GRASS!

There you go, who said I never buy you flowers.

Took advantage of the gardener's laissez-faire mowing schedule today, donned the pith helmet and went off in search of a few species for the garden flora.  It was incredible!  RAT-TAT-TAT-TAT-TAT!  They were coming from all angles, BOOM!  An unremitting tsunami of megas.  Red Fescue Festuca rubra, KAPOW!  Sheep's Fescue F. ovina, OOOSH!  Perennial Rye-grass Lolium perenne, KER-CHING!  Crested Dog's-tail Cynosurus cristatus, PIZZ-ZAZZ!  Annual Meadow Grass Poa annua, BLAM!  Smooth Meadow-grass P. pratensis, DA-DA-DA-DA-DA!  Wood Meadow-grass P. nemoralis, OOOF!  Cock's-foot Dactylis glomerata, PEEE-OW!  Yorkshire-fog Holcus lanatus, KER-BOOM!  Sweet Vernal-grass Anthoxanthum odoratum, POP!  Timothy Phleum pratense, FIZZ!  Smaller Cat's-tail Ph. bertolonii, PFFFT!  Soft Brome Bromus hordeaceus PARP!  And Bearded Couch Elymus caninus SQUIT!

Off to lie down in a darkened room now.

PS. One or two of the more elusive and/or mobile species might be missing from the photo. 

PPS. I am pretty sure I had at least two subspecies of Red Fescue,... I know,... where will this mad, white knuckle, roller coaster of botanical exploration end?!

PPPS. I might be very bored,... and have almost certainly consumed more than my usual intake of caffeine today.

Quiet becoming moist

Another morning Cetti's wrangling at Uskmouth.  A little bit quiet on both the bird (boo!) and punter (yay!) fronts.  In lieu of anything ornithological worth mentioning, some bird food for your delectation,...

Narrow-bordered Five-spot Burnet, Zygaena lonicerae, nice and easy to photograph when they are practically comatose thanks to the fine summer we're having; did briefly chase after a Small China-mark, Cataclysta lemnata, but the wee fella proved a touch evasive. 

A few 'jars and a side order of chips

Another few nights on the heath this week; Nightjars on the dry bits, various avian nuggles in the wet,... a darkness full of churrs, chips, whistles, hums, squeaks and grunts,...

... and the birds were making some noises too,...

BOOM! BOOM!

[From our Guest Editor Fouad: Oh-ho-ho! Yes! It's funny because you thought the noises were made by the birds whilst being observed but then the opposite was implied, the noises might have been made by the human observer. Oh-ho-ho! It's funny! You try it. Oh-ho-ho! Now you're funny too!]

A few nights on Egdon

Spent this week 'jarring in deepest Wessex.

"The heaven being spread with this pallid screen and the earth with the darkest vegetation, their meeting-line at the horizon was clearly marked. In such contrast the heath wore the appearance of an instalment of night which had taken up its place before its astronomical hour was come: darkness had to a great extent arrived hereon, while day stood distinct in the sky. [...] The face of the heath by its mere complexion added half an hour to evening; it could in like manner retard the dawn,... "

"... precisely at this transitional point of its nightly roll into darkness the great and particular glory of the Egdon waste began [...]. It could best be felt when it could not clearly be seen, its complete effect and explanation lying in this and the succeeding hours before the next dawn; then, and only then, did it tell its true tale. The spot was, indeed, a near relation of night, and when night showed itself an apparent tendency to gravitate together could be perceived in its shades and the scene. The sombre stretch of rounds and hollows seemed to rise and meet the evening gloom in pure sympathy, the heath exhaling darkness as rapidly as the heavens precipitated it. And so the obscurity in the air and the obscurity in the land closed together in a black fraternization towards which each advanced halfway." ~ The Return of the Native, Robert [D'oh!] Thomas Hardy.

What he said.

Grinding to summer's halt

Six Black-tailed Godwit, four Dunlin and 70 Swift were the only nailed-on migrants at Goldcliff over high tide.  I suppose we may yet get a late spring monster but, locally at least, you're probably better off chasing dragonflies, butterflies, grasshoppers, bumblebees, etc., for the next six weeks. 

On the other hand, there is always aestivation.  

Smash and shrike

It's what your lunch hours were made for: Gwent's 5th Woodchat Shrike.  I've been waiting since 2004 to get this grip-back on the county and patch lists.

A nominate race female, definitely not the Kenfig/Morfa Tip bird; seemed to show two generations of feathers in the wing, so probably a first-summer; conditions were 'orrible though, I wouldn't want to stick my neck out till seeing it in a less bedraggled state in something approaching daylight.

A pretty ickle bird cowering from the pissing rain and blustery westerly. The bird was feeding during most of my short visit, at one point catching a whopping great bumblebee. It dotted about between the pylon just west of the ramp at the end of Perry Lane, the wooden wings of the crashed-monster-dragonfly sculpture and nearby scrub.  Given the weather, it should hang around till tomorrow, the Met Office aren't exactly forecasting a leaper's moon tonight.

What next, spinning bow ties?

