We were working around the house in Premnay today and having meetings with various people about roof and building work. Apart from seeing and hearing our resident tree sparrows, and hearing blackcap, grey partridge, yellowhammer and a few other song birds, my only other wildlife sighting of note was finding a dead mouse from where some of the carpet damaged by our burst pipe earlier in the year had been taken up. It was basically mummified and completely flat! What I found amazing was that all detail was still there including the whiskers!
Brenda writes: “Today we were around home at Waulkmill and I spent much of it in the garden, starting by having a look at the flowers in what has basically turned into a wild flower meadow. Growing at the base of the wall was a new species for this year, welsh poppy, which has delicate yellow flowers on long stems.
It was nice also to see a lot of bush vetch and patches of germander speedwell.
What I always notice is that, being so much further north, the season starts later, so the fruit trees at the top of the garden are still in flower and species like wood avens are well advanced but not in flower yet. Then it was time to weed out the gravel and have another go at the grass in the front border on a hot sunny day whilst tree sparrows and chaffinches flew overhead and the bi-planes and microlites took off and landed across the road at “Inch International”!
We only had one moth in the trap today, a poplar hawk-moth.”
New species for May 30th:
Flowers: Welsh poppy
TOTALS TO DATE:
Birds = 195
Moths = 58
Wildflowers = 142