bunn

I wandered past the buddleia bush today with camera in hand, and half-raised it to point at a Red Admiral that was flittering past, before deciding it was too far away to make a good photo. Then I looked down, and this chap landed approximately three inches from the camera lens and began... well. Posing. Flexing his proboscis, strutting with his little spiky legs and waving his stalkeyes. So I photographed him.
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Police are searching for a Eurasian Lynx that escaped from Dartmoor Zoo overnight. It had dug its way out of its enclosure after arriving yesterday.

I wonder if they will be able to find it, in this area of tangled woods, rivers, heathland and small meadows or if it will join the illicit beavers and Nobody Mention the wild boar as permanent residents.

That's assuming, of course, that we don't have lynx already. I know the previous owner of the zoo was convinced that there were wild lynx in the area, but he was a bit nutty, so I'm not entirely convinced that the lynx he thought he had seen signs of weren't actually his own lynx who had popped out for a wander about before going home for lunch. :-D On the other hand, the Legendary Dartmoor site has a very jolly list of big cat sightings on the moor, so who knows? Maybe this one will join a breeding population. After the Dangerous Wild Animals act in 1976, a number of cats of various kinds were released by private owners who were unable to meet the new license requirements, and some people think some of them have naturalised.

I just hope that if they do catch a lynx, it matches the description. We had an incident a while ago with an escaped beaver, which when recaptured had apparently become several years younger and changed sex, which was just confusing for everyone :-D

I can live with wandering lynx, but I do hope they will keep a careful eye on the jaguar.

I was puzzled by the identity of these ducks today. The one with the red face is male, and he is the sort of large, spectacularly ugly duck I often see hanging about on the slip at Calstock. I had assumed that these were domesticated ducks, although I have had a look at the Websites of Duck Identification with no success.

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The squirrels of Tavistock are bold and brave, so bold indeed that they can be photographed reasonably adequately even with a phone.
I have tagged this wildlife, although I'm fairly sure that Rosie Roo would be very clear that it should be tagged 'prey'. This park is an exciting place for lurchers.

On Kit Hill this morning, I gallumphed among the heather and the golden stems of dried grass under deep blue skies, surrounded by clouds of tiny fluttering white moths.

For much of my walk. I was tormented by a particularly persistent and malignant horsefly which seemed bent on following me wherever I went, despite my feeble attempts to out-run it, my random irritated flailing and the rich selection of curses that I rained upon it and all its ilk .

It has been suggested that the more clothes you have on, the more savage the bugs. If this is true, I dread to think what this one would have been like if I had encountered it while wearing a coat. Possibly I would have had to fight it off with a spear.

Anyway, in between the flailing, thwacking, etc, I considered this problem and came up with MANY THEORIES:

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Yesterday's score: zero.

I tried a count this morning, but a single gatekeeper seemed such a feeble result that I think I'll have another go later on and hope the butterflies have just got up late.

I went to Greenscombe wood this morning.

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At first, she flew joyfully after them
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As I walked dogs this morning, I felt I was being watched...

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I took a photo of this a few weeks ago because I didn't recognise it. I expect to recognise trees - at least, trees growing in a context that says 'I am a native tree!' like this one. Later, I found the photo and thought 'what was that tree anyway?' So I typed things vaguely into Google, but had no luck. Then the word 'Alder' came into my head, and then the word 'buckthorn'. And so it appears to be. Yet I would have sworn I did not know that tree.

Bad brain, no biscuit.

Went to visit some otters today, at the Tamar Otter Centre. The main job of this place is taking in young otters that have been orphaned and looking after them until they are old enough to release, so most of the otters we saw were British otters. Apparently female British otters are terribly fierce, and specialise in beating up all the male otters, even though the males are much bigger. And orphan baby otters are surprisingly tame and will stay close to their human while they are growing up. And they hate learning to swim!

I think this was my favorite photo I took of an otter.

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Walked through the red dunes and down through the beechwoods around the old Clitters mine to the river. Skies a pale grey, but only one brief shower. The hounds and I sheltered under a leaning tree, and the rain passed over before the water made its way through the leaves.
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Randomly we went to Rame Head: a long tall bulge of land pointing out into the sea.

It has a little building on it that from a distance looks like a chapel. Wikipedia calls it an 'intact shell' and says it is dedicated to St Michael, but at close quarters, it is fairly clear that the people who are mostly using it nowadays are equine. Possibly they still say horsy prayers to St Michael for providing them with a horse-shelter with such fine views.
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Was in a medieval mood today, so we went to Cotehele house for an outing. Here is my mum, demonstrating doorways designed for seriously short people only. This would probably be more helpful if I could remember how tall my mother is. 5'1-ish ? Less? Considerably Shorter Than Me, anyway.
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This morning as I was returning with the hounds from a morning walk (thankfully, much cooler today than it has been: Oh! the humidity!) I was accosted by a woman waving the implement whose name causes controversy. Some call it a fish-slice, others, a spatula, and I think last time we debated this matter there were other suggestions too. The thing you use to turn stuff in a frying-pan so it browns on both sides. Anyway...

A tall, grey-haired lady, slim and jeans-clad, with intelligent aquiline features, approached me, waving this utensil.
"Is this yours?" she said.
Somewhat baffled and for some reason, feeling rather guilty, I examined the item, and was relieved to see that it was unfamiliar. At least, whatever the dogs, cats, etc may do, the kitchen equipment is not out annoying the neighbours.
"No!" I said
"I found it in the garden. We often find things in the garden. Something brings them. I think perhaps it was from a barbecue," and she looked at me hopefully.
I admitted that it did indeed look like the kind of thing that someone might use if barbecueing.

