Nature Spring Diary 1 May 2007
- 1 May 07, 02:17 PM
The highlights of this blog will be broadcast on 91Èȱ¬ Radio 4 at 9pm Monday 28th May and at 11am Tuesday 29th May, so tell us about the spring things happening near you - post a comment below.
You can also e-mail us your spring photos to add to our photo-gallery: nhuradio@bbc.co.uk
May Day, mayday: reading the papers and listening to the news, it seems the world is going to hell in a handcart...
But the sun is shining, the sky is blue, the air is full of birdsong and dandelion seeds, the earth sparkles with wildflowers and the white fire of the may flashes through the landscape. So no, I’m not laid low by worry, even if I should be.
May Day is the cultural post driven deep into the land around which swirls the tide of spring. The fires of Beltane - the old name for the May Day pagan festival - burn with a thousand colours: with the white of the may (hawthorn), the pink of crane’s-bills, the purple of violets, the yellow of dandelions, the blue of bluebells.
The folk traditions of May Day - redolent with sex and fertility - are all but lost or have become facsimiles through revival, but something of them survives as an intuitive or emotional response to the exuberance of the season. May Day has also become the day to celebrate revolutions and the struggle of the common against the oppressor. So let it be so. Let’s celebrate the birds and bees, the commonplace and webs of natural wonder we are all caught up in.
There’s a bird singing his heart out at the top of a tree at the bottom of the garden. He’s been at it all day. Whatever the world throws at him he will persist because he is swept up by a tide far greater than himself and his will and his being are hitched to it. Here’s to you, comrade chaffinch.
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I'm sitting surrounded by birdsong in this London garden. The joys of wireless connectivity!
Blackbirds, robins, tits (assorted),even cawing magpies but sadly no chaffinch. Still I agree it's a glorious May Day and it's hard to be depressed even if the whole world seems to have gone collectively nuts.
I really enjoyed the progamme about orchards today, very atmospheric :-)
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Great Blog
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Plants are blooming in the michigan woods--wood anenome, golden ragwort, but there is also an incredible problem with garlic mustard that is invading some of our native woods and causing monoculture. This spring this invasive species seems to be thriving with the spring weather we have had.
Blue gray gnatcatchers, and yellow warblers seen today yesterday we had the first Great crested flycatcher of spring.
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Paul Evans - surely some confusion over comrade chaffinch!?
Isn't it - here's to you, Mrs Robin's son?
Slightly more vulgar in the home counties (especially now his Cockney chum has all but disappeared ...apparantly due to phone masts), but the red flag is pinned to an evidently proud chest. Further, his song is, by anyone's standards a tad better than his cousins from Finchley.
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may day night
full moon light on may blossom
water shadows on the stream.
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Here in northwest Northumberland the air has been thick with swallows for over a week. All the garden plants are forging ahead and the verges and hedgerows are well grown. But I can expect damaging frosts until early June so the greenhouse and cloches are still the best place for the plants at night. Last year I enrolled on the bumble bee watch and did not see a single one during the recording period; this year they are numerous and varied.
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I heard my first Cuckoo of 2007 today at /
An assessment of leafing progress at
May flowers still to burst, but any day now.
xx
ed
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The summer monsoon seems to have arrived early in Southern New Mexico. Last year flash floods caused by huge rains ravaged the desert. After years of drought could this be a trend? Days start hot and sunny, then after noon the thunderheads appear over the mountains. Sometimes they disperse over the desert floor. Sometimes they dump gulley washers. This village has old water rights and the place is a riotous rose festival. Roses of every hue fling themselves lasciviously over cyclone fences and clamber and clamor on adobe walls. Every rose ever planted flourishes here. Roses, honeysuckle, catalpa and laundry softener scent the night air. The White Fronted Ibis have been and gone, having mined for drowned worms in our irrigated gardens on their way North.
Almost summer. A lovely time of year.
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On the lawn are a couple of Green Woodpeckers sharing what I think must be an ants nest. Before going to the pub last night with Mrs D to watch a game that I shall mention no further, I mowed and must have uncovered all sorts of fresh culinary delights.The only thing fascinating these two more than ants are each other, I'm sure they are even sharing ant body parts with each other. There are plenty of candidates, but the only other serious competitors for Cupid are the pair of Ring Doves, but then they're always at it.
