Month: May 2019

WEDNESDAY 29TH MAY 2019

Elton + DCW

A rather noisy day spent along the A52 with a visit to a square bordering Leicestershire and a revisit to Elton on the Hill itself to fill in some gaps on the atlas and that was achieved with some success. The sun shone intermittently during the morning and Common Blue and Small Copper made brief appearances and a Dock Bug Coreus marginatus and Wasp Beetle Clytus arietus caught our attention.

Dock Bug
Wasp Beetle

NBN Atlas for Dock Bug suggests we are pretty much at the northern edge of its range. The Wasp Beetle is in the Cerambycidae – the longhorn beetles but this one’s aren’t especially flamboyant.

The A52 verge had been unnecessarily mown over its full width but some plants were still managing to flower including a striking patch of Ragged Robin Lychnis flos-cuculi.

Ragged Robin

This are also held several small populations of Bur Chervil Anthriscus caucalis with its hooked hairs on the fruits.

Bur Chervil

It’s quite easy to overlook galls when the primary purpose is to find as many species of plant as possible but when Dave’s beady eyes are on the case, I allow myself the occasional diversion. This is the gall of the aphid Cryptosiphum artemisiae on Mugwort.

Gall of Cryptosiphum artemisiae on Mugwort.

Buckthorn Rhamnus cathartica is the plant that Brimstone butterflies use as a food plant but this one showed no sign of any munching. I find it mildly strange that the butterfly seems to occur everywhere but the food plant is rather local. On the other hand some of the scarcest butterflies use food plants that are abundant and widespread.

Buckthorn

Elder Sambucus nigra is not a very long-lived plant but this one looks to be as ancient as they get.

Elderly Elder

Plant of the day came right at the end as the rain and chilly breeze got going. Round-leaved Cranesbill Geranium rotundifolium would definitely have passed me by. I still have to look very carefully at many Geraniums to decide on a name and this one’s jizz did not jump out as being anything special (except the leaves were held at an odd angle – though that is not a identification criterion) but it did have the red-tipped glandular hairs on the petiole (leaf stalks).

Round-leaved Cranesbill

It is a Nottinghamshire Rare Plant Register species which points out that although it is native in southern Britain, it is introduced here and it occurs on dry waste ground.

WEDNESDAY 22ND MAY 2019

HAWKSWORTH + DCW

A cloudy and decidedly chilly start melted into a warm and breezy afternoon in deepest Vale of Belvoir for another day of filling in gaps in the national atlas. Several target species, specifically missing woodland and wetland plants were the order of the day. However the only woodland we could access had a ground storey totally dominated by what my kids call stickyweed (Galium aparine) and the Carr Dyke produced only Fool’s Watercress Apium nodiflorum Watercress Nasturtium officinale agg. and Water Starwort Calliriche agg.

However, as always with Dave at the helm, there was loads to see and learn and I brushed up on the elms.

Ulmus glabra x minor

The leaves of this hybrid are too small for Wych Elm U. glabra (and the petioles are exposed) and too oblong for English Elm U. procera. Also they were slightly rough to the touch. What I can’t describe is thirty odd years of devoted experience that went into the assessment and the indescribable jizz which that allows.

The gall mite Aceria campestricola is to blame for the pimples. It’s an odd name for something that doesn’t seem to turn up on Field Maple Acer campestre but interestingly, it doesn’t seem to occur on Wych Elm either.(Chinery 2011, Britain’s Plant Galls, WildGuides).

Perhaps because of its name Malva neglecta, I make some effort to find Dwarf Mallow as it seems sad that it is neglected. However Dave beat me to it today after much of the day and then we found loads of it about a metre from where we’d parked the car.

Dwarf Mallow

Plant of the day was Slender Trefoil Trifolium micranthum in a lawned verge in the village. Here it is with its larger cousin Lesser Trefoil Trifolium dubium.

Slender Trefoil on the left with Lesser Trefoil

This ancient tree is a False Acacia Robinia pseudoacacia in a roadside hedge – very odd!

False Acacia

Hawksworth sewage treatment works is a rotating biological contactor with open access on the occasion of our visit (the gate had fallen down) and has quite a rich flora within its compound including Hoary Plantain Plantago media.

Hoary Plantain

One Little Egret a few common butterflies, two Blue Tit nests (one found by a passing South African ornithologist) and a few unidentified flitting moths just about sums up the incidental sightings.

SUNDAY 19TH MAY 2019

SKYLARKS – HOLME PIERREPONT

A Sunday morning stroll with my ‘fam’ in the expectation of seeing some migrant birds but it turned out to be mighty dull on the ornithological front with only Sedge Warbler new for the year. I revised my plant naming expertise instead (Common Twayblade is almost in full flower) and found this disorientated Hornet in one of the Anglo-Saxon huts…

Hornet

…and a Brown Argus in the meadow area.

