Author Topic: Signs of Spring  (Read 208729 times)

Re: Signs of Spring
« Reply #275 on: 23 March, 2011, 06:18:43 pm »
Bah! I was going to post about seeing a ladybird. Sitting on a strawberry plant this afternoon.

Bumble bees bumbling, assorted bugs seen fluttering around.
"A woman on a bicycle has all the world before her where to choose; she can go where she will, no man hindering." The Type-Writer Girl, 1897

clarion

  • Tyke
Re: Signs of Spring
« Reply #276 on: 23 March, 2011, 06:22:04 pm »
Ladybirds in the bag with our milk this morning!  No idea where they came from, though there were loads of them there last year.
Getting there...

Wowbagger

  • Former Sylph
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Re: Signs of Spring
« Reply #277 on: 23 March, 2011, 08:16:47 pm »
Chiffchaff singing in Churchill Gardens.
Quote from: Dez
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Basil

  • Um....err......oh bugger!
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Re: Signs of Spring
« Reply #278 on: 24 March, 2011, 05:38:46 pm »
A wasp.  Not sure if I've seen  one in March before.  Can't remember.
So, how does that work?  Is it new?  Or has it somehow survived the winter?
Admission.  I'm actually not that fussed about cake.

Chris S

Re: Signs of Spring
« Reply #279 on: 24 March, 2011, 05:40:10 pm »
Bumble bees. Lots of bumble bees - as big as... well... really big bumble bees.

Wowbagger

  • Former Sylph
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Re: Signs of Spring
« Reply #280 on: 24 March, 2011, 05:43:06 pm »
A wasp.  Not sure if I've seen  one in March before.  Can't remember.
So, how does that work?  Is it new?  Or has it somehow survived the winter?

Queen wasps survive the winter. When the weather warms up, they come out and start off their nest. They lay the first eggs and tend them themselves but once a few workers join them they don't do any more housework but just procreate.

On the walk to the park this morning, heard another chiffchaff, saw a carrion crow on its nest at the top of the tallest ash tree in the park, and heard, then saw, a pair of greater spotted woodpeckers drumming on a dead tree. They flew around together for quite a while, in the vicinity of the hole in an oak tree where GSWs nested two years ago.
Quote from: Dez
It doesn’t matter where you start. Just start.

Manotea

  • Where there is doubt...
Re: Signs of Spring
« Reply #281 on: 24 March, 2011, 05:55:34 pm »
Found a great big fat bumblebee lying on its back in the middle of the kitchen floor which rather begged the question of how it got there (unless Somebdy Brought Him In!) but he seemed OK so I put him on the kitchen widow sill (the outdoors side) to recuperate.

Rig of Jarkness

  • An Englishman abroad
Re: Signs of Spring
« Reply #282 on: 24 March, 2011, 08:08:26 pm »
And my first bumblebee of the year too.

Also, (not by me), 2 swallows on Islay and 2 ospreys at Gladhouse (just south of Embra)
Aero but not dynamic

Re: Signs of Spring
« Reply #283 on: 24 March, 2011, 08:29:07 pm »
A pair of starlings sitting on the phone line near where it is is fixed to our garage looking very confused. Last year they were nesting in the eves of the garage getting in through a hole in the corner where it was rotten. During the summer we had all the barge boards and facias replaced with uPVC. Sorry birdies.
I think you'll find it's a bit more complicated than that.

Wowbagger

  • Former Sylph
    • Stuff mostly about weather
Re: Signs of Spring
« Reply #284 on: 25 March, 2011, 11:08:23 am »
Three greater spotted woodpeckers cavorting about noisily.

Most annoyingly, two fecking terrapins sunning themselves on the edge of the lake. I thought the one we saw several times last year was on its own. They are probably a permanent pestilential fixture now.



shows what happens when they get out of hand. That's Clissold Park, in North London.
Quote from: Dez
It doesn’t matter where you start. Just start.

