THE FIRST OF JOLLY OLD JUNE

We're waiting for a storm.

The weatherman this morning told those going to work in sunshine they'd be returning in wind and rain. We're anticipating winds of fifty-one-miles-an-hour. That may not seem very fast for readers in less temperate climes; but for us round here it's strong. (Especially if you are by waves or under a tree which could fall over.)

I've been rumbling around in a bad mood all day. I blame it on the weather. There's something about anticipating a storm that puts one on edge.

And I've been rumbling in and out of the house; going to look every now and then to see what's happening and thinking 'I'm sure June isn't always like this'.

And it isn't. I began Loose and Leafy in 2008 so I've lots of recorded Junes to check on - and nearly all began with pretty flowers and blue skies.

But even if the theoretically first day of summer has nothing summery about it, there are still interesting things to mention.

Flower photography outdoors can be challenging. A day might seem completely draught free but individual plants waggle around as if engaged in their own private hurricane and the pictures come out blurred. But see the photos above. Why did these plants stand perfectly still today when everything else was thrashing?

And the trees have been interesting too.

Here's an ash tree. It's mid-morning; the wind is on the rise but you'd hardly know it by the way the birds are singing. Not that they are in the tree. They are in bushes near by. Do birds not like ash trees?

The ash is at the foot of a bank so it's in a fairly sheltered spot  . . .but even those birds exposed to the wind by the sea were determined to sing. This robin on a buddleia bush kept going even when it was blown right off its twig.

Back to the ash. By afternoon the wind is reaching even into sheltered places.

It's raining now and the light is skiving off early. Will I go out at mid-night to photograph silhouettes of fifty-mile-an-hour trees? I doubt it! (If I do, I'll let you know.)

P.S. Don't forget the Tree Following Box opens on Sunday 7th.

The photos and videos in this post were all taken  on 1st June 2015.

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SO HERE IT IS - A BOX TO STICK YOUR FOOT IN

What is a Stuck Foot Post?

Easy.

It's where you stick your foot in one place and refuse to move it till you've seen what you can see - then you post about it.

It's astonishing what you can see while standing still.


Take this picture as an example. There's seaweed at the top of the picture and the retreating tide has left ripples in the sand. There are the feet-imprints of a gull who's been stamping on the spot. Gulls trick worms into coming to the surface by pretending to be rain tapping as it lands on the ground. I don't know if lugworms are interested in rain but on the left hand edge of the picture (quite low down) there's a circular depression. If we were to dig there I think we'd find the head end of of a lugworm underneath. And back up almost to the top - below the seaweed and to the right of the footprints - a beached sea squirt. And this is in only one picture! Stuck footing is about the least energetic form of blogging!

So how about joining in and becoming a Stuck Footer too?

There's a box on the blog alternate months.

Here's the one for 21st - 25th May. (The next will be July.)

(If you see a note which asks you to leave a comment, don't feel compelled. It's an exhortation that comes with the widget.)

To find out more, go to the Loose and Leafy Page about Stuck Footing.

Twitter hashtag - #stuckfootposts
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HERE COME THE CREATURES

As usual, I go out for one thing and come back with another.

This time, I went to look at the sea and came back with pictures of creatures.

Do I know anything about creatures? No! So, here are some mysteries.

The first is this little fly on an alexanders flower.

January 31st 2013
Phil at The Cabinet of Curiosities suggests this may be  a dung fly
Scatophaga stercoraria

If I had taken a picture of its back as well as its face, I might have been able to have it IDed. But I didn't. None the less, I am charmed. Indeed, I am so charmed I have set it as my laptop background and I sit here gazing inanely into its eyes (oh, fly! what big eyes you've got!) and admiring its poise, the frog-like angles of its legs. If ever one were able to fall in love with a fly, I have fallen in love with this one.

The alexanders (Smyrnium olusatrum) are zooming up. Most years, they do this, then they get zapped by frost and go all droopy. So far, though, so good. Not that it matters. Even if they do get zapped, they recover - and there are millions of them! I've not counted so maybe it's merely thousands. 'Lots' doesn't cover it.

They seem to be popular for sitting on. Here's another fly on an alexanders leaf. This one a little bigger.

