Richard Bell's nature sketchbook since 1998
Curled dock, Rumex crispus, growing at the edge of the car park at Newmillerdam, is a common weed of rough ground, farmland and the sea shore.
Nearby another weed of rough ground, hogweed, Heracleum sphondylium, was starting to unfurl its leaves from large, hairy sheathes.
Cuckoo flower grows at the edge of the pond and in our closely trimmed garden hedge there are a few small clusters of blossom.
Meadow buttercup, creeping buttercup and pendulous sedge in our back garden (plus one stray nettle leaf).
Garlic mustard and bracken in the clearing at the far end of the main car park at Newmillerdam. On our return journey via Seckar and Woolley Edge we saw lots of garlic mustard on the verges alongside bluebells and dandelions, growing beneath roadside oaks.
A group of these plants were growing on the riverbank and on a rubbly bank at the side of the riverside path behind industrial units. It looks like a relative of water avens but doesn’t have the drooping flowerheads of that species. Most of the flowers were yellowish green but some plants had flowers midway down the stem with magenta petals. A garden escape?
Next day we spotted this plant amongst the ferns at Brodsworth Hall and Gardens. It’s a Heuchera, a member of the saxifrage family from North America, so definitely a garden escape.
This opium (not Himalayan) poppy had seeded itself on one of the veg beds, so I’ve transferred it to my plants for pollinators bed and it seems to be settling in.
This foxglove rosette will be relocated too, when we put in the runner beans and dwarf French.
Butterbur and kingcups are in flower in a small stream or drainage ditch between the sewage works and the end Industrial Street at Horbury Junction. A fresh-looking peacock butterfly feeds on dandelions alongside the canal.
Hoof fungus, also known as tinder bracket, Fomes fomentarius, on silver birch and wood anemones at Newmillerdam this morning. I headed via the Arboretum, through Kings Wood, down into the Lawns Dike valley and up through Bullcliff Wood to the top end of the lake.
We planted a single cowslip four or five years ago which bunched up into a clump, so we’ve into four plants, which are all doing well in the raised bed behind the pond.
2 p.m., 20℃, 69℉ in the sun – cloudless: I cleared a square metre of what will be a wild flower and plants for pollinators bed, discarding the creeping buttercup and chicory but keeping the knapweed, dog daisy and teasel.
Woodpecker drumming, wood pigeon cooing. Coma and peacock butterflies basking.
The pulmonaria was self-sown. It did so well under the hedge that it started to encroach on the path, so we moved it to the pollinators’ bed.
A small, 1.5 cm approx., dark bumblebee with no obvious stripes visits the pulmonaria flowers, shadowed by a smaller, 1 cm, light brown bee, watching, hovering a few inches away, in fact acting like a drone in the modern sense, It then briefly pounces on the larger bee but is rebuffed after just a second.
The larger bee checks out another pulmonaria flower and the smaller bee pauses at a nearby flower, but doesn’t continue shadowing the larger bee.
I’m guessing this is a male, a drone, following a female.
Snake’s head fritillary, planted in sunken pots for its own protection against rampant chicory.
