Last night we had dinner with some Portuguese friends and my son went outside into the terrace of our rental villa. He found there was a visitor on the wall.

 

I have never seen a praying mantis before but from descriptions I am sure this is what we saw. It was a good 10 cm long and had powerful forelegs.

 

As a child I liked Gerald Durrel's books on his childhood in Corfu ('My family and other animals' & 'Birds, beasts and relatives'). I recall him describing a deadly encounter between a praying mantis and a gecko in his bedroom. I recall him saying that the forelegs were used as deadly weapons that would draw blood...though I recall that the bloodied gecko finally won.

I love the coast of the UK, in particular the SW peninsular. Many years ago as a student, in the early 1980s, I walked the coastal path from Plymouth to Penzance in two stages. More recently, in middle age, I have walked numerous fragments of the N Cornwall path and the path between Lands End and Penzance.

Walking the coast path on a day or half day has the disadvantage that you sometimes need to retrace your steps. Mrs O and I wanted to do a section near Porthleven but found that we could complement the coast path with an inland stretch to make a round trip. We decided to start the walk at the National Trust car park near Rinsey (grid reference SW 592 271)

 

Although there was sunshine inland, the coast path was engulfed in a sea mist. We duly decided to start with the inland leg. We headed along public footpaths WNW towards Breage.

 

We passed this run down cottage/barn near Calvorry farm. At Breage we took the footpath next to the junior school and headed across more fields SW towards Porthleven.

 

There was a good, but hazy view towards the Lizard. The footpath crossed some barley fields with the ears swaying gently in the breeze. Further down the hill we passed a gate and saw that there were horses in the field. We stopped at the gate and the horses approached us. Bizarrely they were also followed by a deer. I assume it belonged to the farm and I do not know what variety it was; it had no antlers but seemed larger than a roe deer.

In Porthleven we stopped for a refreshing drink at a pub overlooking the harbour then started on the Coast Path. The path was fairly up and down and even at this stage of the day there was still some mist that had not quite cleared.

 

In my early 20s, I walked the entire South Cornish Coast path from Plymouth to Penzance. This section was walked in incessant rain and I do not recall any of the sights. I had not appreciated that there were tin mines built into the cliff much like those near St Just. At a small bay we saw firstly kestrels hunting along the cliff edge, then a pair of peregrine falcons that were doing spectacular v-shaped dives chasing gulls then later each other.

 

The insect lif was rich too. There were plenty of scimitar moths and bumble bees. We finally made it back to the car park after a switchback walk in what was turning out to be a hot day.

Anybody in India will think I am daft posting this. After all black kites are as common in India as say wood pigeons in th UK. However I am posting this as they are quite rare in Europe. I have only seen them in the Danube valley in Bavaria or in the Camargue in France.

 

Like the (for us in the UK) more familiar red kites they have a slighltly larger than buzzards and a more distinct 'finger' feather pattern at the wing tips. There is a forking of the tail but less pronounced than with the red kite.

 

The head is a lighter colour than the body and there are pale patches on the wing undersides. However these contrasts in colour are much less distinct than with a red kite. The general impression is of a dark brown bird.

I went with a colleague to the science museum in Hyderabad which is on the top of a rock outcrop. It was quite common to see 20 kites overflying at different heights. Despite that I did not find it easy to photograph them. He said that they performed the very useful function of eating rats.

Overelooking the city there was one point when there appeared to be a massive flock of several hundred kites over one district. Unfortunately we were not allowed to take our cameras into the museum so no photo was possible.

Mrs O and I went to the Netherlands last week to visit some of her relatives. We stayed in a campsite in some woods to the east of Zwolle in Overijssel. My sister-in-law was complaining about May bugs or Maikäfer which were visible in large numbers flying above the grass.

 

 

 

The fully grown ones were a good 3 cm in size like this one crawling slowly across a tile. However once they reach this size they did not seem to last very long. There were a good deal of dead ones lying around. Interestingly you can tell the sex by the number of 'leaves' in the antenna - I counted six on this one so it is presumably a female.

 

I need to relate the final part of the great tit story. All seven chicks left the nestbox on Wednesday when I was on a business trip to Munich.

 

Mrs Oregano saw the family flying together and perching on the fence or walnut tree. So a successful brood!

I took a look in the nesting box again today

 

 

I had earlier posted a picture of our nest box from last Saturday with some tiny great tit chicks.

