Linnets on my New Bicycle

I'm still not back to best running form, and walking, pah, that just isn't enough for me, so it was time to head out on two wheels rather than two legs.

About the same time Alberto Contador was breaking his tibia on Le Tour de France, I was aboard my new steed, found by chance at a roadside bike man's house, and obtained for a mere £45. Compared to the rattletrap (now relegated to commuting and shopping drudgery) it goes like a bomb, despite needing some minor tinkering.

I thus had a good trip out on the Cotham-Thorpe-Home route, although sadly the sun had already gone in and my legs are still a bit milk-bottley compared to the rest of me. Unlike in the wheat fields next to the Elston road, where the Partridges had red legs.

I hope they avoided the combine harvesters, in action today.

Further round, on the rugged lane leading to Thorpe, I looked up at the telegraph lines, and each section had a solitary finch type bird sitting on it, in pairs.

Yellowhammer-Yellowhammer, Linnet-Linnet, Goldfinch-Goldfinch.

I always love seeing Linnets, with their beautiful red breasts glowing out from the smart but undestated rest of their plumage. I used to think of them as rare birds, the truth is, I never got out in the country enough to see them. They are much more eyecatching in summer, and are not urban birds by any means. Seeing one sitting on the fence always takes the edge off my arival at work.

Cruelly, as with goldfinches, the Victorians adored them as cage birds.

I ended up home in record time, a little sore and stiff, but thoroughly happy with my new ride.

Elephant Hawkmoth Studies

This magnificent, if sadly dead, elephant hawkmoth was found at work today, and given to me; my interest in nature is becoming more widely known, although my intention to take a dead moth home raised a few eyebrows above polyester collars.

I wish I could see one of these beauties alive, they are common enough round here, and the imago's nectar sources - garden flowers like honeysuckle and petunias  - are found in plenty of urban gardens. They are night flyers, and this specimen no doubt had been drawn to lights of my workplace, come in through the large open  doors and then got trapped. A small tortoiseshell butterfly suffered the same fate in the day, and I was unable to rescue it.

So without further ado, I present my photographs of the moth. The inverted shots remind me, rather daftly, of the small bugs from "Starship Troopers", such an overactive imagination I sometimes have!

I wish it could have been a live one, and hopefully when I have a go at some rudimentary moth trapping. perhaps the next one will be.

PS - "Imago" is the posh way of saying "adult moth or butterfly". But if I want to make a future in this kind of writing, I'd best use posh words!

In Praise of Swifts

It's a subject I keep coming back to, I make no apologies if I have written on this subject before.

I feel so lucky that we have a fair population of swifts here; as they disappear from many towns, our population seems to have at least stabilised, although there perhaps aren't the numbers I remember from my childhood.

By comparison, house martins have been reduced to one active nest site I've encountered - in a row of houses with suitable eaves on Earp Avenue opposite the Magnus field - and swallows aren't nesting along Millgate as they once did.

The first spring sighting of a swift, virtually always as I've been cycling home after an arduous day at work, always brings joy to a stony heart, and every day I feel grateful I share my urban space with them. Every time one screams down low and parts the hairs on my head, leaving me in their fluttering slipstream, gives me such a sense of excitement. "Whooah!" I will often exclaim, as they make a formation strafing run along Balderton gate, no doubt to the puzzlement of the sadly unaware passers-by, ignorant of the aerobatics above their heads.

I've identified plenty of nest sites this year - Aroma Chinese takeaway and the old church on Baldertongate, the London Road Congregational Church; several sites on Victoria Street, the Forge on Millgate. They need an older style of building, with a very particular type of roof and eaves they can get under to nest. Like Lucy Worsely, they have a fondness for heritage.

They like old fashioned pantiles, I think! Modern bland styles of construction are anathema to them.

We probably have no more than three weeks of our glorious rulers of the air before they head south; their dogfights and joy of flight a memory for another year. The seasons move on.

We don't know how lucky we are.

