Saturday 19 April 2014

Extra high pressure

A second consecutive day of blue sky was a bit unexpected: the forecast was cloudy with showers! I think I remember that in the olden days (pre-warming) we could rely on weather forecasts for about a week ahead. Nowadays, it seems they can't even get it right for the next 24 hours. I rather suspect the computer models that they use to make forecasts no longer work now that we have warming.

Still, making hay.....

I went down to the local river, where Wild Garlic and Bluebells make the first appearance. A few heads of garlic were in evidence:

Flowers of Wild Garlic - Allium ursinum

And a single Bluebell plant had started to open:

Bluebell flowers just opening
 I also caught a few shots of hoverflies. First of the smaller species is usually Melanostoma scalare:

The hoverfly Melanostoma scalare (male)
I always think that if you were hoverfly-sized, then a flower must be a wonderful place to explore, rest and feed.

Syrphus hoverfly species are a little bit earlier this year:

Syrphus sp. hoverfly (female)

There were a great many craneflies in the air. This female (long, pointed abdomen) stopped long enough for a shot:

Female Cranefly

The larvae of craneflies are the 'leatherjackets' that eat the roots of grasses and make empty patches on lawns.

As I'm writing this, we appear to be heading for a third consecutive day of blue sky, so I'm off out again.

3 comments:

Amanda Peters said...

It's great to be out in the sun, plants growing so fast, at the park were I record most of my things it can change daily if we have had a bit of sun, Bluebells slowly comming out, people who I follow down south, seem to be well in frount.

Crafty Green Poet said...

lovely photos, specially the wild garlic.

Weaver of Grass said you might be able to identify the mosses in this blog post of mine: http://craftygreenpoet.blogspot.co.uk/2014/04/moss.html.

Crafty Green Poet said...

thanks for visiting my blog and helping with the moss id!