Sorry about the raccoons, but great to hear about the beavers. Now you’ll get a great ecosystem going.
Discovered in my new neighborhood this spring that someone has coaxed a pink magnolia to not just survive, but bloom in our borderline-too-cold zone. The placed it on the south side of a home to protect it from the worst of winter’s drying winds and perhaps due to an unusually warm winter, it burst into full bloom which gave me a lot of joy on my drive home from work. The blossoms even survived a brief dip below freezing overnight.
Ah, yes: the racoon is there too (same spot):
But it is a great ecosystem indeed. We (my wife and I) are about to finish a hut just 80 meters away, I hope to see some of the action in person and not just with a motion sensor camera this summer.
Only 200 chalk rivers are known globally, 85% of which are found in the UK in southern and eastern England.
Well, this photo is a pond fed by chalk springs, so I guess it qualifies as being on one of those rivers (possibly the head of one of them).
It’s been wet and cold most of the spring , but was warm and bright today; the pond was free of algae and brilliantly clear. I’ve been trying to capture fish in a chalk stream for this thread for while. This is the best I’ve managed.
The ducklings shown on April 24 were not seen again until this week: at least one is still thriving (lower part of the image, centre):
And the wild boars have piglets too (TIL: they are also called boarlets). At least one anyway:
This is the time the mothers are particularly eager to protect them: Never stand between a mother and her boarlets!
I’m rather late in posting this, primarily because I was trying (and failing) to find out more about the habitat in question. The following photos were taken on the sand dunes of the Pointe d’Agon in Normandy. You should be able to choose to read this in either French or English:
One intriguing aspect of the dunes - something I don’t remember seeing before - is this (it’s google photos, so you’re going to have to click for the full image)
In the foreground and in the distance (on higher ground) you have what I would think of as fairly typical dune flora - thick marram grass and the sorts of flowers you regularly see on dunes*.
In the mid-distance, the lower lying ground, that foliage is densely packed succulents. Here’s another view of them.
I assume that the succulents occupy this space because they are better able to cope with the salty environment at lower ground levels, as a result of either being submerged by the highest tides; or a salty water table (is there such a thing?)
Anyone able to help out here? Any other examples of something similar?
j
* - notably, the dunes here have astonishingly high numbers of lizard orchids.
A couple of new visitors to the swamp! Apart from the usual fox, beaver, racoon, boars and roe deer (they seem to be doing fine, all of them), a couple of weeks ago I got this:
and this in the daytime:
Fast, it seems. I suspect a mustelid (a beech marten (Martes foina)? or a european pine marten (Martes martes)?). I wouldn’t mind either at all!
And this week again:
Not yet very clear, but if it keeps coming I’ll get good pics some day night.
No, they are not really rare, but are more frequent in cities by now, where they are feared by car drivers because it seems they like the warm motor in winter and enjoy chewing cables and brake fluid conducts. But as they are mostly nocturnal they are difficult to see. I have never seen one in the wild, and seldom in my street at night, in the middle of Berlin (which is sort of in the wild, of course, at least from the marten’s point of view), where it scuttles from underneath one parking car to underneath the next parking car at night, when the streets are empty and silent and I go out to my balcony to watch around.
Another sighting of the beast:
The fallen tree is about 25 -30 cm (10"-12") in diameter, for size comparison. It’s a pity the camera does not show colours at night.
A swan came to visit:
It is a juvenile, the feathers are still partly brown, so some new born have survived the bird flu so far. I never saw the ducklings again, but they may simply have moved to another part of the lake.
The dragonflies are spectacular when they lay their eggs in tandem flight:
They are so concentrated that they allow you to come relatively close and take a picture:
They fly rhythmically up and down, laying an egg at the surface at every turn. A video would have been a better idea than just a picture. Perhaps next year.
Timely reminder - on Monday we were at Wakehurst and the East coast prairie caught my eye. It’s dying back now, but it just struck me as much more diverse than it has previously been.
The West coast one, on the other hand, seems to have disappeared. I don’t know if this is simply because they’re cutting instead of burning again and that’s the one they started with, or if something else is going on.
Re swans and bird flu - round these parts swans (and geese) weren’t much affected, it was ducks that took the huge hit. Successful broods are a really unusual sight, and have been for several years.
There are still lots of dragonflies? Has it been unusually mild?
Yes, it has been a roller coaster year: spring and early summer were very wet and chilly, the second half of summer was nice and warm, then it started raining, but it stayed warm. The cold is just starting. No frost yet, but it’s coming.
Some new pictures from the roe deer: One has antlers, the other does not, so there are at least two, although they never show together in the same picture!
And a rat:
Probably better than the racoon, I guess:
Is there any way of getting rid of a racoon family? Firearms or arrows are not allowed. Poison is no good either. Too unspecific, to start with.
Yesterday night we had the first snow of the year, just a light dusting in the morning. It was gone by ten.
Last years the only birds I saw breeding were the ducks, this year geese and swans are breeding too.
Ducks:
Geese (with a duck to the left, they seem to get along well):
And swans:
I saw my first family of ducklings of the year today when I was out on the bike. These last few years, seeing any ducklings at all is something of note. I’ll look out for cygnets and goslings.
Cygnets! What a beautiful word, will try to remember.
But today first family of ducklings of the year? Feels like a bit late, my pics are one to over two weeks old. But there is a couple of ducks here hanging around very often on the same spot, wonder whether they are planing nesting. That would feel extremely late, would be great to follow it.
It has been an extremely dry year so far, but the water level is very high nonetheless, and now it has finally rained a couple of days.
I’ve posted about the rare habitat vegetated shingle before in this thread (eg post #2); today in Shoreham, the shingle was looking fabulous. Click for the full image.
