NEW APPROACH?

New little hawthorn leaves
and tiny flecks of lichen.
March 25th 2013

I've been having a bit of a crisis. Here am I with two blogs and hardly any posting. Have I lost interest? NO! Am I ailing? NO!

People expect different things from blogs. I don't know what each reader expects when they arrive at Loose and Leafy but it's not a scrap book. There's a point to every post. Which is the rub. I've been out and about and looking at things almost as much as usual but the light has been so low and so many of the days rainy, photographing has been more of a challenge than fun.

But for all that Loose and Leafy is a blog anyone can read, it's also my own record, a kind of index to what I've seen. So if I don't post, I'm missing out. I'll lose my personal thread.

Oyster Thief
(Colpomenia peregrina)
March 14th 2013

SO . . . I'm going to be selfish. There will probably ensue a fleet of random posts. Maybe some will be nothing more than a picture. Bits and bobs are better than silence. Hopefully, this won't be too irritating. If it is . . . you can always give Loose and Leafy a miss for a while and come back when the text is better. On the other hand, you can hang around and, with me, say 'Oh look! There's a duck!'.

This, then, is a catch up with some of the bits. (Bobs will follow.)

When the hedges are dripping and waiting for warmth, one potters off elsewhere - like the seashore.

There have been storms at sea. At one point the cross channel ferry service had to be suspended because waves were too high for the boats to cope. And on shore - huge deposits of seaweed that must have been churned up have been chucked over the sand. Here's an Oyster Thief (Colpomenia peregrina) - a green alga that looks like a bubble. Well, it is a bubble. That's how it gets its name. If it mistakes an oyster for a rock and sticks to it, the air inside can lift them both and they can float away together.

Worm cast at the rear end of a Blow Lug hole.
(Arenicola marina)
About two inches across and high.
March 14th 2013

The tide was out, lug worms were burrowing. They are the moles of the seashore, with the sand and mud excavated from their burrows pushed back in whirls like this. Except these are not endearing little creatures with soft skins and paddle feet - they are fearsome looking worms. Fishermen dig them for bait and I've stopped to chat a couple of times. One day, I'll ask if I can take a photo but they are so disgusting (the worms, not the fishermen!) I feel it would be a bit like stopping and taking photographs of someone who's leg has just been mangled in a machine. Not quite the right thing to do. The ones I've seen (they don't crawl around randomly on the surface, I've only seen them when they've been dug out) have been about seven inches long . . . oh, click the link if you can bear it! Blow lug - Arenicola marina on the Marine Life Information Netowork. (Sorry, they are fascinating. I don't know why I'm being squeamish.)

Hooded Merganser (Lophodytes cucullatus)
March 28th 2013

Another day . . .  head for a fresh-water lake . . . and a famous bird. This individual, I mean. Not its kind in general. It's a Hooded Merganser (Lophodytes cucullatus). When I took the photograph, I didn't know there was anything special about it. I just thought 'Oh, there's a nice duck, I'll take a picture of that.'. Later, I found out it's a North American bird that has been hanging out with tufted duck on Radipole Lake (part of an RSPB reserve) for a few years now. When it first arrived, bird watchers got very excited, thinking it was truly wild and had flown (or floated?) across the Atlantic. It's now thought to be an escapee from a collection. I get the impression that this, for bird people, is a bit of an anti-climax. According to the train spotting approach to bird watching (see-it-and-tick-it) it doesn't 'count'. But I reckon it's still a pretty duck, wherever it came from.

This is a misleading picture.
The coot's feet were much whiter than they seem here.
March 28th 2013

Sometimes, as I've said often before, there's an enormous advantage in not knowing things because whatever you come across is exciting and new. You may remember how bowled over I was when I first noticed Coots' feet. (Coot - Fulica atra.) Apart from their extraordinary shape, I was stunned by their blueness. Yesterday, I was stunned by their whiteness. The blue tint shows more in this picture than seemed to be there in real life. It was the palor which struck me. That and that it was happily slurping up white bird excrement. (I didn't stay to find out whether this was its own or somebody else's - I'd noticed the merganser by then.) So - next task - which you might help me with . . . do coots change the colour of their feet from blue to white in the winter?

And the last of random images from my 'what I've been looking at' post . . . Wall screw-moss (Tortula muralis).

Wall Screw-moss (Tortula muralis). March 28th 2013

Oh, dear. A scrap book post. But that's life in erratic weather.

The Hooded Merganser (and a whole load of coots)

can be found at the RSPB reserve at the Radipole Lake and Reserve 

in Weymouth, Dorset.

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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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