January 31st 2013

See the round, yellow dent? This is caused by Alexanders Rust (Puccinia smyrnii). For ages, I didn't realise it is a rust and would, each year, poke around looking for insect eggs. Nothing to do with insect eggs. (I'd hoped for butterflies, ah well.) Rusts are a kind of powdery fungus (do not quote me, this is very unscientific language but, unless you are scientist, I think this is a good way to describe it). It counts as 'parasitic' because it harms the plant but it doesn't kill it. This rust, though, does make the leaves look pretty ugly when it gets a hold.

Next distraction was that a trench had been dug into the narrow path I use to make my way between brambles and buddleia.

January 31st 2013

The ground is soft from rain, though not muddy, and some animal has made a huge groove leading to a hole in the bank. It runs for several yards and includes a right turn into what appears to be a dead end part of the way along. But what has done this? Dogs sometimes scrabble around holes but they don't make a massive pathway. I don't know what a fox hole looks like but the BBC Nature Site suggests the area round it smells strongly - and this doesn't. So I'm left with badger. A badger would easily be big enough to do all this digging - and they like grand entrances to their setts. But is the hole big enough? And would a badger do this to a path regularly walked down by lots of humans? It may not be Oxford Street but it's rare one doesn't meet someone here.

Then to the beach.

I had planned to photograph seaweeds but was quickly diverted to footprints. And here's the next mystery. (Only a mystery to me. If any bird people read this, I'm sure they'll easily be able to put me out of my mysteryness.)

Two kinds of bird tracks dominated - similar except some were about two inches across and some only an inch and a half.

January 31st 2013

Some footprints are indented with clear indications of a web.

The two crisp holes in the sand beside the track print interest me too. Any ideas?
January 31st 2013

Some have depressions running either side of a ridge and no sign of a web. I don't know whether these differences reflect different foot structures or it's merely something to do with the sand and the water.

And, there we have it. Two flies, yellow rust, a dug up path and some bird prints. Not what I went to find  -  but that's the pleasure of a walk.

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OF COURSE GEESE HAVE TEETH

The sea can be a pain. It's all connected to the moon. Sometimes, the tide goes so far out, I wonder if a Tsunami might be imminent. In 1824, the village of Fleet, a little further west but still well within Dorset, was swept away by a tidal wave - so it's not impossible; unlikely, perhaps - but it comes into one's mind. At others, the sea hardly goes anywhere, just potters around on the rocks.

This very tiny yellow snail
(less than a centimeter)
is, I think, a
Flat Periwinkle (Littorina obtusata)

I'd been pottering around on the rocks with it - looking at seaweed and snails and wanting to take a picture of Sandsfoot Castle from the shore. There's a new little balcony where you can stand and look out to sea in a romantic sort of way, pretend you are a mediaeval princess (for all that it was built in the 1530s) or Juliet transferred from Italy to Dorset and on the look out for an aquatic Romeo. Visitors like to stand there. (I like to stand there!) It's very nice for them - but it sort of spoils the look of the castle. (And I'm reluctant to take pictures of people without their permission.)

So . . . I'm sitting on a rock, waiting for them to leave, when I notice a dead Canada Goose (Branta canadensis) between me and the not-very-far out water's edge. What a photo op.!

It had not been there long. There was no smell, no decay. Indeed, I couldn't tell how it had died. There was a little dot of damage beside its nostril - otherwise, it was intact and the tail feathers and the feathers on the land side were dry.

I've not noticed Canada Geese along this stretch before. That doesn't mean they are never there. Of course not. But it was a surprise. If it had been a Brent Goose, it would have been interesting in a different way - they are gone in the summer so it would have been a sign of seasonal change - but less puzzling. The issue of how it had died would still have been a challenge. It was as if it had dropped out of the sky, or settled to rest for a few moments and had never managed to leave. Even the tiny, slightly bloody (freshly bloody) little wound might have been made on the spot by a flying stone, chucked out of the water by the sea as it retreated. Not enormously likely to have killed it but I was stuck for an explanation. And it wasn't that big. And the feathers weren't tatty. I don't think it was old.

