Is it June already? Where has all the time gone? Recently I heard of a study that "proved" that time went quicker as you got older. I may be mis-remembering the fine details (another symptom of age) but the basis of the study was to get people of different ages to count seconds. Older persons consistently counted quicker. QED. Time goes quicker as you get older. Or did I hear that on 1st April - I cannot recall!
Anyway to show support for most of our home nations's forthcoming participation in the European Championships (sorry Scotland) we assembled a football XI in the car park of Benthall Hall NT on what turned out to be a very pleasant day.
When we were all ready we ignored the car park vegetation and set off into the grounds of Hall.
There was very little about as we wandered through rough grassland and a small group of trees which contained one rather splendid oak that must be approaching the "veteran" stage if it is not there already.
An early spot was the hoverfly Helophilus pendulus.
Eventually we came to a large very well vegetated pool where we found swathes of a tall flower growing in the water. It was everywhere you looked. I had no idea what it was. Fortunately someone must have seen my quizzical expression as they told me it was Water violet.
"But it looks nothing like a violet".
"It's not a violet".
"Why call it a violet?".
etc.
It is a member of the Primrose family and is, so I have now found out, the county flower of Huntingdonshire.
We had progressed at different rates as we pursued our particular interests and were very spread out, so making sure we were still XI was quite tricky. At one stage I could only find nine.
Panic.
I searched here, I searched there, but not quite everywhere when I found a pole stuck in the ground with a net draped on it. A sign? sure enough, a little further on, I found the missing pair inspecting the flowers.
Time for lunch.
Refreshed we meandered on following the edge of the pool. The invertebrates had now realised that we may have emerged from winter and was out and about and thinking of love. The long-horned moth Nemophora deergella, whose males boast the longest antennae in British moths, was dancing about the bushes trying to attract mates whilst a pair of soldier beetles and green dock beetles got on with the business of creating the next generation.
We found a couple of large caterpillars low down in the vegetation. I believe the one in the photograth is the larva of The Drinker moth.
As we rounded the end of the elongate pool the grassland gave way to a large orchid-strewn wildflower meadow. That brought most of the group to a halt as they tried to separate the Southern marsh orchid from the Common spotted and the hybrids of the two.
Some of us crossed the meadow and explored the willow scrubbed grassland on the other side. In another splendid, but much younger, oak we found the mirid bug with one of the longest names in miridom - Dryophilocoris flavoquadrimaculatus.
Time was marching on so we started back towards the Hall. On the horizon we saw the power station chimney standing proud. How much longer will this and the cooling towers be a feature of our landscape?
Having returned to the car park and divested ourselves of kit and bags we had one more duty to perform - to sample the Hall's cafe.
I can report that the scones were excellent.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment
Please feel free to comment on this post...