Butterflies on the Mynydds

Bardsey Island.

A walk at the end of the peninsula, parking on Mynydd Mawr and walking to Mynydd Anelog, will perhaps become a new fixture of our summer trip to the Llyn. The views and the colours are truly spectacular.

I started this walk at the back of the pack, even in a slow moving group I seem to gravitate towards the rear.

And having started there…

…I fell gradually farther and farther behind.

The problem was that I was distracted, not only by the stunning views and the carpet of purple heather and yellow gorse, but also by the profusion of butterflies and my attempts to photograph them.

Painted Lady underwing, subtler than the more familiar upperwings, but beautiful none the less.

Painted Ladies were the most abundant, but I remember happily counting nine different species of butterfly on this single walk. It’s the kind of thing which makes me inordinately happy. 2019 was a bumper year for butterflies apparently, particularly for painted ladies. The last big year for these migrants was 2009, an influx which I remember well.

Mynydd Anelog.

Common Blue on Common Fleabane.

I’ve read that Common Blues did well last summer too, with recorded numbers up over 100%. These two seem intent on increasing the population even further..

The male is on the right, recognisable because he is more brightly coloured. Which bright colouring includes his aedeagus (analog of a penis). Which came as a bit of a surprise to me!

There were quite a lot of Common Blues about. Here’s another pair…

Painted Lady on Common Fleabane.

Drone Fly on Mint.

Mynydd Mawr.

It wasn’t only the butterflies who were feeling amorous…

I knew that grasshoppers are very variable in colour within a species, but the differences are quite striking here. I was also surprised by how much smaller the male is than the female…

I’ve found an excellent online identification guide to crickets and grasshoppers, but I’m still not sure about these. I think they might be Field Grasshoppers.

Tatty Meadow Brown.

Mottled Grasshopper. Possibly.

Small Copper.

Tatty Painted Lady.

Small Tortoiseshell.

Red Admiral. Also two types of heather, Ling Heather, which is paler pink and dominant here and, to the right of the butterfly, the darker, purpler Bell Heather.

Along the coast to the distant Rivals.

Mynydd Anelog.

Red Admiral.

Meadow Brown.

It may have seemed, earlier in the post, that I had promised nine different species of butterfly, but the post only has photographs of six. What were the other three? Well….I’m fairly confident that one was Small White, but they rarely sit still to be photographed. And…I don’t remember I’m afraid. Possibly Ringlet. Maybe Wall Brown, which I’ve seen here before. Or Gatekeepers? Or Small Heath? Much as I’ve enjoyed revisiting this marvellous walk at eight months remove, there might almost be something to be said for keeping a diary up to date!

My account of the last time we did this walk is here.

Andy’s posts about this walk are well worth a read, and can be accessed here. That’s him, on the right of the final picture.

Sunderland Point

Looking across the Lune.

Oh, I haven’t done that for a while: this post ought to have preceded my last one. Not to worry.

This was another, short, half-term wander. One of our cars was booked in for a warranty service at a garage on the White Lund industrial estate between Lancaster and Morecambe. At the last minute, the offer of a courtesy car was withdrawn. Since we had other things to do later in the day, that left us with some logistical difficulties. We decided to try to make something of the morning, so TBH followed me to the garage and then we continued south to the small village of Sunderland Point.

The causeway road which is the only one in and out of Sunderland Point.

It’s a crazy thing that I’ve never been to Sunderland Point before, even though I’ve lived in the area for nearly 30 years. Twice a day, the tide rises over the access road and the village is cut off from its neighbours.

Sea Beet.

It was an overcast and windy day and we were pushed for time, so we kept our walk short and I didn’t take as many photos as I might have done. I noticed a lot of seashore plants – these Sea-beet, some Horned Poppies, Sea Campion for example – and was thinking that I must return some time to have a more leisurely look around.

Dryad’s Saddle.

I was keen to see this…

Horizon Line Chamber by artist Chris Drury.

Which is just a little way around the coast from the village. It’s a camera obscura, with a small lens in the wall which projects an inverted image onto the opposite wall.

Image inside the chamber.

There’s more about the project on the artist’s website here. Including this delightful film…

Visiting on a gloomy day probably wasn’t a great choice, so I intend to come to have another look when the sun is shining.

The chamber is close to…

Sambo’s grave.

A relic of Lancaster’s history as one of the ports engaged in the transatlantic slave trade. Sambo was a former cabin boy who came to Sunderland Point in 1736 and, having died of a fever, was not buried in consecrated ground. This plaque…

…dated 1796, features a poem written by Reverend James Watson.