 

We were blessed with good weather last weekend and thought it would be a good time to look for bluebells. For round who are not in the UK this is a spectacular event lasting for about 2+ weeks around the beginning of May. This time we went to Upping Copse and were not disappointed.

 

Bluebells seem to need a critical mass of shade to thrive. We had earlier been in another deciduous wood which was sparser and where virtually no bluebells were visible but instead brambles and bracken.

 

Other plants that grow well in similar conditions are wild garlic and dog's mercury.

 

Fallen trees in varying stages of decay also made the walk interesting.

 

We also saw a fair number of woodland ferns unfolding and a few butterflies. We saw brimstones, small whites, peacocks (like the one above) and a large white.

 

It is strange to think that a week or so ago this scene would have looked mainly green and that it will revert to green again in a few weeks.

We have had a nesting box on the side of our house for about 5 years. The design was supposed to encourage house sparrows - ironically something that I recall the RSPB nestboxes of the late 1960s sought to avoid! - but has been inhabited by tits. On three occasions blue tits have nested but with only one successful brood. Last year a pair of great tits nested successfully.

 

We try to avoid peeking in - the last thing we want is for the parents to panic and abandon their brood - but last Saturday we saw that they brood has hatched. Both parents are working hard to bring in food.

Having previously seen evidence of previous visits on our decking, we got a glipse of this visitor at nightfall yesterday.

 

I am fed up with the number of wood pigeons and collared doves we have in our town. They are constantly trying to build nests on window sills and other unsuitable locations and in winter hoover up large quantities of bird food when we put out. An elderly neighbour even claimed that with a warmer climate they are breeding three times a year! A probelm of course is the absence of predators. OK, I have seen the odd one being eaten by a sparrowhawk but a wood pigeon is stretching things a bit even for a female.

Two weekends ago when we were on our way to church one of my sons said "that screeching sounds like a peregrine". He was right, there was one perched on the church roof. I have never seen one in this area of England before. Hopefully, it will be not short of prey here!

We have a little garden pond about 3 metres long and one metre wide. About five weeks ago there was a large gathering of frogs for spawning and the shallow end of the pond was full of frogspawn. Last weekend we noticed that there was very little frogspawn left and suspected it was ducks that had eaten it.

At this time of the year large numbers of mallards wander off in pairs from our local river and seem to explore parts of the town where they never normally go. Yesterday I found a male and female settled on my pond. The spawn has disappeared completely and the water has gone from clear to muddy.... so no little frogs this year.

When we lived in the Munich area we saw many different sorts of birds of prey. They were mainly buzzards, sparrow hawks and kestrels but there were interesting summer and winter visitors. The first time I recognised a hen harrier was in January 1995 when out to a favourite raptor-watching area SE of Munich with my son.

 

He said "Dad, there is a gull over there", but from the low flight over the ground (which I knew had plenty of voles and mice as the buzzards and kestrels hunted them I did not think it was a gull. Also the bird had a long tail quite unlike a gull. I had a long lens with me so took the photo above - which sadly is not sharp - but you see the long grey wings with black wingtips, a white band at the base of the tail and a long grey tail.

I concluded that it was a male hen harrier but was surprised as Germany has very few breeding pairs. On getting home and reading a book on raptors I realised that it was probably a bird that was wintering from Sweden or Finland. Quite a few migrate southward to Germany for the winter. In subsequent winters we would see harriers from late October to about mid March.

 

The hen harrier has a wingspan similar to that of a common buzzard - just over a metre - but is more slimly built and has a much longer tail. The female (like that above) is a similar brown to a buzzard but has the white band at the base of the tail like the male.

While buzzards hunt from soaring or from a perch, hen harriers tend to fly low over the ground alternating between flapping and gliding. Occasionally they will strike something on the ground showing their long legs.

This weekend I found an old video recording (analog I'm afraid) from November 2005 showing a male then a female hen harrier hunting. I was with a friend and our boys were very excited to see the harriers!

Note that the male harrier strikes something on the ground at around 0:18 and 0:39. Unusually the male gains height and hovers 2:49-2:53 before rapidly dropping and resuming his hunt at ground level.

At 2:15 the male poos. Note that like buzzards and hawks, harriers squirt their poo while falcons let it drop!

Enjoy...

