Voralpen

I feel I should probably rename the blog 'what I did on my holidays' or somesuch nonsense. The winter has been long and wholly lacking in inspiration, the spring has sprung equally uninspiringly and summer once again arrived. Time to get out of this country and see what else there is in this world. So we - temporarily - 'Brexited' (bleagh!) and a couple of hours after leaving Bristol found ourselves in the sizzling sunshine of the foothills of the Alps, on the edge of a small town called Bad Kohlgrub.


The scenery from our holiday flat was suitably grand - traces of snow on the distant mountains, rich green conifer forests on the neighbouring slopes and flower-bedecked hay meadows right outside - more on those later. The air was ringing with the songs of crickets and the mellow clonks of the cow-bells. More on these sounds in a later post.

Looking east across the Murnauer Moos (a whacking great valley bog, not a large deer) to the Alps

For the girls, the best point of all was that the railway line between Oberammergau and Murnau ran just below the house, so the hourly train was visible from the neighbouring bench or the edge of the balcony - not only that, but the existence of an unguarded level crossing just down-line meant that the uphill train had the decency to announce itself with a short blast on the horn a minute or two before passing, leading to wild cries of "Zug! Zug!" and an undignified scramble for the nearest viewing point, often up an unsuspecting parent.

We started out on the Sunday morning, not unreasonably, with some exploration of the immediate surroundings. The day had begun with a pair of Spotted Flycatchers zipping and twirling around the balcony catching sundry unfortunate flies, whilst a Black Redstart scratched out his song on the neighbour's satellite dish rim. A Cuckoo threw in a few exploratory notes just to emphasise the fact that we were no longer at home.

We took a walk along the road to see what the immediate surrounds had in store for us - it proved to be flowers. And what flowers! The hay-meadow just along the road was spectacular: a riot of buttercups, dandelions, Goat's-beard, Red Clover, Yellow-rattle and Marsh Hawk's-beard, spattered with Spreading Bellflower and Broad-leaved Marsh Orchid. Getting past that initial impression took a little while, but was worth it: below and between the immediate eyecatchers were Horseshoe-vetch, Yellow Rock-rose, Ragged-robin, Fairy-flax, Shrubby Tormentil, Kidney-vetch, thyme, Germander Speedwell, Hedge Bedstraw, Lady's Bedstraw, Oxe-eye Daisy, Chalk Milkwort, Thyme Broomrape, Salad-burnet and much, much more. That's without even mentioning the grasses, the sedges, the spike-rushes... We definitely weren't in England any more.

Lissa realising she has the wrong colour clothes on to blend with her surroundings. Yellow is by far the order of the day. In the background is the Hoernle... more below

After some parental brain burn-out (too many plants!), we split up: Na to take Lissa to the flat for her lunchtime nap, Bina and I to head off along a little loop around the back of the farm and see what else we can see. The flora proved equally diverse and interesting: wet field-edges garlanded with the salmon-pink bells of Water Avens, a dry bank with spreading mats of Mouse-ear Hawkweed and thyme, punctured with Heath Sedge and a solitary frond of Moonwort, a spring-head hazed purple with the spears of marsh-orchids.

Moonwort - Botrychium lunaria

Water Avens - Geum rivale

The afternoon was spent on the local hill: the Hoernle. We decided to brave the chairlift to take the effort out of the ascent. It certainly made our journey easier, though trying to pin down a wriggling two-year-old who's bored with the journey and wants to get off now, thankyou - never mind the drop, offers challenges of its own.

We were greeted at the top by a brisk breeze several degrees cooler than the valley below (to the surprise of the children), a neat welcome mat of One-flowered Fleabane and Spring Gentian, and a dramatic view across to the snowy summit of the highest peak in Germany, the Zugspitze. Underfoot were exotica like Hybrid Buttercup, Anemone-leaved Buttercup (cruelly white-flowered, so not offering a clue as to whether one might like butter), Monk's-rhubarb and bewilderingly foreign-looking dandelions - the latter offering some comforting sips to a majestic Swallowtail butterfly.

Spring Gentian - Gentiana verna

Alpine - or Purple - Coltsfoot - Homogyne alpina

Who cares about the view of the mountains...

...when this is clambering over your seat!

The lure of a refreshing Johannisbeerschorle got the better of us all, so we repaired to the conveniently-located Gasthaus, where we could shelter from the wind, sip our drinks and admire Nutcrackers - the bird, not the implement - at point-blank range. Almost cheating to see such goodies with such ease, but take 'em where you find 'em.

Bina's working her way through the European corvidae: just Alpine Chough and Siberian Jay to go now...

