30 Days Wild 2019 – Day 28

This afternoon I took a couple of hours off of work and headed to Wiltshire Wildlife Trust’s Lower Moor Farm.  It was a quiet afternoon.  There were few birds flying (apart from a grey heron) and the only birds I saw on the water were a family of mute swans.

I guessed it was just too warm for our avian friends to be putting too much energy into moving around so my attention was drawn to looking at the flowers in bloom.  There were so many to look at; some I know and some which are new to me, like the grass vetchling. 

But of course if you are looking at the flowers you can’t but help look at the insects too 🙂

30 Days Wild 2019 – Day 02

Not every Sunday, but on most, I do my best to take part in #Wildflowerhour on Twitter.  Wild Flower Hour is a wonderful community of people that are interested in the wild flowers which are in bloom in the UK at the present time.  I have been taking part for about 9 months now and I have learnt so much from everyone that takes part.  If you are interested in our wild flowers please do give them a follow, even if you don’t post any images of your finds to start with you can learn so much by looking at everyone else’s photos.  As I slowly began to get more confident in my identification I also gained confidence to post more images.  Even if you don’t know the name of a flower you have photographed someone will be there to help ID it for you, especially if you include #WildflowerID to your tweet.  I know as more of the yellow flowers come into bloom I will be asking for help as I find some of them so confusing; the difference between Common Ragwort and Hoary Ragwort, nope I still haven’t got my head around that one yet!  

Today on my walk I found…

Fox-and-cubs

Yarrow

Green Alkanet

Hedgerow Crane’s-bill

Black medick

Herb-Robert

Dog rose

Common Bird’s-foot-trefoil

Cleavers

Wood Avens

White Dead-nettle

Bush vetch

Red clover

Common vetch

Dandelion

Oxeye daisy

30 Days Wild 2018 – Day 17

I haven’t been to Wildlife Trust’s Lower Moor Farm since January, so I thought it was about time I made another visit and went along this afternoon.  I’m not sure if it was the weather or I just picked the wrong time of day but there didn’t seem to be much bird life about!  There was a cormorant sat on a post, a few woodpigeon’s flying from tree to tree, a black headed gull, a grey heron flew over and a family of mute swans were on Cottage lake.  There were smaller birds flitting from tree to tree but everything seemed to be hiding away in all the leaf cover.  

The most exciting event of the afternoon was spotting my first orchid – a common spotted-orchid.  I have probably seem them before but no knowingly so! 

Also there are loads of froglets! One poor little chap had got himself caught in spiders webs on the floor of the hide, so after carefully removing the web from his back legs I placed him safely back outside.  The walk back to the car was slow and careful, I counted 28 froglets 🙂