And into May the walks take on even more meaning as nature unfolds around me. So many things to notice and breathe in - their presence a joy.
Some highlights:
11 May - tasting water dropwort hemlock
May 11 - osprey flying over my allotment
May 16 - cockchafer flying into my bedroom
Early June - grey seal singing
June 19 - newts arriving in our pond
August - manx shearwater
Coffee in a fancy cup
sedge warbler
red squirrel
lizards
raven
Wow indeed!
Sitting amongst leaf litter - becoming invisible to living things - merging into the scents and sounds and becoming still.
Ramsons in full flower. What is the celery-like plant - it has a celery like taste and texture. I shouldn't have - but I did taste it! Turns out it is water hemlock dropwort the most poisonous plant in Britain.
11 May - An osprey flew over my allotment - following the Tyne up to Kielder Water.
16 May - Small and very beautiful dingy skipper on the Spetchells.
21 May A wonderful, burring, buzzing beetle came into my bedroom - bouncing off the ceiling - it was a May bug or cockchafer.
Cockchafer are so big!
29 May - Diaponis damselfly emerging from my pond.
Mouse-ear hawkweed on Lindisfarne ... and the dunes were carpetted with northern marsh orchids.
1 June - This morning, salmon were leaping vertically out of the Tyne at Wylam.
Be aware, lone fly, butterwort awaits.
A wooley bear caterpillar of the garden tiger moth - I used to see so many of these in the garden of my council house when growing up - I never see them now!
Grey seals were singingfrom the rocks ... ghostly murmurrings as if from mermaids.
Under the greenery amongst the hemlock grow the wonderful aniseed smell of sweet cicelly ... and chiff chaff, bullfinch and chaffinch. And Jess finds a patch of sunlight to sleep.
Singing seals.
There are clusters of this green plant on the river edges ... and when the wind blows, the leaves flash white underside ... they smell of herby-lemon ... and have celery like stems ... mugort - once known as poor-mans tobacco.
Sand martin, dodging and disappearing and so hard to follow.
The deadly power and grace of giant hogweed.
A brain and a moon.
What are these strange things in the woods? A brain and a moon!
Turns out to be a common earthball and anm oak gall.
Common earthball - scier oderma citrinum is the common species of earthballs in the UK and occurs widely in woods, heathland and in short grass from Autumn winter - and yet
I saw it in June!
Oak apple gall wasp - female gall wasps insert eggs into the tree and on hatching the legless wasp grubs begin secreting chemicals that recognise the oak's normal growth processes. Instead of producing normal oak tissues, the gall structures are created by the plant around the developing grubs.
Amazingly, this morning - 20 June - there were 10 dragonfly sitting on branched bur-reed in our pond ... waiting for their wings to dry out ... some of them clinging to their nymph cases still.
July - Combe jelly at Druridge Bay, a big dusky slug, white moth - ermine moth? Could have been a bird-cherry ermine. The host plant is brid cherry and the caterpillars make extensive web-like nests. They eat a whole tree bare. the tree is covered by a mass of webs containing the caterpillars. Wylam Haughs Nature Reserve.
Red bartsia - Garstang. Vanessa atalanta - lots of red admiral in July - feeding on nettles - turns out this is the food plant of the caterpillar.
Manx shearwater drifting over the waves.
August
Manx shearwater drifting over moving seas ... sea and sky meet in clouds of spray. Drinking coffee out of a fancy cup watching red squirrel in the garden on Arran. Teasel and linnets - wind and lots of rain. Oystercatchers, noisily keeps watch on rock - winds surrounds - loud strident calls. A sea of grass hides a hare - stillness and watching.
Willow warblers darting amongst the willow. The shingle is full of scentless mayweed ... but why should their lack of scent define them ... it is as if they are somehow less because they don't smell.
A silent hare among the grass.
Grass of parnassus - a most beautiful flower.
At Kildonan there is a wee coastal walk that is full of lizards ... some of them as small as insects and others as large as ... well, big insects. They are so delicate and precious and when they are not sunbathing on rocks, they seem to slide between blades of grass and disappear.
Bog myrtle is so lush - green leaves thrusting vertical through bog. Crush the leaves and the fragrant and pungent aroma can save you from midges ... sometimes!
Wild angelica - common valerian growing tall alongside the stream - along the way wren flitted among the bracken asnd goldcrest peeping in the pine.
Skullcap along the coast among the rocks.
What an amazing week on Arran.