"The thing is... I've lost a shoe," she went on. "You haven't seen a shoe..? A trainer kind of shoe?"
I shook my head in bafflement.
"Sometimes it brings things, and sometimes it takes them away. I'm hoping that if I can find where this came from, I might find my shoe."
I assured her that I would look out for her shoe, and if I found it, I would return it to her house pronto.
And she went off up the lane, fish slice in hand, looking for her shoe.

Honestly, this really happened. I assume, possibly, a fox at work? All the other explanations seem even less likely.

Summer time, and the windows and doors are open. The first time I saw the vole zoom across the floor and take refuge under the sofa, I was a little surprised, but assumed it had been imported by a cat. Then I thought that it has been a long time since any of our geriatric cats bestirred themselves to hunt, so this seemed odd.

This afternoon, I surprised the vole half-way up our Ikea shelves, tucking in enthusiastically to a small bar of chocolate it had found there that I had put safely out of reach of the dogs.

I now believe it to be not a sad Victim Vole, carried in by predators, but a bold Raiding Vole, nipping in through the french doors in the hope of finding loot.

Definitely a vole. Not a rat, not a mouse. Vole: little round face, short tail.

1) I met a tiny adder last week on the hill. He curled and hissed and darted defensively at me in a way that clearly expressed 'I am a great big snake! Fear me!' but at the same time suggested that it was trying to conceal a monumental lack of self-confidence. It was a very small adder.

2) Walking down by the river, I saw what looked like a tiny, dark-brown grizzly bear poised in the road in front of me, one paw raised in a heraldic fashion. It looked around at me, and then sprang agily up into the long grass of the bank. I think it may have been a mole.

3) My garden is hot and full of flowers, butterflies and bumblebees, and even some of that great rarity, the honeybee. I saw a fritillary this morning, although it was in too much of a hurry for me to work out which fritillary it was.

I'm liking this warm sunny weather, but it's too hot to walk dogs in the daytime. So, morning walk at 6:50am (there's a morning version of 6:50! Who knew!) and evening walk at 8:40pm. The evening walk:

The morning walk became exciting...( Read more... )

This evening, we saw a tawny owl, some pheasants, a lot of rabbits, a lot of bats, and an absolutely adorable family of fluffy fox cubs. But we did not chase any of them. Possibly also some little Egrets, but they were Far Away.

The Lonicera nitida is in full flower at the moment. With its modest bushes and small creamy-greenish flowers, nobody would accuse Lonicera Nitida of being excessively flashy, but as a member of the honeysuckle family it has a lovely scent, and seems to be deeply beloved of the bees.

( Photos )
This bee- attraction makes the plant not beloved of poor Brythen, who loathes buzzing things and looks sideways at the Lonicera nitida and sits worriedly on his bottom whenever he goes near enough to hear the bees at work.

I don't seem to have noted many garden updates this year, although I've taken lots of photos. I think the figs are ahead of where they were last year, I note that I did a fig update on 19th May 2013 with a photo showing figs at a stage very similar to these. ( Read more... )

I was looking out over the valley one morning this week, when I heard a huge sound. Not a very loud sound, but the sort of noise that is only made by quite large things. I thought at first it was a train, and then I realised that the nearest station is too far away. It sounded like the train was going past on the track that would once have run across the hillside above our house but that line was closed in the 1960s. Ghost Train!

Then I looked up and realised that the noise was made by an enormous cloud of tiny birds passing overhead, a really huge flock that stretched right across the entire village. Before I could do anything sensible like get some binoculars to try to see what sort of birds they were, they had flown off up the valley and disappeared.

In other news, I offered my visiting butterfly a piece of tissue that I had soaked and rinsed in clean water, then added a few drops of orange juice and a little fructose. She ignored it for a couple of days, but today she is sitting on it with her proboscis poked into the soggy tissue, so I assume my offering has been accepted. There are a few nectar plants in flower in the garden, but I'm guessing she's probably happier indoors until the weather is warmer. She appears to only have four legs, and looking into this, I discover that the Tortoiseshell is one of the Four Footed butterflies, which have reduced forelimbs that are kept tucked up out of the way. I've never noticed that before, even though the garden is often full of tortoiseshells...

I was having a shower this morning, when I became aware that I was not alone. A butterfly was sitting in the corner of the shower cubicle, with her proboscis stretched out, drinking the water!

It was quite difficult to get out of the shower without washing her away, but I managed it only getting her a little damp. So I put her by the window to dry out. She sat there for a bit vibrating her wings, then she flew off and found a towel. What a sensible insect. Now she's found a wickerwork basket in a dark corner, and is sitting on that. I assume the rough texture is easy for her to hook her little feet onto.

( Tortoiseshell Shower-butterfly )

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June 2025

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Page generated Jul. 12th, 2025 09:09 pm

Entries tagged with wildlife

The poser

Lynx on the loose!

Ducks

Phonesquirrel

Flies

Butterflies

Bunked off, had some weekend.

The Roo is teased by large black birds

Red deer lady in the woods

Alder Buckthorn from the subconscious

Otters and things

Grey day by the river

On Rame Head

Short woman, short archways. Also, mysterious Woman with Fishslice

Chocoholic Vole

Three random things

Evening walk along the Tamar

Bees

A sound like a train, or maybe a single wave

Winter Butterfly

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June 2025

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