Just don't look down, whatever you do...

Small is beautiful

Having a small person in the house now means that some things have changed radically. Our time outdoors is constrained by sleep patterns (to some degree) and time spent with the camera is now precious. That said, the recent spell of (whisper it) fine weather here has given me an opportunity to get out into the garden and appreciate what's lurking in the vegetation there.

Some background... when we moved in, the back garden was effectively a wasteland only recently reclaimed from a seething mass of bramble, with a small patch of dog-fouled perennial rye grass at the bottom. We began by digging out bramble roots and pulling up ash seedlings which sprout like weeds in this area, but aren't really suited to a tiny garden, and mulled over the possibilities inherent in the grass patch. I hesitate to call it a lawn... Both being of a somewhat wildlife-friendly bent, we decided that chucking a bit of species-rich hay around might be quite fun, so we asked a friend of ours for a couple of bags of hay next time he cut his patch - and duly got about 15 sacks of clippings (thanks David!!). We raked over the rye-grass until there were some sizable bare patches amongst it, strewed the clippings, and jumped up and down on them for a while, just to make sure.

The next spring, we began to see the fruits of our labours - well, the flowers. Germander Speedwell, Ribwort Plantain, Meadow Buttercup, Sweet Vernal-grass all came up with some vigour, and a handful of Yellow-rattle plants emerged too, to our pleasure. In the autumn we repeated the grass-strewing over the bare patches, and were rewarded with Centaury, Common Knapweed and Bird's-foot Trefoil joining the party.

This year I've noticed that we seem to have an abundance of invertebrates, when compared with my memories of previous years. OK, last year was nothing to shout about for most wildlife (except bryophytes and molluscs, perhaps) but this spring hasn't exactly been brilliant weather either. However, looking over the back garden now during a sunny spell and the air is full of a myriad shining wings - mainly small hoverflies and other flies. This intrigued me, so I thought I'd take the camera out and have a look... and what's pictured below might not yet be identified - and indeed may not be identifiable - but it gives a flavour of what's going on in the garden.

One of a number of slender hoverflies which cruises the garden - this one a rather black/bottle-green animal.

A small, yet perfectly-formed longhorn beetle of some description, working its way over the raspberries (the raspberry canes have proved to be a fertile hunting ground for photos this year - nearly as good as the hazel-honeysuckle tangle nearby). Edit: thanks to Tim Worfolk, below, a name: Pogonocherus hispidus

One of the flesh-flies, as far as I can tell. Edit: TW suggests perhaps Graphomyia sp (Muscid)

Leaf-mining flies (Liriomyza sp.) doing their stuff on the comfrey. Perhaps not identifiable to species, but they bear a passing resemblance to L. pusilla - and as the name suggests, they're small! About 2mm long, snout to tail-tip.

A more conventional hoverfly, brilliant in black and yellow. Edit: Eupiodes c.f. luniger is suggested

A tiny teardrop-shaped spider which feasts on aphids. Go to it...

Yet another fly - there is a startling diversity in the garden... Edit: this one appears to be perhaps Beris c.f. chalybata, a Stratiomyid fly.

A solitary bee, one of the Andrena species. This one seems to have a particular liking for our dandelions.

Apropos of which, dandelion clocks too are worth a closer look. Their geometry is pleasing when the clocks are whole...

...and there is also beauty to be found in the detail of the seeds when they are exposed.

Even plain old Ribwort Plantain takes on a new dimension at this scale: I hadn't realised that the anthers seem to be swollen bags of pollen. These release their pollen on the wind, but if you see them on a still day when the rain is falling gently, you can see little puffs of pollen clouding up, for all the world like miniature cannon-smoke drifting across the grass...

Another small fly which enjoys hanging out around the honeysuckle growing through the hazel. Notable particularly for its antennae... Edit: Dolichopodid fly: Syntormon sp.

A scorpion-fly, I think. Edit: an Empid of some species - anyone feel like raising the bar?!

Micropterix calthella - a tiny micro-moth, about 4-5mm long, which has decided our raspberry canes make a great place to lure in some of the opposite sex. They spend a lot of time wandering up and down their few cms of stalk, waving their antennae around, looking left and right and occasionally scrapping over the right to use a particularly choice spot.

Another hoverfly, this one with powder-blue markings on the dorsal side of the abdomen, and a rich ochre stripe along the sides. Edit: Platycheirus sp. (female); thanks to 'Ophrys' on i-spot for that one.

Final edit: Many thanks indeed to Tim Worfolk (two bird theory blog - visit: it's great!) and 'Ophrys' on I-Spot for their help with identifications so far...