An Excellent Day on Gooseman's Field.

 Rain overnight but a very pleasant day with sunny intervals, 23C. I went for a walk around the woodland burial ground and Gooseman's field looking for butterflies. An excellent session with 78 individuals from 11 species. The highlights were small heath, common blue, brown agus, painted lady and small/Essex skipper.

Brown Argus

Brown Argus

Cinnabar Moth Caterpiller

Common Blue

Common Blue

Green-veined White

Large White

Large White

Large White

Meadow Brown

Muntjac Deer

Painted Lady

Painted Lady

Scarce Silver Lines Moth

Shaded Broad Bar Moth

Small Heath

Small/Essex Skipper

Small/Essex Skipper

Small/Essex Skipper

Small/Essex Skipper

Speckled Wood

My First Large Skippers of the Year

 A walk around the cemetery and Horsefield today. Warm and overcast but a strong SE wind made conditions very difficult. I saw 20 bird species and found my first large skippers of the year.

Dog Rose

Large skipper, male and female.

Large skipper

Large skipper

Sycamore seeds

Small tortoiseshell

Butterflies on the Horsefield At Last

 The warmest day of the year so far at 23.5C. It was cloudless all day, a T-shirt and shorts day. We were up early to clean the church and then home for soup making - leek and potato - ready for Brian and Heather coming for lunch. Hunger satisfied, we set out for a walk around the 'Local Patch' birding and looking for butterflies. The ladies made it a short walk but I took Brian around the woodland burial ground  and then through the fence and over Gooseman's Drain for a lap of the Horsefield. "I hadn't expected an expedition!", quoth The Historian. It was a beautiful day with just a gentle breeze. Finally some butterflies were out and about: small white, speckled wood, peacock, orange tip and comma. The primroses are looking magnificent, it seems to be a wonderful year for them. The first bluebells are also just appearing. An excellent walk.

Comma

                                                                              Peacock

White snakeshead fritillary

Speckled Wood

Speckled Wood

Speckled Wood

Speckled Wood

Speckled Wood

A Good Morning on the Local Patch

 Another beautiful day today; 9C and feeling warm in the sun with a gentle SW breeze. I set out fairly early (for me nowadays!!!) for a walk around the cemetery, woodland burial ground and a circuit of the Horsefield (Gooseman's Field). I was pleased to see and hear jackdaw and housesparrow as I walked down the busy main road towards the cemetery. House sparrow was particularly pleasing as they are musch less common nowadays and we never get them in our garden even though these ones were only a couple of hundred yards from home.

As soon as I turned down the access road to the cemetery, the traffic noise vanished and all was calm. Once in the cemetery I followed the perimeter route around the older parts of the burial ground. Bird song was all around, mainly robins which is often the case. There must be a huge population of robins; I am rarely out of earshot of one. I also heard/saw blue and great tit, goldfinch, greenfinch, blackbird, wren, chaffinch and long-tailed tit. More primroses and daffodils appear each day whilst snowdrops are beginning to go over now; they are finished completely in the garden. As 'The Historian' would say, "Well that's another year gone!".

Halfway around the woodland burial ground I squeezed through the fence and crossed over the ditch into the Horsefield. Actually it's not so much of a squeeze now as another fence rail has been removed. Although I don't really approve of this practice, I have to say that there used to be access out of the woodland burial ground onto the common land of the Horsefield but the council, in their wisdom (or lack of) padlocked the gate. What do they expect!!!

Once across the ditch I could hear the linnets immediatley and found them all around Gooseman's They stick together in small companies and always sound as if they are in the middle of heated debate. They are also incredibly flighty and very difficult to get close to for photography. As I made my circuit of the fields I was hoping for early butterflies but non were to be found. A naturalist friend who also calls this area his local patch agrees with me that things are slow on the butterfly and moth front so far this year. A neighbour and good friend of ours (Gothic Dave), who is interested and knowledgable in all manner of subjects, helps with harvest mouse surveys and tells me that they found four nests on Gooseman't field; wonderful news. In the south west corner of the site I found four stonechats; I had been looking for them for ages.

Back in the woodland burial ground I disturbed a sparrowhawk which hurtled out onto the fields. When I arrived at the alder copse in the main cemetery I was photographing the catkins when I noticed that a newly planted tree was also producing catkins. The plant label identified it as an Alnus glutinosa, a black alder. According to google it is the same species as common alder but the young catkins look different; perhaps they will turn out to be the same. I shall enjoy watching it grow over the years.

Alder catkins

Linnets

Linnets

Linnet

Magpie

Skylark

Stonechat

Stonechat

Stonechat

A Taste of Spring on the Local Patch Today

 As I sat with my coffee in the conservatory this morning I was seranaded by the local great tit with its tee-cher, tee-cher call. It was the only persuasion I needed to finish my coffee, don coat, hat and boots and set out for the local cemetery, 5 minutes away. Recently I have been restricting myself to the cemetery and woodland burial ground but today opted to squeeze through the gap in the burial ground fence, negotiate the steeply banked ditch and complete a circuit of Gooseman's Field, known locally as the Horsfield for the horses that are kept on there.

The air was full of the sounds of singing birds and spring was definitely in the air. More flowers appear every day and today daffodils joined the throng. They have been there or there abouts for a while but today I noticed the large varieties as well as the dwarf ones which have been flowering for a few days.

As I walked around the woodland burial ground I spotted what I though was a pheasant in the long grass but it didn't look quite right. It was obviously uneasy at my presence and quickly took to the air; not with the noisy palaver of a pheasant but with the slower wing beats of a buzzard as it flew to a nearby tree where, presumably, it could keep a better eye on me. I saw it again a short while later gliding over the Horsefield. I'm not sure whether it had caught an item of prey, vole perhaps, or was worming.

Having decided to take in Gooseman's I hoped to pick up linnets and skylarks. As soon as I crossed the ditch I could hear and then see linnets. There were several reasonable sized flocks of them making a great deal of fuss with their grumpy sounding calls. There were several singing skylarks as well as I walked around the meadow. One of the benefits of my hearing aids is that I can hear skylark singing again; it was a bird that I had lost as my hearing gradually worsened. I hadn't realised until Heather kept remarking on skylark song that I couldn't hear. There was also a songthrush in full song in the hedge dividing the field from the cemetery; an absolute delight.

On my way back through the cemetery I stopped to photograph the long, waving catkins of the alders, which, not so long ago, had been just a purple haze around the trees. Spring is definitely just around the corner.

Alder catkins.

Crocus

Snowdrops and daffodils

Hazel catkins and the tiny red female flower.

Gooseman's Field.

Gooseman's Field.

Gooseman's Field.

Gooseman's Field.

Gooseman's Field.

New leaves (bread and cheese) on the hawthorn.