November 2014

The grass is still growing and even here, where wind removes leaves before they turn colour, there are still flowers: Red Campion and Hemp Nettle I noticed in the weed patch where the vegetables grew, and already the European Gorse has abundant blossom, which had attracted a Painted Lady just at the beginning of this week above Nantmor in Snowdonia, on a sunny South-facing slope of small Sessile Oak, Birch, Holly, streamside Sphagnum and Rush.

At home we have been seeing queen Bumble Bees about, taking advantage of late sun.

But thinking back to the summer, our sunny, dry summer, it was the presence once again of Hares in our immediate neighbourhood which was a highlight.

First, there were leverets: at least two teenaged hares to be seen in a reseeded field down the lane. After strolling part-way to meet the school minibus with Robs it was possible to watch them browsing and preening in viridian  Ryegrass and acid yellow Wild Turnip. One of them lolloped up the track and into our drive ahead of me. I crawled after it, so convincingly non-human that it came sniffing and nibbling towards me, before hopping at the last minute into the patch we left to grow ungrazed for clover and trefoils. The morning sun shone ruby through its ears and through the frill- edgings of sorrel flowers.

Later in the year  we would sometimes encounter the adults on Trwyn Bychestyn among the anthills clothed in Thyme.

This is a monoprint after notebook drawings.

Whimbrel at Porth Ysgaden on the north coast of Pen Llyn

MAY 2014

There were around 50 or so of them in a field of sheep, probing like neat curlew. They flew down onto the reefs of rock for a bathe and a preen; their flight down over the low cliff was erratic, twisting violently before landing like curlew and other species do, maybe to evade raptors?


May 20th
After this wet and very windy winter we were lucky in having a benign April and so far, May also.
At least in our area. Nice for lambs.
But the Swallows, back singing and in and out of the barn where they nest, needed some damp soil:
I unwittingly provided this when I raked a large seedbed in the spud patch up the field, sowed several rows of sunflowers, phacelia and swede, and watered them. Immediately the swallows were there, landing to pick up billfuls of mud and rootlets, stems and general building materials. Gwyd says they are doing up a very old nest, built on a metal frame slung on a beam.
The soil has continued to be wet, with thundery showers over the past couple of days,  20mm of rain.

Whitethroat and St Mark's Flies among the Cow Parsley


I have never seen so many of these flies, which loved the panicles of limegreen sycamore flowers, feeding on them as had Queen bumble bees. Beneath were littered the corpses of flies which presumably had mated and/or laid eggs. Just looking them up on the NH museum site it points out, which I hadn't spotted, that the males are smaller and larger eyed than the females. Must look more closely. Eggs are laid in the soil, and I now wonder how I should recognise the grubs when gardening.

16th May, out in the garden with a coffee, and Gwyd announced a Cuckoo calling close by, from the gorsey basalt crag above the house. Despite getting nearer to it, and further from the cacophony of chaffinch goldfinch and greenfinch in the garden--I still couldn't hear him. I have always struggled with this particular frequency and quality of sound. But still I could not resist including my memory of the hollow, oval, warm voice in the little painting  of sounds in the garden and sounds beyond:-

And here is the key to the marks:-

A few days ago I got out at 5.30 in the morning for a cliff walk  round Pen Y Cil and back up through the valley from Porth. Here are (extracts) notes en route:-
Sun rising, first a shaft shooting skywards from behind the highest part of Rhiw. The cirrocumulus disperses, and the whispy cirrus, in a clear sky. Dew, or yesterday's fog.
Pen y Cil-silent. No Wheatears
Little fields at Hen Borth - silent, no Yellowhammer.
Trwyn Dymi (quarry in the cliff, honeysuckle and blackthorn thicket clad the steep slope above the sea) - resonant - Wren, echoing. Whitethroat zizzing below the path.
Swallows snip to and fro. Sing on the fence.
Pair of Blackbirds carrying food, lands on fence tail rising, eye beady, yellow-green pillar in yellow bill.
Idwal chugs out across to lift pots off Ynys Gwylan.
Dancing Whitethroat songflight.
A pair of Shelduck circles repeatedly, silently, low over the slopes and away round the corner.

There are several webs of Lackey caterpillars. The last thing these marginal Blackthorns need is Lackey invasion. Do birds predate them? Probably they are unpalatable. And their habit of dropping en masse must be a good defence.

A mob of Jackdaws bustles round the shadowed space of the quarry, homely chimney-chups, chaw chaw.
and above in the blue spaces are the rooftop aerial twitters of Swallows. They must be nesting here for why else is he so ardently singing to his mate.

In the valley up from Porth Meudwy:-

where the 2 valleys meet, GREEN is so overwhelming and I start to think about green paint, green textures of bird song, Willow Warbler, Chiffchaff, Blackcap, Wood Pigeon.
Ash pinnates unfurling at last from sooty bud scales. 
Hawthorns are blowing more than ever, creamy greeny.

Yet walking along Lon Pen y Maes I realise that the overwhelming greenness has diminished, up here in the  sky,  road and sky share  a cerulean-grey, soft, I like the roughish bloom of purply down on Cow Parsley stems, the dew-coated grasses. Red Campion. A Ladybird next to magenta Common Vetch. Buttercups. Ruddy, impudent Wall Pennywort flower spikes, all turning russet, old-bracken-buff.