This is some of the not inconsiderable quantity of frog spawn that has appeared in my little wildlife garden pond during early March 2012. Meanwhile I’ve been rushing around all over Gloucestershire during past few days, transferring seemingly endless bucketfuls of both Frog and Toad spawn from (so far) eleven assorted large puddles and various sized natural ponds which, in normal years, are relatively full of water and which tend to remain so throughout the spring and well into the…

Finally, this woodland-based and very poisonous member of the Spurge family has begun to flower (I took these shots on the 12th April, 2010 in Gloucestershire). However, Dog’s Mercury needs to flower long before the leaf canopy fully appears in Spring (preferably sometime in February), leaving the woodland floor in comparative darkness, but it’s very late this year, probably as a result of the severe cold weather and heavy falls of snow that affected the entire UK in January and…

I’m very reluctant to even approach the nest-box that White-Wing and White-Eye have claimed as their own, at least when the birds are anywhere in the vicinity. The problem is, that White-Wing (the female) is a relatively new bird to my garden and isn’t really all that used to me yet. However, I did manage to get this shot of her earlier today as she sat on the four eggs that I caught a sneak look at a couple of days ago.

….and during which time I spotted my first Swallow of 2010 ( 25th March), as it flew roughly northwards following the course of an old disused railway line, I heard my first Chiff-Chaff (24th March), glimpsed a Stoat enduringly (and somewhat mystifyingly) regaled in its full ermine finery (*!) (23rd March) and managed to watch at least a dozen old black and white movies on DVD, including such exquisite Ealing Studios comedy gems as, “Home and Away” (Jack Warner),…

An extraordinary little drama played itself out in front of my eyes in the middle of a Gloucestershire woodland yesterday (20th May, 2010). Maddy was with me and I called her across to bear witness to the event…. It was a very warm, but very humid day (more like a day in late July in fact, than one in late Spring). Wood Ants were everywhere, going about their business in that very determined way that they always seem to display. Then I happened to glance down at the ground and noticed the…

Strange to think that, had I been standing in this exact spot little more than a month ago, my head would have just about been under water, but now, with Spring fully underway, the water has receded and the river banks are, once again, bursting into life!

“Ring around the Moon, rain around the corner” is an age-old country saying that predicts predominantly wet weather for the next day or two. In fact, the halo effect is most commonly observed when it appears to be encircling a full Moon (as above) and is caused by Moonlight passing through a build-up of moisture suspended in the Earth’s atmosphere. Meanwhile, I more or less managed to capture the halo shown in the above photograph just after midnight on the 1st March using just…

I know I’ve talked at incredibly boring length about Alders further below, but hey, what the Heck! Grey Alders are renowned for their strong suckering root systems that soon produce an attractive habitat for a wide variety of wildlife species, each seeking to take full advantage of the forest of dense, fast-growing stems that soon appear above ground. Alders in general meanwhile, are frequently used as an aid to reclaim otherwise unproductive landscapes with relatively infertile soils,…

At this point, she became even more agitated and kept jumping up at me and even barked a couple of times. Then I saw the Fox lying under the hedge. It was motionless, but I told Tess to sit and stay while I checked it out because it looked as though it might still be alive. Sadly, however, it had died only shortly before we arrived on the scene. The body was still fairly warm and flexible, while the tongue was still moist and the eyes only slightly glazed.