Today we reached our 200th blog post. It’s actually getting quite tricky to find the time to write something every day – particularly for Brenda, who has the added task of identifying all the new moths and flowers she’s seeing. My job with the birds has got easier! Anyway having got this far we are determined (although we’re currently six days behind writing everything up) to keep going for the whole year…..
Brenda writes: “I love taking off in the van with books and a well-stocked fridge. As I sat reading this morning it was lovely to hear yellowhammers singing and watch a buzzard float over the field I’m on – a little site near Rockland St Peter, between Watton and Attleborough. After lunch I had a walk which took me along lanes and footpaths to the villages of Caston and Stow Bedon.
As I left the site there was a lovely patch of bladder campion.
This is farming country and harvest is under way.
Although the fields are huge the grass verges are being left uncut and the field margins are broad, so there were lots of flowers and plenty that was new for this year. In the ditch was meadowsweet among the bull-rushes and great willowherb, and along the verges the yellow spikes of a plant I always love to see, agrimony.
There is only one flower species that shares its name with a bird. The bird is a medium-sized wader with red legs, the flower has a cluster of pinky-white flowers on top of a bare stem – redshank.
I visited two churches today and one of the churchyards had lots of dark mullein.
I saw another of the nightshade family, black nightshade. Like traveller’s joy, which I saw the other day, it’s a plant I associate with the end of the season. They seem very early this year. I haven’t actually seen a goatsbeard flower – they’re hard to catch – but I saw some wonderful goatsbeard ‘clocks’ among the closed heads, so I think that counts.
A lovely walk and a good haul of new flowers for the year.”
New species for July 19th:
Flowers: meadowsweet, agrimony, redshank, dark mullein, black nightshade, goatsbeard
TOTALS TO DATE:
Birds = 207
Moths = 188
Wildflowers = 250