Well, the wind has been howling for the last two days and there have been a number of sleet showers. Nevertheless there are a few signs of Spring. Yesterday on a walk by local ponds we saw our first house martin. We also saw a little egret which while exotic a decade ago now seems firmly established in this country. Also in our garden pond the first king cup is in flower.

Just outside Golspie just off the A9 there is a short but interesting walk called "Big Burn". It is not very long - only taking 25 minutes to get to the top and the same back again - but it is multi-faceted and interesting. We did this walk first thing last Sunday when the weather was sunny.

 

You start out near the car park and the valley is wider. On either side of the park there was wild garlic sprouting. The woods are deciduous.

 

Passing under the railway bridge you get a feel for the scale of the gorge you are going into. The railway must be a good 40 metres above the river. The odd little stream tumbles down the slopes.

 

 

 

 

About halfway up the walk the gorge narrows considerably and is vertical on each side. It is darker and damp.

 

From this waterfall there is the feeling of being in a temperate rainforest with lots of mosses, ferns, etc.

The path leads further upstream to a viewing point at the foot of the larger waterfall.

 

We saw a grey wagtail near the stream at the foot of the fall but later saw a dipper perched on the log. The video below is not very good but at least records the event. A dipper is interesting because it dives into streams and walks along the bottom looking for food. We have seen dippers in very few places (Spitzingsee in the Bavarian Alps, Rum and along the River Awe near Taynuilt).

 

A little further on there is a bridge over the stream from which you can see the top of the waterfall. A short walk but very varied indeed!
 

Some of the most spectacular lichen I have seen has been in the woods of Easter Ross or East Sutherland. I recall exploring a birch wood next to where my granny lived as a child and seeing amazing grey lichen.

At the weekend we did some walks by the sand dunes and conifer woods near Little Ferry, Sutherland. I was amazed to see so much lichen actually on the sand dunes mixed with heather and other vegetation.

 

The woods were more spectacular with the firs almost looking loaded down with lichen (not literally true I am sure!).

 

Close up was interesting too.

 

The lichen appeared as "bushes" coming out of the branch a few centimetres high.

 

When constrasted with the darkness of the conifer woods some trees had a ghost-like appearance.

I have always enjoyed looking at lichen. However, I have never bought a book on the subject and cannot even name one sort! What fascinates me is the microcosm of life you can see in a small space with varying textures and colours.

 

Four years ago we had a family trip to Scotland and visited the Isle of Handa in West Sutherland. We mainly went there for the amazing variety of seabirds e.g. tysties or black guillemots, great skuas, etc. However I was fascinated that so many rocks such as the one above, simply had microgardens of lichen growing on them.

 

Tree trunks are no different and can yield fascinating details such as these from a medium sized fruit tree.

 

Further up the tree there are at least three varieties of grey-green lichen - a bush-like one, a "leafy" one and a flat spreading one.

 

Although a lot of lichens are grey or grey-green I love the bright yellow ones such as this one. St Ives in Cornwall has grey buildings roofed with slate. They could look dull were it not for the contrast with the bright yellow lichens.

 

Closer to home, when we moved to our present town we thought that there was a lack in imagination by the inhabitants due to a uniform darkish brown roof colour. We wanted a warm red roof tile and chose our tiles accordingly - they were originally close to the colour at the very top of the lower tile ridge.

However eight years since our house was built, our roof has changed colour dramatically. It is now a dark brown with grey, white and yellow spodges. Again this is lichen - OK there is moss there too!

However, one of the best things about litchen is that it is a good indicator of clean air. It does not survive with pollution. Some of the best examples of lichen I have seen have been in places with great air e.g. the Oberbayern (Bavarian Alps), Cornwall and the Northern Highlands.

After taking the sleeper to Inverness, we had a long weekend that included travelling on the Black Isle, Tarbat Ness peninsular and East Sutherland areas.

In the US they talk of the "big skies" of Montana. Well, I have never been to Montana but I assume this refers to being able to see vast distances and have the sky framed by mountains. I have often thought this about the area around Inverness where low-lying agricultural land is framed by Highland peaks.

You get the "big sky" feeling coming in on the train or A9 towards Inverness from Carrbridge. Similarly if you drive over the Black Isle you will often get a fantastic clear view towards peaks in the distance but be impressed by the scale of things with firths, smaller hills and fields in between.

After Inverness we drove to Cromary and got good views towards the North and West. Cromarty is an interesting historic village. It also has a good view out to the North Sea between the Sutors.

