nature notes

Your photos really make me nostalgic for our old UK house and the local area in autumn. I can just picture the wet grass and the other plants growing in it.

On the mushroom front, we used to go foraging quite frequently, but only for the obvious ones that we could easily identify like various forms of cepes, chanterelle and trompette de mort - we can recognise all of them, and they used to grow around and about in the old woodland. Some we would eat, and some we would dry to last the winter. We have very few mushrooms in this part of Portugal, its wet enough, but we don't have any decidous woodland. We do get something that looks like a St Georges mushroom in the Spring, in the garden, but I am suspicious!

Our mushroom book was a Roger Phillips guide. It has the immortal words 'edible but not tasty' which you can apply to most mushrooms apparently. It has passed into our language, for cooking experiments that don't quite work!
 
The Roger Phillips guide is a great book. The last time I tried Bootlace fungus it was definitely in the 'edible but not tasty' category but I didn't like the texture of Shitake at the time and now like them. Lots of untasty fungi are only really edible when young - like Birch Polypore which very quickly becomes as tough as an old boot.
One of my favourites for flavour is the Parasol - especially Wood Parasol which packs so much flavour punch it needs to be used sparingly. They do look superficially and worryingly like the white capped and mostly deadly Amanitas though. I once found a Parasol the size of a dinner plate!
The tastiest mushroom I ever had I dont remember the name of. It was growing amongst Birch on the West side of the Malverns. It had a perfect (beautiful dusty orange I think) button cap, white pores rather than gills and a fine black lacy patten on the stem (like fishnet stockings.) The book said edible and tasty and it seemed unmistakable so I went for it - it was like a cross between a button mushroom and a sweet chestnut - unbelievably good! Only ever found one of them. (which does make me think eating it might not have been the best idea - hopefully it wasn't genuinely rare!)
 
We get a lot of rooks here. They once carted off a two litre fat block that I'd put out for the birds. I hadn't expected it to disappear whole!!!
 
Rooks. Takes me back to an early childhood memory visiting my grandparents. Funny what sticks and what doesn’t.
Just one rookery here in the whole of the county. Love their calls. Much better than their relatives.
 
I love them too. I have lots of them around here. Lots of magpies too. I love to watch the crows on a windy day, just wheeling around in the sky. It always make me think they are just loving the joy of flight, and playing in the wind. Of course, there's likely some scientific reason why they do this, but it just looks like they are out to have some fun!
 
We’ve just been watching an incredible hunt by a male sparrow hawk. He quite often flashes through the garden and sometimes manages to pluck a small bird from our feeders, but recently he has taken to perching on the nearby shed, flying down, and walking around the base of the feeder. Of course when he’s there, all the little birds disappear. However, this morning he flew down to the base of a small shrub, a globe-shaped spirea about a metre high, right next to the base of the feeder, and kept on trying to get inside the closely-knit branches. He walked round and round and evidently thought there was a bird sheltering in there. Eventually he flew off and perched in the birch tree. Nothing happened, no small bird emerged, and he flew away.
Several minutes later, a sparrow cautiously flew out of the bush and hurried away to safety. Then another one followed - and another - and another - and in total we counted 8 little birds that had all been packed into the middle of the bush. It must have been terrifying for them.
At this time of year I normally prune the spirea to keep it the right size and shape, but hadn’t got round to it. I didn’t know sparrowhawks hunt like that, I imagined they always killed on the wing. What a pity we don’t have the video camera set up!
 
Gosh that's amazing Marigold. In one garden we had a big shrub rose next to the bird feeder and on one occasion in the winter I saw a sparrowhawk flying round and around it, eventually flying off. It was packed with small birds who had taken refuge in amongst the thicket of thorny stems.
That's why it's goof to site the feeders near bushes or shrubs where the smaller birds can take cover.
 
Margaid said:
That's why it's goof to site the feeders near bushes or shrubs where the smaller birds can take cover.
Click to expand...
Unless you want to feed sparrow hawks.
Not being fatuous. Whenever I kill cockerel chicks up to about 10 weeks I put their bodies out in the field. A neighbour was horrified by what he saw as callousness. However when I pointed out that crows, ravens, skuas and great black backed gull have babies to feed then he began to understand my point of view. After all dead chicks in plastic bags put out for the bin man benefits nothing.
Pea nuts, fat balls, sunflower seeds and dead chicks - it’s all the same.
 
