Wildlife – Page 4 – From Pyrenees to Pennines

Wild(ish) life in the city

Our day in Newcastle earlier this week wasn’t just about people-watching. We’d come to walk the banks of the Tyne, weaving back and forth over at least some of its seven bridges. Let’s take a bird’s eye view of the scenes we saw.

This is what those pigeons in the header photo were looking for.

This is the Tyne Bridge, with just beyond, the Sage Gateshead and the Baltic Centre.

This young herring gull was inspecting me as I inspected him. He was tucked behind a railing just beyond that first planter.

We wandered onto the Swing Bridge, which luckily didn’t want to open to allow river traffic through. Its elderly wooden jetties provided the perfect resting place for gangs of pigeons.

Then we walked down this walkway, for another view of the Millennium Bridge …

… but one of our views of the Sage was reflected in a nearby office window.

We didn’t really see any more wildlife. Unless this counts.

I’ll see if I’m allowed to sneak both the pigeons and the herring gull into I. J. Khanewala’s Bird of the Week.

‘Everybody loves to fly: but no one loves the fly’*

It’s true. Flies on the chopping board? Swat it now. Fruit flies crawling over the fruit bowl? Sluice them under the tap. Horse flies? Aaagh.

And yet we need them, those flies. Their larvae clean up after us – all that poo, all those dead bodies. The adults pollinate for us. They’re part of the cycle of life that we depend on.

I have not a single photo. Not one. So I’ve gone to Unsplash, a free-to-use stock photo site that I use a lot and recommend to you. Denzil’s Nature Photo Challenge is meant to be an opportunity for us to showcase our own images. But this time, I’ll showcase the works of others. They really make the case for a fly being a thing of beauty, as well as of use.

The photographers haven’t named their flies, so I’ve had to try. Corrections welcomed. We’ll start with the house fly:

Tobias Roth. The featured photo, also of a house fly, is by a Spaniard, Josep Plans.

Next, a sarcophaga, a flesh fly. I guess the clue is in the name.

And finally, a green bottle fly.

Pall Maroof

Birds in Black

To go with the dismal weather we are having here in Britain this July, Denzil’s Nature Photo Challenge #20 asks us to focus on black. Inevitably, most of my shots are of birds. Let’s go …

That cormorant spreading its wings at the end of the pier at Whitby is a shot I’ve shown before and will probably do so again. I’m quite fond of it, so I’ve made it my header shot.

These shags are from the Farne Islands, currently closed to the public during the devastating avian ‘flu outbreak.

… And this is also where we saw these guillemots.

Here’s a blackbird, silhouetted against the evening sky.

I can’t resist taking you to Studley Royal, where I spend so much time – as do the jackdaws who think they own the place. Maybe they’re as much clerical grey as black. Never mind. I wonder if this is the one that Sarah (Travel with Me) snapped in her own response to this challenge?

Let’s go into town for the next two shots: starlings gathering on the weather vane of my grandchildren’s school, and a tame raven in Knaresborough.

But I can’t let you go without a sweet treat. Here are some juicy blackberries.

And in fact, I still can’t let you go. Not till I’ve shared this crow presiding over a street in Berlin. Or he was when I was last there.

I have just counted. I have offered you ‘Five-and-twenty black birds’. But not baked in a pie. And not twenty four. (English nursery rhyme, non-UK readers!)

And I’m going to add the cormorant – or any other of my featured birds of your choice – to IJ Khanewala’s Bird of the Week challenge.

The Rat & Me

I’m - fairly - intelligent. Just like a rat.
Empathetic. Just like a rat.
I laugh when I’m tickled.  Just like a rat.
I need companionship. Just like a rat.
And I’m - usually - clean.  Just like a rat.
So why don’t I want to be … just like a rat?

For Rebecca at Fake Flamenco’s July 2023 Poetry Challenge.

My header image comes from Slyfox Photography at Unsplash, and my second, also from Unsplash, from Dave Alexander. Oddly, I have not a single image of a rat in my photo archive.

‘The busy bee has no time for sorrow’

The quotation that forms my title is by William Blake. I have no idea whether it’s true that bees have no time for sorrow, but it’s certainly the case that bees are busy. Yesterday, and unforgivably without even my phone as a camera, we saw – or rather heard at first – a brightly yellow hypericum thronged with bees, buzzing energetically, and hurrying round each flower, their pollen sacs already bulging bright and yellow. This YouTube video tells a similar tale:

My own photos come from a friend’s sunflowers …

… and from elsewhere in her garden, as a bee apparently all but drowns in pollen.

For Denzil’s Nature Photo Challenge #17: Bees

Portraits of two snails

It turns out that snails are not my specialist subject. Denzil’s Nature Photo Challenge #16 this week is all about these gastropod molluscs. And I have precisely two in my archive. The first one is my header photo. Here below is the second.