Canada Geese are not popular. They were imported from North America in 1665 because they look good, settled in, bred, and have become a bit too numerous for comfort. They specially like ponds and lakes in towns and villages (not so much rocky seashores though they do eat seaweed as well as pond weed). They live in flocks and a flock of fifty birds can produce two and a half tons of excrement in a year. No wonder they aren't always welcome on village greens!

A digression. (Except it isn't really.) Two questions. Have you ever seen elephant teeth? How would you define teeth?

I first came across elephant teeth in the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford and was fascinated by the patterns and grooves in them. Elephants, being vegetarian, need to grind up the leaves they eat. Specially interesting (to me) was that elephants are born with a life-long supply of teeth already intact. At first, they don't use the back ones. As the front ones wear down, the back ones gradually move forward to replace them. When they run out of teeth they can no longer eat - so they die.

That's one question. Here's the other.

What are teeth? To me, they are bony bits in our mouths which we use for biting and grinding and chewing. Usually, they are inside the mouth but if you think of crocodiles, we know they can also stick out of the mouth so they can be used for tearing. Until I met this goose close up, I would not have included gums in my definition. Yet looking at this one's beak, it clearly has what I would describe as teeth (called lamellae) - hard, pointy things and grooved grindy things with patterns on (just as elephants have patterns) which they use for snapping off and tearing up the weeds and grasses they eat. They also work as sieves when they are feeding on plants in water. All they are missing are gums. If I had hard lips, I don't suppose I'd mind having my teeth sticking out from them as long as I had a tongue capable of helping me to transfer the food to my throat and good enough muscles in my neck to mean I could swallow it. Which means, in my mind, that, whatever the convention is about birds in general - geese have teeth. Well, this one does!

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Some references.

A picture of elephant teeth (scroll down the page) on the Elephant Facts site.

How to Identify an Elephant's Tooth on the Natural History Museum Site

Eleaid - Elephant Teeth

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Below are some Canada Geese links. You won't want to look at all of them - and, believe it or not, this is a (roughly) random selection. I put the list here because it gives a snapshot idea of how widely found these birds are - and some of the sites are worth knowing about in themselves because they have information about other birds and animals too.

I'm always interested in how sites present their material. There's a great variety here. And it's interesting  (and frustrating) how different sites filter information. Each tends to have a snippet that can't necessarily be found on others - so you only begin to get a picture by plowing around.

Another frustrating thing is that I can't re-find my favourite site. It was made by a student in the U.S.A. as part of her course work. When I find it again, I'll give it a special place in the list.

Geese have teeth? - Picture of Canada Goose with open mouth - on the Natural History Museum site

Canada Geese info. RSPB site (You can even hear what they sound like except they sound better in real life! This makes them sound as if they are woofing. It gives a bit of an idea though.)

Canada Geese in Illinois - which may sound odd given that this goose died in Dorset - it is interesting though - on the Living With Wildlife in Illinois site.

Canada Geese on Animal Diversity Site for University of Michigan

Canada Geese on Citizens for the Protection of Wildlife site

Canada Geese on Critter Catalogue (Detroit!)

Canada Geese on BBC Science and Nature Site

A bit about Canada Geese migration (in North America) at Waterfowl Hunting HQ!!!!!!!!!!

There are an awful lot of them - video of migrating Canada geese - shows why you might not like them to land near where you live!

P.S.

I'm an idiot.

There are some tree following posts

ready on other blogs for you to read.

My eyes are going bleary for having looked at the screen for so long.

I'm off to make a cup of tea.

I'll make a big deal of these posts later!

Meanwhile - if you haven't let me know of your latest tree following post -

do.

Here's your chance.

(And I'll make a fuss of your blog too!)

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WHAT'S EVERYTHING DOING?

Clearly, I can't answer that properly! But I can note a few things - and I have to scurry between the house and the bank (the grassy variety) to keep up. For what's happening is happening fast.

Not that this pigeon sitting on a wonky post with its back to the sea is doing much at present. Unlike urban pigeons, and despite being great eaters, wood pigeons never seem to be in a rush.

It is, of course, an eagle in disguise.

What is the blackthorn doing?

It's sprouting flower buds along its thorns.