Sculpture by Ray Schofield, who lived in the house opposite where the sculpture is now sited.

Half-term Happenings: Warton Crag

On the Tuesday of the half-term week my brother took his kids to Kendal to see how far his Swiss Francs would go in British shops. (The answer being a very long way.)

TBH had some reason to pop to Carnforth so I sponged a lift part of the way. She dropped me by the limekiln on the Low Road. From there a path climbs to the High Road. It’s a path I rarely use because the only way to get there is from a fairly busy road, so this was a good opportunity to reacquaint myself with this, albeit short, section of local footpath.

King Alfred’s Cakes on a tree-stump.

From the High Road I took another path I don’t often use, which wends its way up to the top of Warton Crag.

It was quite gloomy over the Bay, but the view from the Crag is always worth the climb.

Warton Crag Beacon.

Whilst I often head north to climb Arnside Knott, it’s much less often that I find myself walking up the Crag. There are various sound reasons for that fact, but the bizarre thing is that I find myself feeling guilty for neglecting the Crag, as if it were an old friend to whom I’m showing a cold-shoulder. I have to remind myself that Warton Crag, site of a some sort of Bronze Age settlement, made of limestone laid down beneath a shallow, warm, pre-historic sea and subsequently scoured by glaciers, is probably not overly bothered by my choices!

Down at Barrowscout Field the reeds had been cut and the trimmings burned; hence the smoke drifting across the photo above.

I returned home via Quaker Stang, where there was evidence of a recent spring tide, then Heald Brow, Woodwell and Bottom’s Wood.

The following day we went Go-Karting on an indoor track in Preston, which was great fun, but unfortunately I have no photos of the action to share. Anyway, the boys were both quicker than me, so the less said about that the better.

Tramp

A bit of a wander from the end of January. Before I left the house I’d been watching a large flock of Curlews in the field behind the house. Here’s a portion of them…

Snowdrops.

Pepper Pot.

Slime mould?

Goldcrest.

Jelly Ear fungus.

Stinking Hellebore.

I’m not sure that Stinking Hellebore is really a local wildflower – it likes alkaline soils so grows well here, but not in may places, so is probably a garden escapee. It’s apparently best seen on the chalk hills of Hampshire.

Jackdaws.

Snowdrops.

More Hellebores, this time from our garden. 

And the title? Well, it all came from mishearing….

‘The Champ’ by The Mohawks on Radio 6. My mistake is not too surprising, since this is a cover of ‘Tramp’, first recorded by Lowell Fulsom and cowritten by Fulsom and Jimmy McCracklin (who recorded the album ‘High on the Blues’, a favourite of mine) and most famously performed as a duet by Otis Redding and Carla Thomas. The song has had quite an eventful history, with lots of versions recorded, some of which have also been heavily sampled. Salt and Pepa recorded a reworking of the tune, but when the b-side started to get more airtime that was released separately as a single. And the b-side was…Push It, their big hit.

Anyway, enough pop trivia for now. I really like The Mohawks cover, but for me nothing will ever top the moment in the Thomas/Redding version when Otis’s voice soars into the line ‘I’m a lover’.

New Year Floral Survey

Eaves Wood – Castlebarrow – The Row – Burtonwell Wood – The Clifftop – Heald Brow – Quaker’s Stang – Jenny Brown’s Point – Jack Scout – Gibraltar Farm – Woodwell – Emesgate Lane.

Quince Flowers.

After a string of grey, overcast, foggy, damp days, New Year’s Day was a corker: bright, sunny and, out of the wind, even quite warm at times. TBH was wiped out by a rotten cold, but the rest of us had been out on New Year’s Eve and the children, lightweights to a man, weren’t up very early. Eventually, Little S emerged into the light and I told him I was heading out to take advantage of the sunshine and asked him to ring me when the others got up, chiefly because the day before we’d got halfway through a game of Pandemic, a board game my brother sent us for Christmas, and I’d promised to finish it with the kids when they were ready.

The first surprise, apart from the glorious sunshine, was the thicket of Quince on the  corner of Elmslack Lane which was studded with bright red baubles. I suppose it must have been flowering when I walked past it earlier that week, but it took some brighter conditions to draw my attention to that fact. When I spotted a Marigold (I think?), which must have self-seeded where it sat at the end of a gravel drive….