I like the post from Helen. OK we don't have Ibis (yet), but the rest of the description of SNM is getting pretty accurate for Oxfordshire.
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Here at home I belong to several environmental/wildlife conservation groups, especially WWF. I also write poetry on a variety of conservation/environmental issues and would like to share some of these with you. They come from my collection entitled "DE NATURA", which is Latin for to/of/for/about Nature. The first one I wrote in 1985 and is untitled.
Only one Earth,
There is a dearth
Of planets like ours -
Only one Earth.
So let us cherish
Or we may perish
Along with the politicians
Who have caused the divisions
Amongst themselves and the people who care.
------
I hope like it. Most of my poetry, although the subject is appropriate, is too long to display here, so I thought you might enjoy this one in the meantime. I have started one relating to Kyoto and will post it when I have completed it
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Once again my apologies. I have never used a blog before and for any first time user mistakes can ge made and I accidentally sent my last one before completing it and also accidentally chose the wrong poem. As it is late Autumn here, am I forgiven?
THE SEASONS
(composed 1883 - first verse only.)
To seek a new dawn,
To sit with a fawn,
Quietly seeking a different solitude
From that which even quiet corners of cities elude,
The calm of the forest on a warm spring day,
The lively, but distant sounds of children at play,
To stroll through a frost-laden field at early morn,
To be woken, but gently, by birds singing at dawn.
-----
I hope you like it.
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I have a small plantation of sitka spruce on good ground to the west of Lisburn co.antrim and the amount of pollen drifting from the "flowers"since last weekend is phenoemenel....what a spring
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Screaming swifts -- just heard my first. I forgot how to lifeless the skies are before swifts, swallows and martins energise them.
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Chris in New Zealand -- no problem about sending the wrong thing or for having autumn when we're having spring. What's your autumn like? Do you have migrant birds that are leaving or arriving? It's good to remember that it's not the whole planet that is bathed in spring at the moment.
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What a difference two years can make. This time last year I could not find a pair of Tawny Owls nesting in my study sites, but this year there are Tawny Owlets everywhere.
A mild damp winter which of course was preceded by a brilliant nut and fruit bearing Autumn have really helped the small mammals this winter, so that now in the spring a high density of the small mammals will be breeding and will have bred early, meaning the predators such as the owls will follow the food and themselves have a great breeding season in 07.
Some Tawny Owls appear to have started breeding in mid February and even Barn owls have begun breeding as early as March with some pairs already feeding young.
Last week I was in Scotland and on the Island of Mull where I encountered my first Cuckoo's, and now back home in Somerset where I'm still to hear one .
Enjoy the Spring
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Today, May 3rd is in the 70's here in Michigan. I am only about thirty miles inland from the great lake of Michigan or 2.5 hour or so from chicago( Kalamazoo to be exact just like the Glen Miller song).
Today I had the first sighting of a Nashville warbler--friends have seen them for a few days.
I also saw a common yellowthroat.
The Celadine Poppies, Wild Geraniums,are now blooming in our woods.
jack-in-the-pulpit is at its peak.
I read the british notes and see that swifts are just arriving--we have had our swift for now about a week.
This weekend is going to be fantastic for birds so happy birding, or should I say good luck all you twitchers?
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As a highway star and sitting in motorway traffic jams last night en route to getting Davidson Jnr to the Deep Purple gig last night, I was probably not the only one gazing in awe at the light side of the moon. It was deep orange. Smoke on the water ... and evidently in the atm!
The department of sickness have today just released their latest missive:
"The present scientific consensus is that the climate is changing and that human activity is contributing significantly to this. We have to prepare for the consequences and consider the possible health impacts. Some aspects are positive, for example there are likely to be fewer deaths due to cold weather, but others are potentially negative, including increases in food poisoning and dangers from both floods and droughts."
So there you have it, Good news! - we are not going to die of cold. But as my Granny used to warn, "ne'er cast a clout 'till May is out".
Yours space truckin'
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Dan in Kalamazoo - is there really a bird called the Nashville warbler? Which label is it signed up with?
Do you know any websites where we can listen to your North American birds? There are some of our British bird calls and songs on a 91Èȱ¬ site that a colleague of mine -- Brett Westwood -- has put together. You can download them as MP3s.
The weather here has turned cloudy and cold, but I'm told it will warm up later today and I'm off to listen to nightingales - now there's a singer!