We are lucky to have a rookery in the woods at the end of the garden. About 600 Rooks roost in it, it is the only recorded rookery in London. Plus it is also a roost for C800 Jackdaws, it is quite a sight at night and morning as they leave and arrive. I love the sociable nature of both species, they don't mind the Buzzards that use the wood either, whereas the crows go nuts when they see a bird of prey
 
Icemaiden said:
We get a lot of rooks here. They once carted off a two litre fat block that I'd put out for the birds. I hadn't expected it to disappear whole!!!
Click to expand...

:D Well, at least they appreciated it!
The rooks around here hang out with big flocks of Jackdaws which can be seen in the evening above the woods flying in 'murmurations' - not quite like starlings but similar. You can hear and see them a good mile away at least.
 
There is a famous Rook roost at Buckenham Marshes in Norfolk, about 80 thousand roost there, it is quite a spectacle, it even gets a mention in the Domesday book, which is quite amazing.
It is that time of year for OH, clear sunny mornings and the Wood Pigeons are on the move, 12, 273 on Saturday and 9,122 today all heading south just east of the Dartford Crossing, they aim for the big pylon known as the twin sisters which span the river Thames which you can see. Plus a shot of a load going over her head, lots of other stuff moving high south, finches and even a group of 3 Sparrowhawk. You can just make out in the left of the pic the cruise ship Astoria, one of many cruise ships berthed around the Tilbury area with nowhere to go
 

Attachments

  • IMG_0050.JPG
    IMG_0050.JPG
    43.9 KB · Views: 1,005
  • IMG_0054 (2).JPG
    IMG_0054 (2).JPG
    42.2 KB · Views: 1,005
How do you count flocks of wood pigeons? 12,273 on Saturday and 9,122 today sounds very precise. Are you sure you didn’t miss any, or count any of them twice? :-)02
I can manage flocks of geese flying over - just count one side of the V formation in twos, then X2.
 
The odd numbers are the tail end Charlie's. We basically do it by counting them in blocks, you do get quite good at estimating numbers funnily enough. The Wood Pigeons go over in quite big groups at times, and it is always a long line, smallest groups seem to be about 40, big ones can be from 100-1000 and smaller groups will turn and join a bigger group. One year which was particularly notable, we were getting 3-4 separate groups in the sky at once, the end totals bearing in mind the movement is from 7-9am and it stops numbered from 28-58 thousand.
geese are much more simple, bigger and fly in those nice lines. The only other way is to photograph it all and literally count every dot in the sky
 
If only you could sell that patience! You'd be richer than Rupert Murdock :o
 
Plus if you could bottle the patience whilst waiting for a rare bird to appear from deep within a bush. We could make a fortune.
14,305 Wood Pigeons this mornings total, in really big groups, obviously a big push to get themselves ahead of the rain belt. Two large flocks of Siskin and Redpoll as well, Chaffinches and Meadow Pipit.
One memorable autumn day we were on the Norfolk coast by Titchwell and witnessed 34 Short eared Owls come in across the North Sea, that was a once in a lifetime experience. Plus another day on the East coast near Lowestoft, when you have hundreds of winter thrushes flying over you and the bush next to you has over 50 Song Thrush in it, little Goldcrests landing on you then shooting off into the nearest bush. There are some amazing sights out there if you wrap up and watch
 
Neither did I. I constantly remain in delighted awe at all of your experiences and experience.
 
Hen-Gen said:
dinosaw said:
Never knew owls would travel in flocks.
Click to expand...
Or even parliaments.
Click to expand...

I had a wonderful book when I was at primary school called the New First Aid in English. It had all the collective nouns in it, proverbs, nonsense rhymes from Edward Lear and all sorts of interesting and useful stuff. It disappeared unfortunately - having asked me to leave my childhood books with her when I married, my mother had a clear out without telling me and I lost a lot of stuff I wanted to keep. :(
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Latest posts

Back
Top