…I was reminded again, as I often am, of Richards Adams marvellous ‘A Nature Diary’ in which the author, most famous for Watership Down, explores the lanes, hills and coasts around his home on the Isle of Man. His winter entries often gleefully list the flowers he has found unexpectedly in bloom. I wondered how I might fare with a similar scheme on New Year’s Day. Almost immediately, I spotted Snowdrops and a single Celandine. Also…

…quite a bit of Winter Jasmine in gardens. All of those might reasonably be expected, but I was a bit more surprised by the extent to which the brambles were flowering wherever I saw them in the woods…

The Jubilee Monument on Castlebarrow.

In Eaves Wood.

In Burtonwell Wood.

I think that this might be Yellow Jelly Fungus, also known as Witches Butter, but I’m not sufficiently confident about that, or hungry enough, to try adding this allegedly edible fungi to my diet.

Heald Brow.

Meadow Ant Mounds on Heald Brow.

Evidence of Badger predation of Meadow Ants? Apparently Badgers are partial to ants.

It was a good morning for birds, if not for bird photographs: I heard and saw Nuthatches, a Buzzard, various tits, several Great Spotted Woodpeckers and one Green Woodpecker.

Ragwort.

Dandelion.

Gorse.

Daisy.

Quaker’s Stang and Warton Crag.

Sea Beet.

It wasn’t just the flowers which caught my attention; Sea Beet is the wild ancestor of Beetroot, Sugar Beet and Perennial Spinach, grows all year by the coast, is packed full of vitamins and is reputedly delicious. Spring is apparently the best time to eat it, so, seeing it growing on the edge of the salt-marsh, I made a mental note to come back this way, later in the year, with some sort of receptacle in which to carry away some forage.

There were quite a few people enjoying a New Year’s Day constitutional down by the salt-marsh, but I felt like I might be the only one who spotted the completely unexpected flight of a Speckled Wood butterfly and, moments later, a Painted Lady…

Butterflies can only fly when the temperature is high enough, so the fact that they were here at all was testament to the genuine warmth by this sheltered, south-facing bank. It’s still a bit of a puzzle however, since Speckled Wood butterflies are unique in that they can overwinter as either a caterpillar or a chrysalis, but I don’t think they generally hibernate, as some other species do. And Painted Ladies famously migrate northwards from North Africa over several generations during a summer and then return in the autumn. Perhaps this one was a straggler.

The large tree behind the old chimney had a couple of clumps of…

…exquisitely ochre fungi.

Jenny Brown’s Cottages.

This looks like a Hawk’s-beard, although I’m not remotely confident about that. Maybe Rough Hawk’s-beard, but that’s supposed to flower in June and July, so if it is, it’s a confused specimen.

Jack Scout.

I’ve previously reported that the berries on Flowering Nutmeg, here growing close to Woodwell, reputedly taste chocolaty. In the interest of accuracy, I tried a berry and can now correct my error – it didn’t taste at all like chocolate. It was bitter and not at all pleasant. Oh well – you live and learn.

More flowers. These were staked, clearly a garden plant, but Stinking Hellebore is actually native to the British Isles. This plant is very early to flower and would be one of the few you might expect to see at this time of year.

Emerging Cuckoo Pint leaves: spring is on the way!

Hydrangea. In retrospect these are not actually flowers at all I don’t think, but the remains of the large bracts which once surrounded the actual flowers.

We never did finish that game of Pandemic. I eventually rang Little S, when it seemed too late in the day for the rest of the family to still be in bed. It transpired that they were watching a film instead, so I was free to continue my New Year’s Day ramble without feeling guilty about having abandoned them all. We have played several times since.

The following day our old friend X-Ray visited and he and I and B played another new game, sent by my brother, Queen Domino. It’s a companion to, and can be combined with, King Domino, which we’ve enjoyed enormously since we got it last Christmas. Although I won, I didn’t really feel that I’d grasped the strategy for Queen Domino; I think that might take numerous games.

After our game, X-Ray and I went for a rather late wander down to Jack Scout and managed to miss what was, apparently, quite a spectacular sunset.

Next time will have to do.

A pretty good start to 2019. I hope you’ve enjoyed the same.

Mending Wall

Eaves Wood – Ring O’Beeches – Waterslack – Hawes Water – Moss Lane – Trowbarrow Quarry – Storrs Lane – Red Bridge Lane – Golf Course – Bank Well – Lambert’s Meadow – Burtonwell Wood – Hagg Wood.

A half-term Monday, no work, not a cloud in the sky: better get out for a local walk!

In Eaves Wood.

The circle of beeches.

