We were outside most of today, but only around the house (or “chouse” as our kids call it! – see photo below), making the most of some decent weather to paint a few areas, do some weeding, and finish some general outdoor tidying. I think the only birds I consciously noticed were a couple of our resident tree sparrows and a raven that flew over. The tree sparrows like the ash tree at the front of the house (on the left in the photo). It has ash dieback, a fungal infection: Apparently the tree can fight back, but year on year infections will eventually kill it – we will just have to wait and see.
Hopefully tomorrow we’ll do a bit more wildlife spotting as we’re planning to go out for a good walk in the afternoon.
Brenda writes: “Question: When is a wild flower a weed? Answer: When it’s growing in the wrong place. Today we were around home tidying the front terrace and garden after the work the stonemasons did on the stonework. In among the grass and snowdrops in the rather overgrown front flowerbed was groundsel in flower. It is one of many species which are described in field guides as ‘a weed of cultivation’. I did spare the life of this one but other groundsel plants in the flower bed were pulled out as I removed tussocks of grass. Groundsel is a member of the ragwort family but differs from it in having no petals on the flower. I was struggling to describe its shape and the book helped me out, ‘brush like’.
New species for February 15th:
Flowers: groundsel
TOTALS TO DATE:
Birds = 120
Moths = 3
Wildflowers = 16