Dickie Benyon prepares to make DEFRA's next statement on the UK's wildlife.

Eight fun Richard 'Dickie' Benyon facts:

1. Dickie is the richest MP in the House of Commons, his personal wealth is estimated at £110m and is Minister for Natural Environment and Fisheries Department for Environment [sic?], Food & Rural Affairs.

2. Amongst a varied property portfolio, Dickie owns two large estates including 20,000-acres in southern England on which gamekeepers tend to his pheasants and kill the animals that might eat them. Last year a video came to light in which one of the aforementioned gamekeepers listed buzzards as the first of the predators he blamed for eating his pheasants. [Is it beyond the wit of man to roof poult pens? And what about the rampant predation of pheasants by cars? Shouldn't we be shooting them on the assembly line?]. By sheer coincidence, in 2012 Dickie sought to use public money to capture buzzards and destroy their nests, in order to help pheasant shoots and in 2013 revisited the issue (see below).

3. Birds of prey are illegally shot and poisoned by gamekeepers on shooting estates across the UK. Luckily for the poor, down-at-heel, landowners, under UK law, they carry no liability for the killings they directly or indirectly commission. In 2012, when Dickie was challenged in the House of Commons to introduce a law of vicarious liability, under which landowners would become responsible for illegal persecution of wildlife carried out by their staff, he dismissed the proposal out of hand.

4. In 2012 Benyon refused a request to make possession of carbofuran, a poison used to kill raptors, a criminal offence causing Caroline Lucas MP to point out that "The minister's shocking refusal to outlaw the possession of a poison used only by rogue gamekeepers to illegally kill birds of prey would be inexplicable were it not for his own cosy links to the shooting lobby."

5. During Dickie’s tenure, Natural England (NE), the statutory body charged with safeguarding England’s natural wealth, has been brought to its knees through gross under-funding. Luckily for Dickie, a severely weakened NE opens up the way for landowners attempting to cash in on the natural environment. By sheer coincidence (again), Benyon's Englefield Estate has sold the rights to quarry 200,000 tonnes of sand and gravel across 88 hectares of important wildlife habitat despite opposition from his neighbours and the local wildlife trust.

6. In a recent return to all things Buteo, a weakened NE appears to have been lent on by Benyon's department to issue licences to destroy buzzard nests. DEFRA then hid behind Natural England's direct responsibility for issuing said licences in an effort to avoid criticism. DEFRA claimed "NE is charged with determining applications for licences. Ministers did not make any decisions regarding this licence". However, documents detailing a conversation between a deputy director at DEFRA and a director of NE clearly point to DEFRA's direct and active involvement in these decisions: "Insofar as a moratorium was in place (following the decision of the department to review its proposed programme of research on buzzard predation in June 2012), there is now no impediment to Natural England assessing applications for bird of prey licences" and "This position has been confirmed in subsequent Ministerial correspondence (e.g. to National Gamekeepers’ Organisation, 21/11/2012)." In addition, whilst DEFRA involved The National Gamekeepers' Organisation in correspondence on the issue, apparently, the RSPB were kept in the dark.

7. Richard Benyon's boss is the renowned anti-science, climate change denying, irrationalist Owen Paterson.

8. Richard 'Dickie' Benyon is a creasy-faced clown.

The above largely constitutes a ham-fisted amalgam of snippets from the following:
Martin Harper's RSPB blog posts here and here.
Michael McCarthy's article in The Independent here.
George Monbiot's blog posts on The Guardian website here, here and here.
Tom Rowley's article in The Daily Telegraph [I know! The Torygraph!] here.
And, of course, the mighty Wikipedia here.

Yawners

Summer appears to have arrived, which is odd, as spring never did. Walked to within a Cetti's Warbler song of every point of Uskmouth this morning, the mind utterly untroubled by the thought of something rare appearing. It was never going to happen. A singing Grasshopper Warbler and a few Cuckoo were the sum of the feathered it; and a Water Shrew squeaking away in the bottom of a ditch, although not seen, was probably the top all-comers highlight.

Buttercups, apparently poisonous to livestock when eaten fresh, but, due to the fact they taste like shit, usually left uneaten. Symptoms of poisoning include bloody squits [technical term], excessive salivation, colic, and severe blistering of the mucous membranes and gastrointestinal tract.

Buttercup-free moo cow.

Six legs, four wings

Finally, a day of multiple Odonata and a few other relatively large, obvious and pretty flying insects; nothing exciting mind, and only a few butterflies.

 Female Large Red Damselfly Pyrrhosoma nymphula f. intermedia

Red Twin-spot Carpet Xanthorhoe spadicearia

Nettle-tap Anthophila fabriciana; also had the longhorn Cauchas rufimitrella but failed to obtain a suitably sharp and shiny photo.

Dusky eastern exotica

What a lovely day for a saunter down the M4 and around the M25 to God's acre; and then beyond, along the M26 and M2 to the very furthest flung corner of the garden of England-England-England and the first twitchable Dusky Thrush since forever.

A thrush in a tree.

A tree in front of a thrush,... mostly.