Getting ready

I needed to recce a few sites in preparation for a visit, this Thursday, from Jon Dunn, who is currently writing a book on the UK's orchids. The good news is that the particular species that he is targeting this week are present, with some only just flowering - it seems to be a late year. I will hopefully have a full post about what we get up to later on in the week.

Back to today - I made a whistle-stop tour of Juniper Bottom, Juniper Top, Mickleham Downs, Box Hill (several sites) and White Downs. The targets were present, in varying stages, with few out in flower, but producing a spectacle non-the-less - in fact some of these orchids look more fascinating even before reaching full flower.

Birds were not to be left out, with the lower slopes of Boxhill producing a singing Firecrest and two croaking Ravens along the scarp. Butterflies were few, the temperature being quite inhospitable for them whenever the sun went in, which it did more frequently as the day wore on.

Green Hound's-tongue - a bit of a North Downs speciality.

Man Orchid - a spectacular gathering on Box Hill
Bird's-nest Orchids - almost there, maybe fully out by Thursday!

Comments

Derek Faulkner said…
Interesting, I didn't realise that there was a Green Hounds-tongue. We have the ordinary Hounds-tongue growing all over the Swale NNR here. The seeds are like velcro and get spread round easily by sticking to animals legs etc. If you crush the leaves they smell strongly of mouse urine.
18 May 2016 at 05:38
Steve Gale said…
I do like Hound's-tongue, Derek. I often find it on disturbed ground, especially around rabbit warrens. As for the smell - interesting!
18 May 2016 at 08:42
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Goldfinches and Lavender

Image
We have three medium-sized Lavender bushes in our back garden. Throughout the summer the flowers (which last for several months) are a magnet for insects and give off a most restful aroma. As tempting as it is to cut the dead stems in the autumn, we always leave them, as we know that during the late winter we will get visitors to feed on the seed heads... This video was taken from the kitchen window this morning. We will normally see one or two birds over a few days, but have had up to 14 at once. We never tire of watching them. Lavender is a wonderful plant to have in the garden, with year round natural history benefits. So what are you waiting for? They are readily available at a garden centre close to you right now! There is an historic association with Lavender in this part of northern Surrey and south London. Lavender fields have been harvested for many years, with one particular field close to Woodmansterne being very popular with day trippers. A significant proportion o...
Read more

Welcome back!

Image
In November 2005 I purchased a pair of Swarovski 10x42 EL binoculars from The London Camera Exchange shop in Guildford, for the then princely sum of £899. These bins have served me well, with almost daily use in all types of weather, testing their durability to the maximum - salt water spray, deluges of rain, 38C temperatures, dust, dirt, slight knocks... and apart from the armour coating that had started to bubble and come away from the body, nothing to be alarmed about. Then, in the summer of 2022, I noticed that I had a problem when close focusing - the outer focusing wheel would lose grip and it would take me an age to regain a middle-ground distance of focus - plus, over the next few weeks this outer focusing wheel became loose. I resorted to the use of tape to keep it all in place, but realised that I had to do something about it in the long run. For a while I did consider buying a new pair - after all, they were then 17-years old - but they were still optically superb. It seemed...
Read more

A special day

In birding, timing can mean the difference between an average day in the field and that of a spectacular one. Good timing can be helped by reading the weather conditions correctly, or understanding local conditions but it is more often down to pure luck. In this case, I just got lucky... I had not visited Dungeness since March 2022, quite a gap for me. It was high time that I once more trod the shingle and my timing of a visit was down to several factors, mostly a personal liking for mid-late autumn but also because I needed to be at home until September 20th and could not make the journey south until then. I also chose to stay at the bird observatory for a few days rather than make it a day trip. All this conveniently found me stepping outside the observatory's back door in the breaking dawn of Sunday 22nd September, quickly making my way to the fishing boats, an area I prefer to stand to best appreciate any visible bird migration, an aspect of birding that I find exhilarating.  A...
Read more