Brown Argus with Sticky Mouse-ear and Cut-leaved Cranesbill

KEYWORTH

Our baby Great Tits are coming along nicely.

THURSDAY 16TH MAY 2019

RUBOP

My first trip out this year to see how the Barn Owls are doing and the answer it seems is very well. It looks like a bumper year for voles as they have well stocked larders and some large clutches. 7 eggs is as big as they get and if the parents can rear them all it will equal the project’s biggest brood.

Clutch of 7 Barn Owl eggs

This male (the one on the right) was in a box in a barn near Widmerpool.

Howard Broughton with male Barn Owl

Males have pure white breast feathers; the females have dark spots.

WEDNESDAY 15TH MAY 2019

A WOOD WEDNESDAY – LAMBLEY DUMBLE

Lambley Dumble

My first visit to a dumble. I heard about them donkey’s years ago and I wasn’t disappointed to explore our miniature grand canyons that were formed at the end of the last ice age by the torrent of melting ice eroding the soft overlying rocks. That is a coarse summary of information from the interpretation panels there but I found the internet unhelpful in elaborating the formation of these dumbles – there are others.

This is not a part of Nottinghamshire known to me and it was also a first visit to Gedling country park though this was largely limited to the carpark which constitutes a convenient access to the much more natural countryside nearby as the dumble runs through rich areas of meadow

Our approach to the dumble caught the attention of the local farmer, whose wife and dog came out to see what we were up to and we took the opportunity to ask her about her herd. It consists of a Limousin bull and British Blue and Hereford cows which produce calves that go to slaughter at (I think) around two years old. (I recall that beef cattle were fattened for three years in the 1970s).

British Blues and Hereford

My trips out of Rushcliffe with its largely clay soils inevitably find new plants and the first today was Wood Speedwell Veronica montana which immediately struck me as unfamiliar. Sanicle was another new one for me. Two lifers in one day!

Wood Speedwell

Opposite-leaved Golden Saxifrage, Hard and Soft Shield-ferns and Woodruff featured in and around the dumble while the meadows had Bugle, Devil’s-bit Scabious, Burnet-saxifrage, Tormentil and Pignut.

Red and Black Froghopper

Insects caused some digression from the target class with many Red and Black Froghoppers and a Small Yellow Underwing moth among those getting named.

Small Yellow Underwing

Grasses are maturing to an identifiable state and I’ll be revising hard. Here’s one for starters; Giant Fescue Schedonorus gigantea (formerly Festuca gigantea) is big and has impressive auricles.

Giant Fescue

TUESDAY 14TH MAY 2019

KEYWORTH.

The garden moth trap is slowly getting worthwhile again after a major lull during last week’s horrid weather. Yesterday morning there were just two Light-brown Apple Moths but today saw the year’s first Pale Tussock, 3rd Waved Umber, 5th Double-striped Pug and 50th Shuttle-shaped Dart.

Double-striped Pug
Pale Tussock

GREAT CENTRAL RAILWAY.

Grizzled Skipper

Barnston Cutting south of the A6006 has been managed by Butterfly Conservation and Notts BAP volunteers for the Grizzled Skipper population and I’m pleased to say that their efforts (including mine occasionally) are paying off as I reckon I saw about ten over a 500 metre stretch.

There were also a few Brown Argus and a Treble-bar moth.

Treble-bar

There is also a terrific variety of plants to be found here with at least two “species” of Hawkweed as well as Field Scabious, Rustyback, Common Cornsalad and a Polypody to name a few that spring to mind

Rustyback

The Rustyback is a new site for Nottinghamshire.

SUNDAY 12TH MAY 2019

KEYWORTH MEADOW.

Tetrix subulata

I was doing my best to come up with a complete inventory of the flora of the meadow but spotted this chap in a damp hollow. The photos are awful, sorry and I can’t be certain of the id. Given the location it is a Slender Groundhopper Tetrix subulata but given climate change it could (perhaps) be T. ceperoi which I can’t tell apart. I should have potted it up rather than taken (or rather, attempted to have taken) its portrait. I’ve recorded Common Groundhopper Tetrix undulata in the meadow before.

Unlike grasshoppers, groundhoppers overwinter as adults or final instar nymphs, so this one is fully developed even in May. It will die in a month or two after mating and then there will be a range of developing nymphs until the end of the summer when they will be ready to enter dormancy.

I was told that a Little Egret had been in the meadow earlier and I’m happy to accept the record (the first). Tim saw a Muntjac with a fawn in one of the pastures.

In late afternoon from my front door I could just about see a couple of distant Swifts but a scan of the sky through binoculars revealed several along with a few House Martins and a further scan of apparantly empty space showed what has to have been a Hobby at great height and climbing before it coasted north till lost from view. I’ve eliminated Eleanora’s and Red-footed Falcon on the grounds of probability!