I'll be brief!

Well, there's no choice really. I haven't much to offer just now. But I'm hoping we will slowly get back to some kind of birding. However I will be very cautious.

So, I went to Fairburn and just parked at the roadside down towards Lin Dike. First common terns of the year. 

Sand martins in the village by the Old Gaol.

Colton railway bridges [near Appleton Roebuck] was my last call. Azuma trainsets, a whitethroat and as I watched the field north of the bridges one of the buttercups began to walk about!

Oh go on. The trains too - electric and diesel. Electric on the new line, diesels on the old one.

Colton railway bridges May 2020 Colton railway bridges May 2020 Colton railway bridges May 2020 Colton railway bridges May 2020

157 UK 2020

Only 45 behind this time last year. And that wasn't the best of years...

How has it come to this?

Nearly seven weeks since I reluctantly forewent going birding. Now there's a word I've never used before! Forego, forewent, foregone. Oh well, I'm sort of getting used to it - staying home I mean. The garden keeps us both sane - coupled with some model-making and playing trains. Like a good little schoolboy!

Time for the latest flower and plant blog. I've been photographing the garden more than I've ever done before.

Here goes!

Paris polyphylla [Can't resist the idea that this is where the names 'Plaster of Paris and 'Polyfilla' come from!]

Stipa

Flowering ribes aureum

Red helianthemum

Shooting star or dodecatheon. Primula family.

Geranium phaeum

Rubus 'Benenden' or a variety thereof. 

Rodgersia

Echeveria - hardy in this trough. What trough? I hear you ask! Well they're in an old ceramic kitchen sink that's been covered in hypertufa so it looks like old sandstone. Honest!

Primula japonica by the stream. 

Cercidiphyllum japonica 'Rotfuchs' ['Red Fox' - a German introduction] Compact fastigiate tree.

It has lovely leaves and smells of toffee in the autumn.

Giant redwood - now the biggest thing in the garden. We brought it back from Bodnant nursery in North Wales many years ago when it fitted in the boot!

Meconopsis cambrica 'Frances Perry' - the red flowering Welsh poppy. Returns each year in the same border.

Osteospermum - African daisy

Hostas in hypertufa sinks. What is hypertufa? It's a mix by volume of sifted peat [through a very fine riddle], coarse sand and cement.

Drumstick primula denticulata and farfugium japonica foliage.

Deutzia 'Strawberry Fields' and dwarf deutzia 'Nikko'

Dicentra

Wisteria 'Black Dragon' 'floribunda Yaekokuryu'. Grown here as a standard - it took many years to start flowering but wow, how it flowers now!

A strange twisted weeping willow - very slow growing. It hangs strangely over the path. I have to persuade Sheila not to cut it off!

A sprawling small-flowered clematis whose name escapes me!

Anometheca! There's a red one somewhere.

White erinus or fairy foxglove.

Clematis seedhead

Wild garlic, purple erinus in a real stone trough and alpine strawberry

And that's about it again. I'll finish with a shuttlecock fern.

Stay home, stay safe. Be careful: there's a UK government planning your demise!

Journal of the Plague Year

Part 4: I got a year tick!

I shall just name what you see and add the occasional comment. Enjoy!

This batch of photos is a mix of iphone images and images from my Canon 5Dsr with a 100mm macro lens. Spring flowering now at its best and it's been a very good season for blossom on our trees and shrubs.

Andrena barbilaris - soil nesting bee [I think!]

Solomon's seal. Beloved of sawfly caterpillars.

Welsh poppy: a weed, I suppose, but we quite like it. And, after all, a weed is only defined as a plant you don't like or want.

Dwarf iris pumila. 

Mouse plant: arisarum proboscideum. You can see its tail.

Tulip

Speckled wood butterfly on camellia flower.

Lathyrus aureus - apparently rarely grown commercially because germination is so erratic but we have a few plants that have just appeared over the years in our gravel paths. they've then been potted up and grown on. 

Greenbottle lucilia semicarta.  On perennial honesty

Another andrena species of mining bee, I think.

Cranesbill - a variety of true geranium and bluebells nearly in flower.

Beeflies are very much in the news for some reason. I've only recently learnt to identify them with confidence, probably because there's been a good number in the garden and I've been around more than usual. Anyway, here's a few photos with the close up lens of  a dark-edged bee-fly.

And here's Harry, the scarecrow in our vegetable garden. 

These bee allies are very tricky to identify with confidence. Here's another. Hoverfly? All suggestions welcome!

Red tulips, speckled wood on honesty.

Blue dwarf lathyrus: just appeared as a self-seedling.

Darmera peltata. Flowers before the leaves appear. Damp ground.

Seed grown paeony mascula

Bluebells have now opened as has the uvularia grandiflora.

I like to try to get sharp images of these insects but I'm sorry I can't name these two.

Lysichiton americanus - impressive pond plant along with the kingcup or caltha palustris

Orange tip butterfly

I call it a flowering gooseberry. officially it's the fuchsia-flowered gooseberry or ribes speciosum.

Now for something else... When in lockdown there are other interests to pursue. Here's Hurricane [so named because he's so very slow] at full speed with a short train of slate wagons powering his way through the cutting...

There. That'll do for now. More next time. If all is well....

The year tick? 5 swifts over the house so far. Pair of pied wagtails seen every day so must be nesting locally. Buzzard frequent too on warmer days. Goldcrests still around in the conifers. Life can go on without us - in fact I think it responds well to the quieter lives we humans are leading.

151 UK 2020