Waterslack.

Woods near Challan Hall.

Exmoor ponies, used for conservation grazing.

The only fly in the ointment that day was the new fencing and padlocked gate near Hawes Water. It looked as though the intention will be to keep the public off the grassland which borders the lake which the old boardwalk used to cross. That will protect the habitat of the plants which grow there – Bird’s-eye Primrose at the southern end of its range and Grass of Parnassus for example – but will also mean that people like me who enjoy seeing those plants will no longer enjoy that simple pleasure. I could be wrong of course, I hope I am: the fencing was far from finished and I haven’t yet been back to check.

“Before I built a wall I’d ask to know

What I was walling in or walling out,

And to whom I was like to give offence.

Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,”

from ‘Mending Wall’ by Robert Frost

The bright sunshine went some way to alleviate my concern about the number of poor photographs of fungi I’ve taken this autumn; with better light the camera coped admirably.

Birch polyps.

Hawes Water.

Trowbarrow Quarry.

This female pheasant seemed unusually sanguine about my close proximity. I couldn’t decide whether or not she might be sitting on a very late clutch of eggs.

I rather liked this new (to me) carving on a dead tree by the visitor centre at Leighton Moss RSPB reserve.

By contrast, the following day the whole family went to Blackpool Pleasure Beach in bitterly cold weather. We’d bought tickets from a charity auction.

Poor Little S wanted somebody to accompany him on all of the white knuckle attractions, but the rest of us were relatively cowardly. TBH did eventually agree to join him on the ‘Ice Blast’.

Here they are, both looking very nervous, shortly before being sent hurtling skyward…

I was up for taking him on ‘The Big One’ – I like rollercoasters, but it was shut due to the high winds. We had to settle for the old rickety wooden ones, which left me feeling pummelled and slightly nauseous. I must be getting old.

Here’s the rest of the family on something much tamer, but wet, which is why I refused to join them.

To finish, another snippet of my diverse musical taste, in contrast with the previous post, this harks back to the late eighties when I waited eagerly for each addition of Maximumrocknroll where I could discover obscure punk bands, like, for example, Angst.

This song is the opener from their album “Mending Wall’. The fact that the album was named after the Frost poem was what put it into my mind, but I suppose that the song is also tangentially relevant, since it seems to be, in some way, about an inability to adapt to change (although I don’t think padlocked gates at nature reserves are explicitly mentioned). Angst were on SST records, run by Black Flag’s Greg Ginn and home not only of Black Flag, but also of Husker Du (at least for a while), Sonic Youth (for one album I think), the Meat Puppets, Saccharine Trust and a host of others including, best of all in my opinion, the Minutemen. Simply being on the label was recommendation enough for me and most of the records I bought on spec turned out to have been worth a punt.

Do people still become single-mindedly obsessed by the output of a favourite record label? I hope so. I was quietly pleased to see that Maximumrocknroll is still going strong.

Comfortable Silences

Speckled Wood Butterfly.

A mid-October Sunday and another day which brightened up into a cracker after a most unpromising start. B must have been playing at home and I’d been for a wander along the Lune from Underley Park under dark skies and beside a river which, if not quite in spate, was swollen, fast flowing and looking as if it would present a stern challenge to canoeists.

In the afternoon, I walked around the coast as far as White Creek and from there up to Heathwaite without, unusually, ever going up to the top of the Knott.

I enjoyed watching this flock of birds heading north rather faster than I was. I suspect that they were Oystercatchers, but it was hard to tell.

I was interested to see, now that we were definitely into Autumn, what I could still find flowering. Some things weren’t particularly unexpected….

Devil’s-bit Scabious.

I was pleased to see some butterflies too: quite a few Speckled Woods, a large White and this…

Small Copper Butterfly.

Betony is another late-flowering plant, so not out of place in October. But…

…this Burnett Rose was a bit unexpected.

Oystercatchers – unmistakably this time.

The view from Park Point.

Holly is normally a spring flowering plant, so these flowers go down as surprise of the day.

This is one of the two short tunnels of White Creek Mine. The colour of the rock here suggests that this is another haematite mine – an iron oxide ore mainly used in the manufacture of paint apparently.

Two views south along the coast from Heathwaite.

It was a fairly clear day – was that Blackpool Tower I could make out down the coast?

Yep!

The (becoming) obligatory Ingleborough zoom.

I thought this pair of crows looked like old friends, comfortable with each others silence…

‘Did you…..?’

‘Oh, no? Okay. Think I’ll grab a snooze.’