After a pretty intense posting yesterday I thought I’d kick off with these two visitors who just turned up. On the left a hoverfly – Hyathropa florea sunning itself on the allotment. It’s a stocky creature that’s probably one of the fruits of the rush to build ponds on the site. It emerges from a rat tailed maggot – not a pretty sight! – which lives in the dank and smelly shallows of untended ponds and wet places. The other slightly more glamorous visitor is a Jersey Tiger moth that settled on our window this morning. One of its favourite food plants is hemp agrimony which we have large drifts of, growing on the river bank.
I wish those two observations made me as clever as I possibly sounded. In truth the combination of the Pixel 3 phone and a wifi connection for the Google Lens app does a lot of the heavy lifting for me. It’s by no means infallible, so I need to check nearly everything against the print guides but it often leads me to the correct page, and the more it’s used the more accurate it becomes. The database must now be absolutely gigantic, and that should make plant id’s available and less daunting – which can only be a good thing for citizen science. Let’s not be sniffy about it people!
Yesterday, at last, we made our way up to Alexandra Park, a tremendous viewpoint overlooking Bath
We’d been woken early in the morning by a tremendous thumping bass note that sounded as if it was emerging from a car parked outside. Sadly the truth is that an illegal rave had put 3000 people on to a very quiet and very species rich disused airfield to the north and east, just about four miles on from the top right hand of the photo. The police were unable safely to intervene until mid-day yesterday. Quite aside from the damage to the site, these huge gatherings can become centres of infection – superspreaders, and I’m sure that many young people think they’re immune. They’re not of course.
But from the top of Alexandra Park, we also has a lovely view looking down on to Bathampton Fields – the grassy triangle at the centre. We are so lucky to live in the midst of this environment. It’s easy to slp into the lazy assumption that all the good things are somewhere else – usually somewhere exotic – and yet the little patch of land in the photo has everything to offer and it’s barely fifteen minutes walk from home. There are more natural riches within walking distance than you could shake a stick at, and certainly enough to discover and learn an impressive number of plants, invertebrates and birds.
And finally, to cap a lovely day, my borrowed microscope arrived, along with an invitation to try my hand at making a video about botany on the wrong side of the tracks – a sort of ‘really rough guide to the botanical thugs, chancers and parasites that share our habitat here’. (How’s that for a working title J – ?) The microscope came from the same person that asked me to make the video – oh my goodness now I’m indebted over my head! I can’t begin to express how much difference a stereo microscope makes to plant identification. I have a strange relationship with new technology and often I have to leave it on the desk untouched for a week or so until I’ve rubbed some of my scent on to it and it doesn’t feel strange any more. Not so this time . It’s a thing of beauty and it works. The sense of three dimensionality, the ability to look around the subject is really wonderful, I’m quite besotted; and – I’ve been thinking about adding some videos to the blog for ages so this has given me just the shove I needed.
