Bramley Bimble – 4th May 14

I took my whole family on my rounds of Bramley last weekend. The kids as usual had fun climbing, wobbling and generally getting muddy.

This was the first time that Alison was able to come on my rounds and she was keen to explore the village wildlife in more detail.

I took a short video of the walk which I titled Happy finds and sad finds.

A few new flowers made an appearance this week.

I particularly like the bottom right picture. You can actually see the the probiscus of the fly. Not bad for a little phone camera.

The moth was found in a bowl of water by my daughter Catherine and seemed to be recovering well as it dried its wings out. In the bottom picture you can just see a solitary bee emerging from its underground home.

The crab apple tree on my rounds is finally in leaf now. I will be recording the growth of the apples closely over the following months.

The yellow coltsfoot flowers (top left) have gone now and all that is left are the distinctive leaves and the beautuful puffy seed heads. Also the lungwort flowers have gone leaving only the distinctive white spotted leaves (top right).

At the bottom though I found that the orchids were still standing strong.

While we were looking for orchids Alison spotted a dead deer nearby. I couldn’t see any obvious cause of death but lying nearby were some deer leg bones recently stripped of flesh. As the deer (as you can see) still had all its legs I assume there must have been another dead deer nearby at some point as well.

It was nice to see the willow and oak finally coming through this week (left-hand pictures). The reedmace leaves seem nearly full grown now so I will be looking out for the stems and flower heads starting to appear.

Looking beautiful still were the bluebells.

Cheers

George