Great Mullein

-

 We have a monster in the garden! In some disturbed ground next to my bike shed we have this very large plant (not far off 2m tall) that has been appearing in the same spot for the last couple of years.

The plant is native to this part of the world but is an introduced species in the Americas and Australia. This plant is apparently common ( although it's fairly new to me) and it produces a lot of seeds which can last for as long as 100 years dormant in the soil seed bank until the plant gets an opportunity to germinate . Germination relies on the soil being disturbed and the plant is intolerant of shade so it only does well if it is not overshadow by other plants. The little yellow flowers only last a day each. The flowers open before dawn and have finished by dusk of the same day. If the flowers are not fertilised by bees in that time then they have the ability to self fertilise. You are expecting me to say that it was used in traditional medicine and that is the case although there don't appear to be any instances of it being used nowadays. The plant was sometimes used as a dye.

Diary.
I paid a visit to Tarn Sike reserve yesterday. A fine display of wildflowers . I also got a couple of photographs worth showing - a nice shot of a goldfinch and a distant one of a reed bunting. The reed buntings are ground nesting birds (in the marshy and reedy areas obviously) and they are  difficult to photograph due to their tendency to drop into the reeds. Reed buntings are resident in Britain but the ones at Tarn Sike disappear in the winter so I guess they migrate South in winter.


I pointed all my trail cams at the roof where I thought the owlets might perch last night - nothing! I reckon the torrential rain didn't help.



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Dunnock

-
Image
 When I was a boy my first bird book described "hedge sparrows" but at some time in the last 50 years this name has all but disappeared and these birds are now called dunnocks (as they are not closely related to House and Tree Sparrows) Its easy to miss a dunnock! They are little brown birds and they tend to feed on the ground and keep to the cover of vegetation if they can. The males are territorial and the birds pair up in the spring. The pair are not strictly monogamous and the female will mate with another male if she gets the chance. DNA testing reveals that a brood often has more than one father. The male dunnocks are alert to this possibility and can sometimes be seen pecking at the cloacal opening of the female in an attempt to get her to expel the sperm of the competitor. The sexes look alike and these birds are common and widespread in Britain. The males get involved in feeding young according to their breeding success so it is common to find two males and one femal...
Read more

White Clawed Crayfish

-
Image
 I went for a walk yesterday that took me along the Scandal Beck (a tributary of the River Eden). On the banks of the river was a stone that had obviously been used as a picnic table by an otter and the remains of his meal were strewn about. A recognisable part of the leftovers is shown below. It's clear that this claw comes from a white clawed crayfish. These animals are not common in the UK as they need the water to be rich in calcium. This requirement is fulfilled in the Eden valley by the limestone substrate. I think that the River Eden is as far North as theses animals get. I know that there are crayfish in this part of the system because for a number of years I have volunteered with the Eden Rivers Trust to survey them. It was not uncommon to find a couple of hundred animals in a 300m stretch of river. The following images give an indication of scale. In recent years the population of the native white clawed crayfish has been threatened by the arrival of the invasive signal (...
Read more

Otters

-
 Well another Covid lockdown! As I am confined to the local area I have been having a closer look at the local wildlife. I treated myself to a trail cam and started to see what I could find. After a couple of experimental sessions to get to know the kit I set the camera along a fence line by an old railway track. On the first night I was astonished to get footage of an otter carrying a rabbit! The site is at least 500m from a watercourse which is a drainage ditch that eventually flows into a tiny tributary of the River Eden I hadn't realised that otters eat anything other than fish but apparently they do. I wonder why the otter was carrying the rabbit rather than eating it where it was found. Perhaps it was feeding young? Apparently ottters have young throughout the year. I have only seen an otter near the house once before and that was a late night encounter in the car headlights.
Read more