Thursday 15 April 2010

Springtime flowers and wildlife

At last, the wood anemones are in full bloom!
That picture's from our friend's wood on the other side of the wayleave. Here's one from ours, near the pond, where we coppiced just over a year ago - there's new flowers arrived - dandelions:
There's other promising developments too, like lots of thistles, seeded from the single thistle we had last year I assume.
And a mystery plant we haven't identified yet. We'll probably have to wait for it to flower, unless anyone knows it straight away?
The area we coppiced in 2007/8 is beginning to look green again:
although there were still plenty of dead leaves from the autumn to camouflage this Purple Thorn moth while it rested:
Butterflies were busy in the same part of our wood too, including several Peacocks:
There's other insects out as well now:
and with the insects come the birds that eat them, such as this Treecreeper:
and this Great Tit
A surprise in the wayleave was to see some Sparrows hiding in the brambles, as they're normally living nearer to people.
Back to insect-eaters, we saw this lizard near our camp as well. You'll see it's in the process of shedding its skin:

And finally, how are the trees getting on? Here's some Hazel:
Some Willow:
and some Birch:
Just inside our entrance we found a few self-seeded Birch that have been growing since we coppiced there. Very please to see this natural regeneration going on:
That's all for now. Hopefully we'll visit again this weekend as things are changing so fast in the wood right now!

Mike

4 comments:

Isaac McGinley said...

is the mystery plant not just a nettle?? Isaac

Mike Pepler said...

I don't think so, although the leaves are a similar shape. Then again, I don't remember watching a nettle grow from this size, so I could be wrong. I'm hoping it will become obvious as it grows...

Unknown said...

Mike, I think this is either hemp-nettle or horehound - both have similar leaves to nettles and are in the nettle family, but they aren't stinging nettles. We have similar at our woods.

Mike Pepler said...

A friends has told us it may also be Hop...