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We (my young son and I) took from the back garden on the evening of the 25th April - rings around the moon are apparently caused by ice particles in the atmosphere and are deemed to be a foreteller of bad weather - we did have a shower of rain the next day. It was a beautiful sight and we are so fortunate that there is no light pollution here on the moor to spoil us witnessing such things. We wondered what our ancestors, especially the peoples of the Bronze Age, would have made of them?
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This is a reply to Grant Sonnex comments to my notes. The Nashville Warbler is currently not signed to any record label--and it doesn't sing with a twang to its voice--thank you very much(say this like elvis) I can point you to two websites our research department has suggested to me as a site for North American Bird sounds. check out:
This one is Cornell’s Macaulay Library – A very excellent resource. They have some songs for free, the rest you have to pay for.
or:
This is the Wisconsin Society for Ornithology’s breeding bird atlas page. (Their atlas is done now, & even published!) The songs were donated to them.
I'm working on editing a few of my Eastern United States bird CD's making them user friendly for IPODs. A friend of mine has edited all the songs removed the narrator and given them all the species individual tracks so he can call up the bird sound in the field to make ID matches--he also has external speakers that plug into the device for making his own Owl caller and he has even called our native Rails (Sora and Virginia).
And when he is done with a day of birding I guess he can listen to some of Nashville's Greatest Hits too.
Blue Flox is now flowering.
Footnote: Queen Elizabeth seems to be having a great time visiting Virginia's 400 year old Jamestown settlement. She will also be going to the Kentucky Derby--Does she like Mint Juleps and Pecan pie?
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Dan
I don't know, but I get the feeling that you're winning the Dolly dispute - although spp other than warbler might have had the edge in this instance. However, you team up with Kenny and we're back on the aquatic theme with 'eiders in the stream'.
Screaming swifts - still no sign of the Thame chapter (probably still hanging out around the watering holes of Montmatre), but as they normally nest in my office - I'll tell you the moment they show. Still no sound of 'one flew over', but ... a curlew did today. That's a fairly rare sight in these parts and so well worth a plug.
Presumably HRH is there to re-exert our sovereignty. Sounds like there was little trouble taking the garrison.
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Dear Bob Davison,
How was the Deep Purple show? How am I winning the Dolly dispute, my only association to Dolly is that hollywood film "Hello Dolly" with Louis Armstrong was filmed in my hometown train station of Poughkeepsie, New York.
And if your talking Dolly the sheep I thought that was your mutton?
Dolly Parton=Nashville=twang= is this the chain of dolly thoughts you have...Talk about cloning?
Was that a first to have Deep purple on your life list?
HRH is not doing anything of the sort to re-exert her sovereignty she's using this as an excuse to do some fast food take-out at those arches. Even if she was, 91Èȱ¬land security would be all over her like bees on honey and the american public would be told she had weapons of mass destruction in her purse. She likes the races.I hope she doesn't bet the family fortune.
Oh by the way, Saw a wood thrush, and a catbird.
We should be having 20's celsius all weekend, I'm expecting a wave of new birds this weekend.
I saw a 2 curlews when I was in Ireland toward the end of last February. Are they common there and not in Great Britain?? The funny thing was I met a british birder in Galway and he showed me a rare bird sighting through his scope, and it turned out to be the Ring-billed Gull that is our Mall parking lot/beach begger bird. Like they say...location, location, location.
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What about Nashville Cats?
xx
ed
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Did the N Cats eat the Galway gulls?
stop it immediately.
Still no rain - it's just not British. Ed - are you doing Waterperry? I've just got back from there after stocking up on cacti and tumbleweed.
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Hi Bob,
We're having a (self-imposed) year off. I hope The Powers don't put me off the invitation list for next year, etc. Staying close to home and enjoying reinvigorating the garden (extensive and intensive (veg)) after a year and a half of neglect.
Not bedridden, but love a lie-in watching the squirrels and Spotty woodpecker coming for peanuts, not to mention hearing the Green woody calling all morning. We have some very old ant colonies in a patch of 'herb-rich grassland', never plowed, only intermittently grazed. They're like 18 inch soft and springy cubes. The woodies love 'em and on one or two years, they fly and the gulls swarm.
Willow warblers, all the finches and most of the tits, thrushes and blackies, robins, sparrows and dunnocks, pheasants, redleg partridges, jackdaws, crows, ravens, jays and b***dy magpies! Tawneys all round.