Wherever I can Find Beauty in Newark (picture post)

White tail / Buff Tail on Beacon Hill eastate lavender

Early bumblebee weighed down with pollen, same location

A magnificent thistle, Beacon Hill reserve

Poliinators busy on a thistle, Beacon Hill reserve

Small skipper (I think) Beacon Hill reserve

6 spot burnet on knapweed? Beacon Hill reserve

Bees all over this garden lavender. Looked, smelled and sounded wonderful

Is this ladies bedstraw? Or yellow bedstraw?

Non Particular Newark Wanderings

Today I walked with no specific goal other than relaxation and recovery. The weather was fair if not stifling, and I'd be happy to see whatever I saw, as long as there were tea and ice creams along he way.

The tea was taken care of at Rumbles, where small tortoiseshells were loving the flowerbed, and along the paths I saw red admirals, and what must be newly emerged second flight commas. I hadn't seen a comma until today, and was rather relieved to see their familiar deep orange, ragged, wings sunbathing on a nettle leaf.

Also new in the air today was a brown hawker dragonfly over the second pasture, flying at angles, bronzed wings glinting.

I kept walking, past the multitude of bumblebees and honeybees enjoying the fragrant lavender on the library park, and down Clay Lane to snap a small tortoiseshell feeding off a thistle. Clay Lane field itself was full of meadow browns - I like how they've left half the field to grow wild for nature.

I kept walking, looking out for architectural things for I was away from green space, other that the abandoned nature reserve at the end of Beacon Hill Road. Must write about that place soon.

Soon, when I don't have a thought of an ice cream to distract me as well.

See how many butterflies you can spot in this picture of the Rumbles flowerbed

Speckled Wood by the Devon Park woodland

Meadow brown on a thistle, Devon Pasture

Gee gees

Small tortoiseshell, Clay Lane

The bee in the sun

Bumblebee close up

A Blackbird Vignette from Newark

As I went out my front door this morning, prepatory for heading for work at 6am, I had another of the lovely little widlife vignettes I so enjoy.

An adult blackbird had brought back an enormous lump of bread for a very grown up fledgling on my driveway, so grown up its gape had faded and it was practically larger than its parent. However, the bread was far too big for even the greediest of chicks, so after an initial attempt at feeding bounced off the fledglings head, the ungrateful child peeped insistently at the adult until it tried again, with exactly the same result.

I was reminded of the “And that's how I acquired my drinking problem” scenes from the Airplane movies.

Eventually, after a few avian accidental headbutts the bread had reached edible size, and the fledgling was duly fed, with that same insistent peeping in between each mouthful. Early evening at home, there were three fledglings sat on my back wall; I pity the parents of this demanding little brood.

I love such moments; unremarkable, un-noteworthy perhaps, but a cheerful sign of life going on around you as the prospect of a grim roadwork hassled cycle to work looms over your helmeted head. When I arrive, there's often a singing linnet sat on the fence at my grim industrial workplace, but that's another vignette I may have written about before, and may do again.

Copyright creamcrackerednature  03/07/14

Today's Newark Wonders (another photographic miscellania)

The weather turned fine, but my muscles were still sore after a long run where I took a few mis-steps in the long grass. So I walked through a rather drab and uniform cemetery compared with the constant living changes of spring.

I walked through the threatened grasslands of the sports hub site, where butterflies - skippers, large whites, small tortoiseshells, meadow browns, ringlets, common blue and small heath were all on the wing there.

I walked through the estate, where I always look for life in unusual places.

And then I walked through Devon Park, where butterflies and damselflies flew, adoring the nettles like the least tacky QVC jewellery you've ever seen.

Even at home, a forest shield bug sat on a sycamore leaf, and helped me read Empire magazine in the sun.

This bluebottle can't read this Sconce Park sign

Small copper on the Sonce fortification

Female banded demoiselle chomps down on a mayfly of some kind

Female common blue damselfly, I think, on Devon Pasture

Grasshopper on the Sconce

A tricky subject - small heath on the Sports Hub site

Large skipper

Another large skipper - the small ones don't let you get close!

Common blue at the sports hub, wing undersides look a little dully coloured

You see I think these underwing spots are wrong for a common blue, but nothing else you'd see round here fits

Forest shield bug on sycamore

Not the prettiest face