This, it seems to me, is an odd place for them. I don't mean there's anything unusual about what this small tree is doing. It's just that I think it's a surprising arrangement - flowers on thorns instead of beside them.

In February, on my other blog (Message in a Milk Bottle) a couple of people mentioned that they are unfamiliar with gorse. And the question came up whether gorse is always in flower. I can't answer definitively but I'd be surprised if there were any times in the year where some gorse isn't flowering somewhere. 

In the winter one notices it because its splashes of bright yellow stand out from the gloom. In the last couple of weeks, though, more and more branches have been spurting colour. In the summer, there will be great banks of it round here. I'll give it a post of its own.

What is the hawthorn doing?

Its leaf buds are opening. When they are new, hawthorn leaves are delightful; a delicate fresh green. Later, they darken and the trees become a bit blobbish.

I'm not a bird person. If I can't see who's singing, I don't necessarily know who it is. I can't tell an invisible dunnock from a lark. I guess by the landscape. Bushes - dunnocks. Flat, open land - larks. But, over and over, through the years, I've heard a wonderful song and looked around to see who . . . and it's a robin. And Robins are not shy. They sit somewhere prominent and let rip!

I wasn't the only one who stopped for the performance.

Perhaps we should have clapped during this pause?

Real bird-watchers are quiet people. Those of us who don't know one feather from another stand and chat. The funniest gathering of strangers is when field fares fill a bush and start yelling at each other. You can hardly see them but the bush almost vibrates with noise. One waits for it to explode. Passers-by pause and gaze at it in astonishment. And laugh.

And, just beginning, here and there, the big gold coins of dandelion flowers.

The sky is blue, the birds are singing, buds are opening, flowers are flowering (at least, some of them are!) all we need now is leaves . . . and we are away. Boring, isn't it? Happens every year. All the same. All very predictable. Ah, well, I suppose we'll just have to put up with it. (Expect we'll manage!)

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LIGHTS AND BELLS, MISTS AND FLOWERS

This is a mixed post to match a mixed season.

The month began grey and cold. We'd missed out on March winds - but having grown up with the idea that 'rain' is almost a synonym for England and Wales it never struck me that April might be without showers, let alone that the blazing summer weather of June should be relocated to spring.

This is the lighthouse at The Bill (the tip of land at the end of the 'Island' of Portland) as it was in cold and hazy weather at the beginning of April.
The lighthouse in the picture was built at the beginning of the twentieth century
but its history goes much further back. You can read about it
here.
This picture also shows how strip farming (elsewhere more associated with the middle ages) is still practised.

So, here we are in the third week of April, smothered in suncream and wearing shorts (well, not me personally - at least, not the shorts). Hawthorn bushes are only just coming into flower (the blackthorn being mostly over) - and it's quite disconcerting. This isn't how it's 'meant to be'. The season seems all 'wrong'.

There's a common saying

'Ne're cast a clout till May is out'

and, at this time of year, it seems to be discussed almost as much as the weather and probably more than who hears a cuckoo first (which is another tradition). Is the saying referring to May the month or May the blossom?  ('May' is another word for Hawthorn.)

You'd have thought we would have decided by now! It's a bit like the commercialisation of Christmas - an issue that is never settled and which gets re-chewed each year.

May Blossom - the flowers of hawthorn trees and bushes.
(Sometimes it is deep pink.)

The 'clouts' are the cloths we wear as clothes - which, in the 'old days' were much harder to take off and on. Some people would be sewn into them for the winter.

And those 'old days' lasted until not very long ago.Take a look at this page of the Ambleside Aural History Project.

This is the Higher Lighthouse - Marie Stopes (famous for promoting birth control) lived here in the 1920s. One of the buildings in this little group can be rented to stay in for a holiday.

My mother (who was born in 1920 and grew up in London) told me newspapers were sometimes stuffed  between layers of winter clothing to provide extra warmth.

Nowadays, of course, most of us are able to fling clothes off and on again with each passing cloud!

* * *

Even when the seasons flow according to plan, this part of South Dorset has its own range of surprisingly different climates. Portland Bill, exposed to cold winds and salt spray, is a harsh environment. A few miles to the west, there are Sub-tropical Gardens at Abbotsbury. The spring flowers in this post are located somewhere in-between!