And on the river several kinds of ducks, including shelduck.
Salaam, etc.
ed
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Paul,
"May Day has also become the day to celebrate revolutions and the struggle of the common against the oppressor."
"They hang the man and flog the woman,
Who steals the goose from off the common,
But let the greater villain loose,
Who steals the common from the goose."
xx
ed
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The villians are at here too - big time. There is planning to convert the area around us (including the Green Peckers' patisserie) into another housing estate. It's probably only another year before the earthmovers turn up. The council are making recommendations for amphibious crossings and bat reserves, but we all know that it is simply not good enough. The swallows have not returned to nest this year as work has already started on the old outbuildings. The sheer biodiversity here is just stunning for an area only 40 - 50 miles from London. I guess it's one of the last remaining refuges. We have various varieties of deer, hares, badgers, voles, snakes as well as the aforementioned amphibians.
Between trying to fix the mower and doing the garden I took a stroll around the adjoining meadows. I took some shots of the wild flowers and will post them when I've worked out how. But the ornithological score was as follows:
Heard first cuckoo at 2:45pm!! (although quite distant)
Pied wagtails
All sorts of finches including gold, green and chaffinches
Buzzard being mobbed by crows
Red Kite also being mobbed
3 wild mallard
Wood pigeons - everywhere
Robins
Blackbirds - everywhere
Blue and great tits
Pair of English Partridge (fairly permanent fixture)
Pheasants
2 maggies
Wrens
other small unidentifiable birds in the reeds
I guess that's normal, but I'm sure you'll share my sense of impending doom.
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Alright, here are .
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Well, here it is - May 5, 2007 - not a single leaf on a single deciduous tree - YET - this is my first Spring season here - Western Massachusetts, a third of a mile up a blooming mountain - (without any blooms, YET) - an escapee from Florida where I got hit head-on by a walloping great hurricane, and became utterly paranoid about the visibly rising water level there, and continual talk about global warming; so here I am, missing the marvellous bougainvillea, hibiscus, elephant ears, palm trees, etc. etc. - not to mention sunbeams - and here I sit, mesmerised by a single purple crocus that has actually "made it" through the frozen earth. Yippee!
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Oops ...
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And I've got a peregrine visiting the bird table! Of all the cheek!
ed
06/05/2007 at 00:46:17 GMT
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Well Jean (29),
At least you've got the cheery chipmunks to amuse you. I'm amazed there aren't any here as escapees from petshops or pet-keepers, but time will tell. We've got the American grey squirrel taking over in most parts, but not round here.
You'll be amazed how fast stuff starts growing, once the season begins - like a shot from a gun!
xx
ed
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From Otis, Massachusetts ...
A cherry tree is trying to progress beyond buds - second time this season! And lo - the beginnings of leaves on an old oak have reached the wrinkly stage - all about an inch across now - there's HOPE! Many woodpeckers make their hungry presence known, - but (Ed in Scotland)- the earlier chipmunks have gone - maybe to higher ground after flooding rains - my sister in Sussex could have used some of that rain, she said - trying to feed and water the newborn calves and lambs - "parched," she said, "the earth is dried and cracked."
We plough the fields and scatter
The good seed on the land
For it is fed and watered
By God's almighty hand .....
sometimes, anyway ......
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From Otis, Massachusetts ...
A cherry tree is trying to progress beyond buds - second time this season! And lo - the beginnings of leaves on an old oak have reached the wrinkly stage - all about an inch across now - there's HOPE! Many woodpeckers make their hungry presence known, - but (Ed in Scotland)- the earlier chipmunks have gone - maybe to higher ground after flooding rains - my sister in Sussex could have used some of that rain, she said - trying to feed and water the newborn calves and lambs - "parched," she said, "the earth is dried and cracked."
We plough the fields and scatter
The good seed on the land
For it is fed and watered
By God's almighty hand .....
sometimes, anyway ......
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Jean
I liked the 'mesmeric crocus', but am duty bound to point out the potential effects - i.e. "We plough ..." is more Harvest mode. Further, the climate at the mo seems to be more anthropogenic than theological.
Still no rain, but I've been planting out today on the strength of the pptn forecast for tomorrow.
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Jean,
In the ?
