Pictures of spring: Bovey Tracey

Comma butterfly. Presumably an overwintering adult - the forewings are looking a bit worn and faded, nectaring on Celandines next to the river Bovey.

River Bovey at Wilford Bridge, looking downstream into Parke.

Nice garden-escape anemone species (it grows in our garden too) amongst Celandines on the banks of the river Bovey

Green Alkanet

Magnolia, or: 'Spot the Robin'

Shining Cranesbill - a common hedgerow plant in this part of the world, but one which I really enjoy. The button-like shocking-pink flowers are outstanding amongst the vivid shining green leaves, and it somehow always looks fresh and clean, even in the height of summer.

Primroses and Celandines, splashing yellow along the foot of the hedges

Common Dog-violet, with Yarrow and Ivy-leaved Speedwell, injecting a tint of blue to the vegetation

Barren Strawberry growing amongst Yarrow on a dry bank

Honeybee on Grape-hyacinth in the garden. These flowers are absolutely heaving with honeybees at the moment, whilst the bumblebees seem to be concentrating on Rosemary flowers. The mass of tulips next to these Grape-hyacinths are attracting a large number of hoverflies and tiny beetles, all of which seem to be eating pollen. Nice to do the wildlife-watching the lazy way and sit on the doorstep!

Gratuitous picture of Sabina, to prove that she's doing very well, thankyou, and enjoying her second bird-ringing session on the moors. And that her sunhat's currently too big.

Spring is springing well and truly here in Devon. We've been up to our eyeballs and beyond in learning how to cope with an infant, and consequently not been out and about as much as once we would. Funny that.

Anyway, after a shockingly bad night's sleep, I left Na to sleep off her cold this afternoon and took young Sabina up through the woods to see what was happening in the world around us. After a bit of a cold snap over the past couple of days, it was nice to be out in warm weather. The birds have been triggered by the rising temperatures and longer days, so even though it was early afternoon the air was sweet with the songs of Blackbird, Robin, Mistle Thrush and Chaffinch, whilst Great and Blue Tits chucked in their two-pennorth (I just can't bring myself to describe their songs as 'sweet', though they're undeniably pleasant to hear).

Along the river we managed to find a  Dipper singing and feeding in the riffles, so spent some time enjoying the sight of him wading energetically into the water, ducking down to search for invertebrates, then shrugging under the surface for a moment, only to reappear close by - either bobbing along the stones in the same unhurried fashion, or, in the deeper patches, popping to the surface like a cork and swimming along for a brief moment before flying to a nearby rock.

Argh! Not another walk! Why do you do this to me?

The river Bovey at Parke

The floor of the woods is a rapidly burgeoning carpet of green, as Pignut, Celandine, Dog's-mercury and Primrose surge into leaf, with the arrowhead leaves of Cuckoo-pint emerging in glossy, spiky clumps here and there. You could generally be forgiven for wondering why they are called Arum maculatum, until every so often you come across an absolute beauty with deep purple blotches sprayed across the rich green gloss of the leaves. It won't be long before the flowers emerge with their pale greenish-white bracts hooding the flower-spike.

Pignut (feathery leaves), Wild Strawberry (trefoil leaves), Lesser Celandine (heart-shaped leaves) claiming the open soil for the early part of the season.

Beech trunk covered with mosses (mainly Hypnum andoi) and lichens

The bulk of the green in the ground layer is still found in the ferns and mosses though; it's still somewhat surprising to realise how many species are involved in a reasonably varied bit of woodland here: testament to the generally moist climate we live in here.

Primroses; a splash of delicate colour to welcome the warmer weather in.

Another of the species making up the carpet: Wild Garlic, or Ramsons

Cuckoo-pint deserving the name 'maculatum'

Red-flushed ivy leaves on a post along the old railway line

Polypody, one of the commoner ferns in this part of the world; but which species? Difficult without a microscope, but perhaps Polypodium interjectum and P. vulgare - or more likely a hybrid between the two!

Polypody doing a semi-passable impression of Hard Fern

Above the green field layer the Hazels are already flowering, sprays of catkins covering most of the trees, and the first of the young Sycamores and Elders are bursting into leaf. Above these shrubby trees, the canopy trees proper are still tightly bound into bud, and we spent a while looking at the various patterns and colours of the shoot tips (reassuring myself that I can still identify them in their dormant state!).

The old railway line through Parke, glowing in the afternoon sun with Dog's-mercury along the sides of the track.

Gulls, gulls, gulls

Gulls, gulls, gulls. Yesterday evening was an indulgence of mine, though many would consider it a penance. A friend organises an annual gull-count on the Exe, which attempts to keep tabs on the number of gulls using the river as a roost - they're not monitored in any other meaningful fashion here, unlike some other wetlands where the BTO's Wetland Bird Survey volunteers note the numbers each month. To be fair, the number of gulls present on the river in the daytime is a shadow of the numbers roosting overnight, so the WeBS counts would not be particularly representative. Anyhow, three of us gathered at the Topsham recreation ground to count the birds moving south down the river.

