Sunday 8 April 2018

From Rain to Sun

We had a lot of rain here over the Easter weekend. The river levels reached as high as I've ever seen them with one measure suggesting water levels reached as high as four feet (1.2 metres).


The river meanders across the footpath meaning that the path and the few trees either side of it were the only dry land for some distance. This probably explains why I managed to spot this bank vole right next to the path. 


Bank voles have a longer tail than other voles, usually some fifty percent of their length1. They live in burrows with multiple entrances and I saw this individual disappear into one of them. It's likely some of the other led into flood water so this vole was probably limited in where it could go. They are a common species and an important prey species for foxes, owls and other birds of prey. 

I think the rain probably triggered a large amount of sap to secrete out of a recently cut tree branch along one of the paths. 


The smell of the sap was really strong and it was attracted lots of invertebrates. In the photo above you can see a woodlouse feeding on it and there was a steady stream of ants coming to and fro to the sap. 


The wetter weather has also probably supported some of the fungi species I've seen this week. These golden globules on a fence post are fungi of the genus dacrymyces probably a common jellyspot.


These fungi often appear on fence posts and can be found at any time of year where there's wet weather2

I also spotted this witches butter fungus


This fungus gets its name from it's yellow colour though during wet weather it turns much darker as you can see. 

On Thursday the rain finally stopped and the first butterflies of the year emerged. 


This is a brimstone and I saw lots of these in flight on Thursday. Brimstones hibernate in the winter in ivy, holly and bramble and then re-emerge on warm spring days, though usually a few weeks earlier than this3.I also saw a handful of peacock butterflies which also hibernate over the winter4.

I was also pleased to see some more flowers emerging


This is lesser celandine, a woodland flower which is one of the first to flower- as you can see here, they provide a useful lifeline to insects when few others are in flower. 


This is a primrose which although I saw in the wild looks to me like a cultivated variety. Though primroses are often yellow it's also quite common to see them in this paler form. The name 'primrose' literally means 'first rose', indicating it's early flowering. 

Finally, here's a bird I stumbled on at a quiet patch of river, a little grebe


This bird is already in it's summer plumage. Little grebes eat fish like other grebes but as they are smaller only eat smaller fish, meaning they are distributed more widely. Though relatively common they can be difficult to see, especially at close range, because they are shy and normally dive under the water and resurface some distance away5. This individual tried to do that but it was still close enough for me to photograph when it emerged. 

1: Konig, Claus (1973). Mammals. Collins and Co. pp. 110-111

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