I’ve been walkabout with my camera, looking for more. But in these dry conditions – not a hope. Even the slugs have given up chewing every plant in sight.

And I can’t even name the snails I am showing you. Can anybody help?

The Call of the Chorus

I tend to wake up early in the morning. At this time of year, it’s no hardship at all, because I can lie in bed, listening to a concert like this …

These are moments of uncomplicated happiness. However, by now, almost mid-June, it’s tinged with sadness too, because I know that we’ve less than a month to go before this morning serenade quite simply … stops.

So when Rebecca gave us our monthly marching orders of a poem, one about about a bird in our part of the world, I knew I didn’t want to fall in line. I didn’t want to single out the blackbird, robin, thrush, chiff-chaff, wren … whatever. I wanted to celebrate them all – all those songbirds who contribute to this morning symphony of joy.

Dawn.
The sun creeps above the horizon …
Birds awaken.
Carolling, calling, crooning, chirping, chanting - 
a clamorous cacophony welcomes the day.

Cacophony is often seen as negative, as being a word for racket, dissonance, din. But for me there is no other word to describe the medley of sounds as dozens of local birds have their morning vocal work-out, defending their territory whilst raising a brood of chicks.

On of these mornings soon, before the chorus this year stops, I’ll get up, get organised and walk towards the sunrise, maybe one just like the one in my header photo, listening to those birds saluting the light.

Fake Flamenco: June 2023 Poetry Challenge

Hammad Rais’ Weekend Sky #104

Feeding time for the birds

I think the heron in the header photo has pretty much got breakfast sorted, don’t you? Some of our landlord’s goldfish are living their last moments.

Meanwhile, over at our local nature reserve, this egret’s just found something.

Another nature reserve: Slimbridge. Flamingos and a godwit look for their next snack.

And even if this sparrow hasn’t found any crumbs yet, she knows that a café is quite the place to look.

For Denzil’s Nature Photo Challenge #15: Birds feeding and drinking

And I’ll pop the hungry heron into IJ Khanewala’s Bird of the Week Challenge XIV too.

Why did the Greylags cross the road?

We don’t know. In the village, we have ponds on either side of the road, so why bother? I suspect they enjoy having every car, motorbike and lorry grind to a halt, allowing a small and patient queue of traffic to form in both directions. Sadly, I’ve always been just a little too far away to get a photo that properly represents the tailback.

Practising road-crossing skills on a footpath.

Our geese are less than popular here. Because of them, our mallard population’s efforts to breed come to nothing. So far this year, no duckling has survived longer than two days. I’m more hopeful for the moorhens.

The pavements are thick with goose droppings and hard to dodge, especially if you’re a toddler. The geese have spread from their traditional home down the road at Lightwater Valley, where there’s still room for them. On our smaller village ponds, they’ve chased away any of the quite large variety of ducks who used at least to call in for a while.

Looking around the area – generally, it seems that geese – generally – are out for World Domination. They’re tough enough not to be predated, and are fierce unfriendly neighbours. Does it look that way where you are ?

I’m getting in early for Brian’s Last on the Card. Just to make sure I don’t cheat and take any more photos this month, I’ll leave my phone behind, and not take my camera with me when I go out.

Last on the Card: May 2023

And also I J Khanewala’s Bird of the Week. This is a relatively new challenge- quite a few of you have great shots of birds – why not join in?

J’entends une chanson

For the past few weeks, days at home have been cheered by a very vocal thrush who starts his loquacious singing at round about ten to five in the morning, and continues with almost no time off for eating, drinking or rest until about two minutes to ten at night. Here he is, in the featured photo.

For the past few weeks, our small a cappella choir has included in its repertoire a 16th century French song, composed by the German Steurlein, celebrating this very thing. I suggested it, because it brought back memories of the choir I sang with in France. Some members have cut up a bit rough, complaining their French accent wasn’t up to the challenge. In the end, I gave in and wrote an English version. I promised them cheesy, schmaltzy doggerel and that’s what they’ve got. Still, it’s all quite jolly, so why don’t you sing along with the YouTube video?

Oh, can you hear the song bird who trills and sings for me?
His joyful notes are sounding from that far-distant tree.
He banishes the darkness, casts out my dreary dreams.
Oh, can you hear the song bird who trills and sings for me?

I wander in the garden, the birds are always near.
They're trilling, crooning, fluting, and singing loud and clear.
They sound the end of winter, and welcome in the spring.
I wander in the garden, the birds are always near.

Let's greet the start of springtime, the season of rebirth,
The birds and bees and flowers, all creatures on the earth.
We'll welcome all the sunshine, and bid goodbye to chill.
Let's greet the start of springtime, the season of rebirth.