Got plenty of forest for firewood? I always reckoned having next winter's firewood cut by Easter and stacked on the porch by September was the mark of a sorted life. I've never come near it yet.
xx
ed
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My friends,
Please pardon me because I'm going to post a largish quotation I came across today. It seems pertinent to the original "Planet Earth Under Threat" source of this blog.
"We must be the change we wish to see in the world." -- Gandhi
xx
ed
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Shock news - IT RAINED (a bit)
Ed - its only marketing and manufacturers responding to consumer demand (whether pushed or pulled).Dear Wendell takes an awful long time saying that we only have ourselves to blame. What is more interesting these days is how materialism begats more materialism and a proportional amount of misery. The more you have, the more you have to lose. We have a global, market driven economy.
Spiderman 3 has just come out - talking of a need for a planetary (or New York atleast)hero. It's like the Rx principle. i.e. it is easier to take a small diet pill than to stop cramming your face.
We need heroes for our global sense of well being. Heroes allow us to be Neros. While Nokia meet our perceived communication needs, Hollywood - with a massive special fx budget makes us feel good. The reason why the money was spent on fx and not sewage treatment (or even mosquito netting!)is because we are not making the demand. That's the reason why, as Paul Evans puts it "We are going to hell in a hand cart".
Isn't this the communication challenge? How do you get people to act proactively? Or, is it all too late now?
My logs are still stacked because they were not needed last winter.
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Hi Bob,
It's his country drawl.
;-)
ed
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I live near Edinburgh and heard my first cuckoo on 26 April. Is that early? It could just be made out behind the particularly enthusiastic great tit that seems to have a pitch outside my office window. Swifts have started appearing over the last week or so - and Sunday saw our first swallow.
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I finally heard a cuckoo on Sunday, May 7 -- in the Welsh borders in the little village of Kilpeck. It's a quiet spot in an old landscape. The squat red sandstone church was built by the Normans on a much older Celtic site, and the Green Man still looks out from over its doorway watching the progress of yet another spring. Next to the church is a Norman Mott and Bailey which is now thick with Hawthorn, Elder and dogrose. And from the top of the castle mound you spy on the surrounding landscape through the cracks between old stone walls and fresh young trees. That's where I heard the cuckoo, and then saw him fly like an arrow heading east before the rain blew in from the Black Mountains in the West. If the cuckoo really does bring the spirit of spring, then it came and went in a breath, drawn in at the thrill of hearing his call and expelled under the lowering skies.
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for Bob #35 posting -
thanks for straightening me out on the "ploughing" - and the crocus has since disappeared - but now there's one daffodil - all is not lost!
And Ed - post #36 -
no, not the Taconics - the Berkshires - I believe they're supposed only to be hills, but even Arlo Guthrie refers to "I was goin' along dahn this mount'n road" - in his "I don't want a pickle" song - referring to this area, as well as in "Alice's Restaurant" and the metropolis of Stockbridge (just joking) .......
I went to the doctor's office the other day, and was escorted into the building by a strapping guy who told me to watch out for the bears ..... one was found wandering along recently, just down the hill in Lee.
We've had 3 sunny warm days, and leaves are popping out on all the trees, the hostas are busting through the ground - and if I stood still for a few hours, I just know that I could SEE all these things actually growing before my very eyes .....
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Spent time in the garden yesterday after the fresh rain. It is truly amazing how much grows in one week. My hostas have those lily like things everywhere and all this ground cover plants have started to appear. It was overrun with ivy when I bought it last year and much sweat and tears and green bins went into clearing it but there are plants like roses now appearing!
it is a small city garden in Cambridge but I have blackbirds, robins, chaffinchs, blue tits, some yellow birds i dont know and field mice and squirrels.
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The screaming Thame Chapter are back in town. Haven't started nesting yet.
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The temperature jumped from the 50's to the 80's - the trees are in full leaf - so it's not Spring any more - suddenly it's SUMMER.
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Hello folks,
Well i took time out of my busy schedule of long-range naturewatching to catch the end of your magnificent radioshow.
What a success, though I couldn't help but notice a severe deficiency in melancholy and pessimism. Isn't the whole point of having a vested interest in our nation's rolling hills and singing skylarks supposed to be something of the choking alarmism?
Perhaps we all need to chill out and listen to something harmless.
I hope you enjoyed hearing your names on the wireless.
Night all, I might be back
xxxx
hit the road jack...
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