 

BTW, if you ever go to Cromarty I can recommend the bakery. They make excellent oatcakes - which are far better than the mass-produced ones - including garlic and herb ones and good cakes.

In the next peninsular that stretches north of the Cromarty Firth to Tarbat Ness you also get great views inland.

 

This view west towards Ben Wyvis and beyond was taken at an elevation of about 50 metres but the height is just enough to give scale to the land between where we were and the mountains. We enjoyed the sound of skylarks in the area.

 

Travelling further North the next peninsular is at Dornoch, bordered on the North side by Loch Fleet. When we were driving past Embo there were showers and sunshine producing occasional rainbows.

 

At low tide near Skelbo and opposite Little Ferry, Loch Fleet looks deceptively shallow but has strong currents. On the sandbank in the middle we counted 16 seals on a further bank maybe 30 more. In a previous year we saw an Osprey near here. Buzzards are plentiful presumably profiting from the numerous rabbits in the sand dunes.

I should have written this post on Sunday 24th February. However we had a house full of guests and I forgot about it. On 23rd we had our first frogspawn of the year. Frogs had been very active in the pond in the preceding weeks (or at least when the pond was not frozen over)and the females (I presume) were looking very bloated.

On the 24th we took our Dutch guests for a walk on the Hampshire downs and while the plants higher up are behind those of our town we were seing signs of Spring. Firstly when we got out of our van, we saw 4 buzzards skydancing (courtship display). Buzzards usually soar in an extremely laid back way. However in the mating season they are positively vigorous, flapping hard to gain height then doing V-shaped dives to impress prospective partners.

Later we saw 3 roe deer and a red kite. At the summit we saw a kite again soaring below us on the edge of the scarp slope. In the woods the lords and ladies had already shot up leaves while the wild garlic was not yet visible.

Reporting something seen on the M4 driving from Reading to Heathrow somehow goes against the spirit of an "outdoors" blog. Nevertheless this posting definitely does not belong on the other ones!

Since returning to the UK in 1998, I have been delighted to see an increasing number of red kites. In the early 1990s I saw some - on a visit from Bavaria - in the Chilterns and saw loads in the Stuttgart area and between Lyon and Grenoble. I have often seen them in the Hampshire downs and over the last two years between Basingstoke and Reading.

Today there was one over the M4 just west of the Maidenhead exit. Great the the reintroduction is working!

I have always thought it would be great to see otters in the wild but until last Saturday night was never successful in this country. I have seen sea otters off the Californian coast near Monterey. I have spent time waiting near a beach on Mull - where supposedly it is easy to see otters - but in vain. On a trip to Rum with my eldest son we were told where to look for otters but despite promisingly looking movements in the water all we saw was kelp - well actually, my son found otter dung but never the mammal.

We came back from London on a late train on Saturday and walked home. Passing over a small chalkstream my wife noticed squealing sounds from the stream. My first thought was perhaps there was a nightbird, but we could see into the stream due to the floodlights of a nearby building. 

We were thrilled to see four otters chasing each other for a few minutes. By the time I thought of getting out my camera two had already headed off under the bridge. But I did get the above shot of the last one. We never thought we would see our first wild British otters in a town!

With Dutch visitors over the Christmas period we wanted to take them to somewhere different from home. Previously visitors have enjoyed going to the Isle of Purbeck where the cliff scenery is quite different from the dunes and beaches of the Netherlands.

One place we have never been to as a family is Kimmeridge. Our eldest son is a surfer and said that the reefs, cliffs and fossils there were very interesting. On arriving there on Christmas Eve we were struck by the darkness of the cliffs in contrast to the limestone and chalk of nearby West Lulworth or Swanage. This is shown very well on the University of Southampton website.

The dark shales (some looked more like slates) of the cliffs dominate the cliffs however there are very distinct layers of yellow sandstone. On some parts of the beach there shales go out as flat plates into the sea.

 

 

 

There were obviously a lot of fossils. Ammonites - or rather fractions of them were very common - and quite a few rocks showed imprints of shellfish.

 

Larger ammonites were quite visible in various states of erosion in both shale and sandstone rocks.

 

My eldest son and his cousin found some small but well preserved ammonites in shale in rocks below the cliff.

 

Another cousin found parts of an ammonite in a rusty rock.

 

While neither good geologists nor expert fossil-hunters this was a very interesting beach!