October Visit to Herefordshire - Part 2 Around the Site

 

Timothy on his shelf - thankfully I remembered to pack his jumper!!

The Herefordshire Oak - I am sure I can now see a slight change in the colour of the leaves.

D took a lovely photo of it with a faint rainbow curving round it but I will save that until later in the year when I'll probably do a collage of photos through the year of the tree. Thanks to Rustic Pumpkin from "Country Ways and Cottage Days" for suggesting I do one this year.

No sign of Redwings or Fieldfares yet on hawthorn berries. Oh and the House Martins on the site have now left :(

The rose is still flowering and below photos of the hollyhock that B grew from seed that is now in flower.

The owners of the site keep it looking lovely and there are quite a few of these planters.

One of the caravan owners who I think has been there the longest has quite a large garden which he spends hours looking after and the dahlias are now in flower.

Moon rising on one of the evenings.

View to the front left of the caravan.

View from the rear with the oak in the distance.

Here is the static caravan.  I am so glad I had it moved here from the walled garden when we bought it and the site owners said they would relocate to this vacant plot if we wished free of charge!  We are on the final row of the site and it only has four or five caravans on that row. There are lovely views to the front and rear and there is a high hawthorn hedge on the one side and no caravans to the front or rear so it is quite secluded.

The Gatekeeper D bought us for the caravan. It is very similar to the one I have at home.

*D

D's far better photo of the moon.

*D

I hope everyone is staying safe and well.

Photos taken by me with the Panasonic Lumix FZ330 bridge camera and those marked *D by my son with the Canon SX50 HS bridge camera. (I don't particularly rate most of my photos but if anyone wants to use one of mine or my son's I would be really grateful for an email first - thanks).

More on Moths

Two posts in one day - I don't think I've ever done that before! Anything to take my mind off the Villa result today - I can't believe how close we are coming to possible relegation. Any why was Albrighton (one of the better players on the pitch) substituted?

To return to moths here's a summary of the moths trapped last night

Summary of Moths Trapped on Friday, 18th March, 2011

Minimum Temperature -2.1 degrees centigrade

6.30 p.m. until dawn

15w Actinic Skinner Light Trap

1 x Dotted Border
1 x Common Quaker
1 x Clouded Drab

All species new for the year and Dotted Border was also a garden first.

Common Quaker



Clouded Drab





My moth identification skills still leave much to be desired! So if I have misidentified either species please let me know. No photo of the Dotted Border which is a shame as it was a garden first but it was very flighty and flew away before I could click the shutter.

Total number of species trapped/seen in the garden 2009-2011 = 100 (finally reached a century!)

Total number of species trapped/seen this year = 4

Total number of individual moths trapped/seen this year = 4

Took another photo of the Super Moon as it is actually the Full Moon tonight although it doesn't look a lot different from last night's photo!

Moths, Super Moon and Goldcrest

With a minimum temperature of -2.1 degrees centigrade and one night off a full moon, I didn't expect to catch any moths in the trap last night! But when I checked it this morning there were 3! A Dotted Border and two Quakers - I will do a full report later when I've attempted a few photographs and identified which Quaker species.

Tonight the full moon will apppear 14% bigger and 30% brighter than usual as it is in the perigee stage of its elliptical orbit meaning it will come ~50,000 kilometres closer to Earth than when it is on the apogee side of the orbit.

Below is a photo of the Super "Perigee Moon" that I took last night from the garden.




There seems to be a lot of blossom appearing locally - photo of robin I took yesterday in amongst apple blossom in a neighbour's garden.



I saw my first buff-tailed bumble bee of the year in the garden last week on the 17th.

Yesterday I spotted a small bird foraging in one of the silver birches - I thought at first it was a redpoll or even a siskin but once I got a view through the binoculars it was a goldcrest - my first sighting this year and also an addition to the year garden bird list which now stands at 23 species. In fact, it has returned this morning in exactly the same birch tree. Below a very, very poor record shot of the bird - if you click on it to enlarge you might just be able to make out the gold crest!!