Re: Signs of Spring
« Reply #285 on: 25 March, 2011, 06:31:23 pm »
Swan sitting on a nest beside the Kennet.
"A woman on a bicycle has all the world before her where to choose; she can go where she will, no man hindering." The Type-Writer Girl, 1897

Snakehips

  • Twixt London and leafy Surrey
Re: Signs of Spring
« Reply #286 on: 25 March, 2011, 06:56:25 pm »
Nine Mallard ducklings on the Hogsmill river where it joins the Thames.
An nescis, mi fili, quantilla prudentia mundus regatur?

border-rider

Re: Signs of Spring
« Reply #287 on: 27 March, 2011, 10:37:42 am »
Lots of Cuckoo Flower/Lady's Smock on our lawn

Re: Signs of Spring
« Reply #288 on: 27 March, 2011, 05:40:09 pm »
"He who fights monsters should see to it that he himself does not become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you." ~ Freidrich Neitzsche

Wowbagger

  • Former Sylph
    • Stuff mostly about weather
Re: Signs of Spring
« Reply #289 on: 28 March, 2011, 12:02:11 pm »
A pair of blackbirds transporting worms.
Quote from: Dez
It doesn’t matter where you start. Just start.

Riggers

  • Mine's a pipe, er… pint!
Re: Signs of Spring
« Reply #290 on: 29 March, 2011, 08:51:07 am »
Okay, okay, I think this has been left long enough … I'll be the one that bites … in what, pray, were they transporting them 'in' Baggers?
Certainly never seen cycling south of Sussex

Wowbagger

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Re: Signs of Spring
« Reply #291 on: 29 March, 2011, 08:53:38 am »
Beakers.
Quote from: Dez
It doesn’t matter where you start. Just start.

Riggers

  • Mine's a pipe, er… pint!
Re: Signs of Spring
« Reply #292 on: 29 March, 2011, 09:00:56 am »
<boom-boom - top hat>

Ha, ha. Very funny.
Certainly never seen cycling south of Sussex

Salvatore

  • Джон Спунър
    • Pics
Re: Signs of Spring
« Reply #293 on: 29 March, 2011, 03:18:10 pm »
Rumpy-pumpy in the flower bed. Loads of them about.


Quote
et avec John, excellent lecteur de road-book, on s'en est sortis sans erreur

Martin

Re: Signs of Spring
« Reply #294 on: 29 March, 2011, 09:26:14 pm »
I see 1 million lambs have been airlifted into the fields over the last week;

can someone explain to a townie like me how all this is done? I assume their mums were inseminated n months ago but where have they all been up to now?

Re: Signs of Spring
« Reply #295 on: 31 March, 2011, 04:51:13 pm »
Lambing sheds.
I think you'll find it's a bit more complicated than that.

a lower gear

  • Carmarthenshire - "Not ALWAYS raining!"
Re: Signs of Spring
« Reply #296 on: 31 March, 2011, 11:57:12 pm »
And for the next few months they'll be bright-eyed, active, interesting creatures. Yet in twelve months they'll be blank-eyed, dopey, boring woolly-things-that-live-on-the-hills (when they're not absently wandering in front of vehicles). Must be connected to a diet of grass...

hellymedic

  • Just do it!
Re: Signs of Spring
« Reply #297 on: 01 April, 2011, 08:43:47 pm »
A mozzie in the meeting room last night.

a lower gear

  • Carmarthenshire - "Not ALWAYS raining!"
Re: Signs of Spring
« Reply #298 on: 01 April, 2011, 10:40:45 pm »
A mozzie in the meeting room last night.

Must have emerged from the same hidey-hole as the fly on our landing this evening: first one this spring.

Wowbagger

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Signs of Spring
« Reply #299 on: 02 April, 2011, 11:09:58 am »
A SWALLOW! At about 9.30, a mile or so north of Holbeach.
Quote from: Dez
It doesn’t matter where you start. Just start.