This is the gull-count view. Birds tend to mass over and behind the bridge in the background, before moving down the river at anything between 1 and 100m height.

The gulls tend to come downriver in a particular pattern. First of all, there are always a couple of hundred birds loafing around the river when we arrive; mainly Black-headed Gulls, with a smattering of Common and Herring Gulls here and there and perhaps the occasional Great Black-back. Looking upriver past the M5 road bridge which spans the floodplain, you can see a gathering mass of Black-headed Gulls floating and swirling around the Countess Wear sewage works. The first flocks of Black-headeds start to make their way purposefully down past us, initially twenties and thirties, but soon building to a constant stream of birds. The first birds come through low down, perhaps 10-20m above the water, but the bulk of them drop down from somewhere above 100m height, slight black silhouettes against the evening's grey skies. Common Gulls are sprinkled sparingly throughout the flocks; it's tricky, but feasible, to pick out their slightly more rakish shape amongst the Black-headeds which are by now sleeting past us.


Eventually the Herring Gulls put in an appearance. At first just singles and twos amidst the smaller gulls, soon they are the bulk of the flight, many of them dropping down from even higher than the Black-headed Gulls. The numbers of Black-headed and Common Gulls dries up rapidly, leaving us with a stream of Herring Gulls floating down in gathering darkness until they too peter out. A last quarter hour of patience is rewarded with a late flock of about a hundred Black-headed Gulls suddenly hurtling past, bellies almost touching the water, and a couple of groups of Herring Gulls, necks stretched and calling as they sail past.

Spot the Common Gull.

So, limbs numbed with the lack of movement in a biting northwesterly wind, and brains slightly numbed with counting gulls past in fifteen-minute blocks, we end up with a total count that is - once again - slightly lower than the previous year. One day we'll perhaps be able to find out why the number of gulls roosting on the river is dropping, but for now we're happy to guess that it might be a combination of climatic changes across Europe, population declines of some species (especially Herring Gulls) and/or changes in food supply and availability in the catchment of the Exe.

Either the sun just came through below the cloud, or Haldon Forest has just been taken out with a tactical nuke. I favour the former personally, as though it does make counting tricky for a while, at least it means dinner will still happen.

Today (Sunday), for variety's sake we took a pleasant mid-day walk down the river Otter; Na, Sabina and myself. We started out from Budleigh Salterton and wandered upriver to the footbridge across the river, then back down the eastern bank. Despite the continued presence of the same stiff north-west wind as yesterday's gull count, the weather was pleasant enough to find an increasing presence of spring flowers: hazel catkins are out in some numbers - yellow tassels bobbing and flapping in the wind, spreading pollen on the air; Red Campion and Herb-robert shining pink-red from the longer vegetation on the side of the path; Hogweed and Cow-parsley taller still with white umbels swaying in the gusts; and a small patch of White Deadnettle by the river, with their hooded creamy-white flowers looking richly succulent amongst a spray of vivid green leaves.

White Deadnettle

The rivermouth was alive with gulls (sorry!) using the fresh water of the ebbing tide to bathe and drink. The vast majority were Herring and Black-headed Gulls, with a trio of Great Black-backed Gulls hulking in the middle and a solitary Common Gull floating serenely downriver on the breeze. Further upriver, whilst Sabina settled into her lunch, a Dipper was peacefully hunting the edge of the water, ducking into the water and pulling out what looked like water-snails, then calmly battering them on a handy rock before swallowing them. We ended the walk - throughout which Sabina remained resolutely asleep - with a coffee on the beach, relaxing out of the wind in the afternoon sunshine. Couldn't really be much better than this, I guess...

Sabina relaxes and blows some bubbles after a tiring day being carried around in her sling.

The afternoon sunshine, looking westwards along the coast towards Ladram Bay.

New year; fresh start

Another new experience at the start of the year to chalk up to life: we are now a family proper, with the arrival of a daughter (Sabina) on January 8th. It's been an interesting experience all round.

She was born at home at the ungodly hour of 3.30 a.m., which meant that all three of us slept in for quite a while on the Sunday morning. In common with the vast majority of newborn babies, she spends most of her time eating and sleeping, though she's already developing a short 'play' time in the afternoons, where she tends to lie around and wave her arms and stare intently at any moving objects in the room.

We've been out for a few walks as well - it's easy to feel a bit cabin-feverish when you're used to being out on a regular basis, so we've walked some undemanding local walks - Na's a little anaemic still, so we can't do too much yet. Fortunately Sabina sleeps readily when we go out, so she's fairly easy to please; although this means that she missed the Iceland Gull that we bumped into yesterday. Such is life...

She sleeps. A lot! I might post some more pictures when I have some with eyes open...