The lighthouse pictures were taken on April 5th. 

The flowers yesterday (April 22nd).

The Lower Lighthouse, like the Upper Lighthouse, has its roots in the eighteenth century. It is now a bird observatory where a track is kept of birds returning from their winter migration.  There is a bookshop, field courses and day events too. (It's run by the RSPB.)

Here you get a glimpse of why lighthouses were built here!

Close up of the
Black Backed Gulls
on the stack.

Throughout the centuries, Portland has been a tough place to live. Even now, those prepared to go onto its seas have to be skilled and brave and know the waters well. Boats like the one in the photo below have to be lowered by cranes.

The obelisk in the background warns that there is a low shelf of rock extending thirty metres into the sea.

As you can see from this photo, plants in the immediate, rough and rocky, area above the water are not bluebells! Here is another highly specialised context to bear in mind!

So, swinging between the beginning and end of the month, switching seasons in the way the weather is itself switching back and forth, flitting between the sheltered areas with dips and bushes - and the exposed land jutting south . . . we go from the harsh to the flowery and end with . . . this . . . there are lots of them . . .

Toffee Apple, Rob and Michael Peverett have identified
this plant as Green Alkanet - thanks folks!

I don't like this plant (others do; I've even seen it in gardens) but, since this is a blog to document what's here not what I'd like to be here, . . . well, here it is!

A WINTER WALK AND A CUP OF TEA

I don’t know what it is about old brick bridges but they always seem to be running with water. If there isn't water trickling under their arches, they are likely to have damp patches or small streams dripping from the parapet instead. I don’t know where this water comes from. It’s as if the bridges are standing in for mountains. I’m never clear how mountains manage to spout water either.

But the water on this bridge wasn’t being water for long. It was dripping into the undergrowth and fossilising the plants with ice.

This twig, encased in ice, reminds me of a certain kind of pear liqueur. Bottles are tied over small fruits while they are still on the trees. The pears grow inside the glass and the liqueur itself is added when they are ripe and plucked from the trees - bottles and all.

An imprisoned thorn!

Young Alexanders. These ice-ed plants spark connections. This one reminds me of Snow White in her glass case waiting for the Prince to come and thaw her with a kiss.

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It was bleak, yesterday afternoon; beautifully bleak.

Strewn on the sand were these tightly closed carnations with small buds. It seemed terribly sad. You can see another stem a little further away.

The beak of this juvenile herring gull (Larus argentatus) caught my eye.

What had caught the eye of the gull was something to eat. It dropped onto the water, bobbed up and down for a few seconds, then spread its massive wings (a herring gull wingspan can be more than five foot!)  hopped into the air, dived back down into the water - and came out with something pinkish in its beak - then off it went. In the picture, it’s getting ready for lift-off.

And, at last, to my destination - the National Trust Van. 

That’s what I call it - "The National Trust Van". The National Trust calls it a “Recruitment and Engagement Vehicle for the National Trust and Jurassic Coast in West Dorset”. These cheerful (though shivering) people who do the recruiting and engaging are called Ben and Caroline.

I’ve been following Ben on Twitter for a while - under the delusion that he’s a cross between a palaeontologist and a botanist and . . . and . . .  that he wanders up and down the coastline imparting wisdom and knowledge about our rocks and wildlife and history. Because his Twitter name is @jurassiccoastin I expected him to be more of a Jurassic expert than a recruiting one. HOWEVER, he and Caroline (recruiters!) were very friendly and invited me into their van for a cup of tea.

And was the tea welcome! The right hand side of my face (which had been facing east for most of my walk) had frozen so I felt a bit awkward at the beginning of our conversation. Meeting new people when it feels as if you’ve just had a tooth extracted and your mouth hasn’t fully recovered from the anaesthetic isn’t . . . isn’t . . . comfortable.

So that was my afternoon; my walk. Completely without a theme - an ordinary-for-round-here kind of walk at the beginning of winter. (I’ve given up calling it ‘autumn’. The leaves have powdered to dust because of the cold and I haven't smelled a bonfire in days.)

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To read more about this roving and recruiting and to reach Ben’s blog, click here.