Moths (or Lack Of - Yet Again!) and Garden Birds

GMS Week 6

I put the moth trap out on Thursday night but, with a minimum temperature of minus 2.3 degrees centigrade and clear skies with a nearly Full Moon, I suppose I shouldn't have been surprised to find that for the second week running the moth trap was empty!

Garden Birds

The wren is still taking feathers into the hanging basket - it will be interesting to see if this nest location gets picked again this year. It was last used two years ago but last year the nest the male built in the ivy was used.

The male robin is still "courtship feeding" the female and the robin below has started to appear at the back door looking for mealworms whenever I go in the garage. I suspect it may be the very tame robin that used to feed from the hand because whenever he saw me in the kitchen or garage he used to appear close to the windows just like this bird has started to do. The photo was taken with the 14-42mm lens and, although it is cropped you can see how close, the bird was.




This morning we checked out the nestbox camera which links into the tv and one of the blue tits (the female?) has started taking in nesting material. Here's a very record shot of the action.



By teatime the bird had removed all the nesting material but this happened last year for weeks on end. Grass would be placed in the box daily and then regularly moved out until a few days before she began laying eggs when she completed the nest very quickly.

A Medieval Market Town

As we seem to be experiencing a "blackthorn winter"* at the moment (cold, rain/sleet and windy here again today) and I am not sure if I am going to be able to get out this week, I thought I'd publish a few (well, a lot!) of photos I took at the end of last week when I visited Henley in Arden.




Henley in Arden, Warwickshire, has a medieval one mile long High Street (classed as a Conservation Area) with buildings dating back 600 years. Over 150 buildings (don't worry I am not going to show you them all!) are listed as being of Special Architectural or Historic interest. Several lanes leading off the High Street, for example, Doctors Lane, Milking Lane, the Tanyard, are named after work that was once carried out there.




Joseph Hardy House, parts of which date back to 1345, now houses a Heritage Centre (on the right in the photo below) and Henley Ice Cream Parlour.



The Heritage Centre, run by an educational charity, is well worth a visit and has several exhibit rooms showing the town's history from the Norman Conquest to today.



The black and white building is named "The Old White Horse" - now a private residence but it was once a coaching inn.



The Baptist Church



The Nags Head



St John the Baptist Church dates from the fifteenth century. If you can make out the Barclays bank symbol this building was once the Rectory





The Bear and Ragged Staff

(I nearly didn't include this photo because I don't like to see a bear wearing chains)

Bears were used in heraldry to denote boldness and courage and the Bear and Ragged Staff emblem has been associated with the Earls of Warwick since the fourteenth century. The symbol was used by Robert Dudley, favourite of Queen Elizabeth I and today is used in the coat of arms of Warwickshire County Council.



The Guild Hall was once a residence of the Guild of Holy Trinity and St John - a religious order founded in the fourteenth century. It was restored in the early 20th century and today is where Henley's Court Leet takes place. This is an ancient medieval court, still active after 800 years, which primarily has a ceremonial role today.







The White Swan - a Sixteenth century coaching inn





The remains of a fifteenth century market cross (a Scheduled Ancient Monument) which was originally 17 feet tall. The original cross had a four sided head of religious symbols at the top. This is the site of the original town centre where news was proclaimed and it is still used for this purpose today.





George House - a timber framed building possibly 16th century and originally the George and Dragon Inn







Old market towns often have an interesting selection of shops











Some of the interesting house frontages





Henley Ice Cream Parlour a charming traditional tea room where Henley Ice Cream has been served since the 1930's. Today the icecreams are made on local farms using local produce and there are around 40 icecream flavours. Emily and I were here a few weeks back eating delicious cake followed by icecream - I do like my icecreams!







Just behind the High Street runs a stream and I found in the archives a photo of some mallard I took just after I had my camera a few years ago.




* Blackthorn Winter - a term used to describe a short spell of cold weather at the end of March which occurs when blackthorn is in flower.

Following in the Footsteps of an "Edwardian Lady" - Part 2

Further to my post in February when I wrote about looking for snowdrops at Packwood Hall following in the footsteps of Edith Holden in "The Country Diary of an Edwardian Lady", I decided last week to visit a few more places either associated with Edith Holden or visited by her in 1905/1906.

Edith Holden lived with her parents at a large house called Gowan Bank, Station Road, Kingswood between 1890 and 1897. At the time there were only a couple of buildings in Station Road - Kingswood Station and their house about 300 yards away. Things are very different today as the whole road is lined with houses. I did consider taking a photo of where she once lived but, on reflection, decided it was probably not the best of ideas!

Just round the corner from Gowan Bank is the Grand Union Canal and, bearing in mind the number of canalside walks she mentioned in her diaries, I am sure she would have walked along this particular canal.

Grand Union Canal, Kingswood




I found some Coltsfoot nearby - a species of flower she picked in March, 1906 and drew in her diaries.



In the "Country Diary" she mentioned cycling along the lanes around Bushwood on 31st March and here's a couple of views she would have seen although I doubt there would have been electricity pylons or power lines in 1906 and the fields would probably have been smaller forming more of a patchwork.






She writes of primroses and violets on the banks of fields and along the roadside, cowslips in bud, and celandines "making the ditches bright" and "strawberry-leafed cinquefoil spangling the banks".

I drove around the lanes near Rowington, Lowsonford and Bushwood and, although I couldn't spot any cinquefoil, primroses or violets, I did find celandines

Celandines






Dog's Mercury




Although she writes that she did not actually walk into Bush Wood on this particular visit, I parked the car and walked back along the land to see the wood which she regularly visited. Today I think it would be difficult to walk into and through the wood as there is a ditch and stream on one side of the road and a wire fence on the other and, although there are a couple of public footpaths, they only skirt the very edge of the wood.

Bush Wood


















It looks as though the wood will have a mass of wild garlic and bluebell flowers in a few weeks time.

When Edith wrote the "Country Diary" she was living in Olton, Solihull and she mentioned in Spring diary entries daffodil fields and violet woods but did not actually name the locations. I have had a look at the 1901 Ordnance Survey map and her house in Olton at the beginning of the twentieth century would have been surrounded by field and woods, copses and spinneys. I very much fear that today her daffodil fields and violet woods will have been covered by housing estates, shopping and business parks although a few woodland fragments do survive nearby.

The population of Solihull in 1901 was just 7,500, by the 1960's it had already swelled to over 100,000 and today it is around 205,000! To be fair to Solihull it does live up to its motto ""Urbs in Rure" (Town in Country) because it has many parks and greenspaces and there are trees absolutely everywhere even in and all round the town centre. However, I suspect that had Edith Holden been able to travel forward in time to 2012, she would not have recognised much of the area surrounding her house!

Speckled Wood

I saw my first Speckled Wood (Pararge aegeia) of the year in the garden this morning.

This species has a flight period from early April to mid October with 2 or 3 generations a year depending upon Summer temperatures.

Speckled Woods pass the Winter as either a caterpillar or chrysalis so this will be a newly emerged individual.






Males defend their territory vigorously by engaging in spiralling aerial "battles".

This species was originally called the "Enfield Eye" because it was found on Enfield Chase near London and then "Wood Argus" until the present name became popular.

Butterfly Species 2012 = 2