Main Menu

Tip jar

If you like CaB and wish to support it, you can use PayPal or KoFi. Thank you, and I hope you continue to enjoy the site - Neil.

Buy Me a Coffee at ko-fi.com

Support CaB

Recent

Welcome to Cook'd and Bomb'd. Please login or sign up.

March 29, 2024, 12:44:00 PM

Login with username, password and session length

Wildlife spotting

Started by Twit 2, August 06, 2018, 12:59:58 PM

Previous topic - Next topic

Buelligan

Saw a glow worm last night.  Just glowing yellow-green there in the hot dark oleanders, cicadas endless song and the sad waning moon washing down on all us sinners.

Blue Jam

Quote from: BlodwynPig on July 07, 2020, 03:20:43 PM
Got a message from the BTO about the dead swan

The dead swans lay in the stagnant pool.
They lay. They rotted. They turned
Around occasionally.
Bits of flesh dropped off them from
Time to time.
And sank into the pool's mire.
They also smelt a great deal.

dissolute ocelot

Saw a grey squirrel try and fail to climb a 30 foot sandstone cliff at the weekend. It got about 20 foot up with a little help from nearby trees, then fell with a colossal thud into somebody's private yard full of rusty tools and boat parts, so I couldn't see where it ended up. I'd like to think that squirrels can land as nimbly as cats, but this one seemed to land as nimbly (and loudly) as the scrap metal it's probably now attached to.

Twit 2

Quote from: Buelligan on July 13, 2020, 08:25:31 AM
Saw a glow worm last night.  Just glowing yellow-green there in the hot dark oleanders, cicadas endless song and the sad waning moon washing down on all us sinners.

Was one of my glow-in-the-dark nipple tassels, sorry.

Spoon of Ploff

Went for a walk in the Berrygrove woods on Sunday morning. Came across a Roe deer, who scarpered before I could get m'phone out. I wandered about for a bit hoping I'd come across it again, but instead spotted a fox walking toward me. You can witness its double take when it finally saw me here: https://youtu.be/_1FOI3AVgYg.

It was a good day for butterflies as well... gangs of Peacocks on the Buddleias, and five or six Red Admirals setting up shop on a damaged oak tree, they seemed to be dining out on the sap that was leaking in one or two places ... if that's a thing they do, I dunno.

BlodwynPig

The swan mystery takes a twist

Today I returned after 1 day off and noticed a new pile of feathers. in fact, it was deja vu to two weeks ago...like I had gone back in time. Except instead of a carcass there was a bone and an intact wing. This is odd. I initially thought the predator had brought back the wing and bones and was eating out in the open. But would the wing be still intact after 2 weeks? What about the feathers scattered around the place? The old carcass had disappeared and I only found the foot in the hedgerow, assuming the rest had been dragged off into a den somewhere.

The other swan is still alive and I'm more convinced its a female.

So, could this be an intruder female who killed the first mother and scared the father off? The father returned and was subsequently killed?

Odd.

bgmnts

Sounds like a job for Columbo!

Wood pigeons opposite my balcony continued the nest building today, its good watching. They abandon it in the evening and go to another tree to sleep I suppose.

BlodwynPig

Quote from: bgmnts on July 14, 2020, 06:45:37 PM
Sounds like a job for Columbo!

Wood pigeons opposite my balcony continued the nest building today, its good watching. They abandon it in the evening and go to another tree to sleep I suppose.

I've called John (Nettles)

bgmnts

Get in.

Has anyone done one of these:

https://www.wildfooduk.com/foraging-trips/

Sounds like a nerdy as fuck but interesting day out.

king_tubby

I've done a morning with a local version of that. My take was just because you can eat weeds and trees you've foraged, doesn't mean you should.

I expect a mushroom one on the autumn would be good though.

Buelligan

Be careful on the mushroom one, friend of a friend went on one and had to have a liver transplant.  Not really worth it.

I also took some smallish children mushroom hunting.  Found some nice edibles.  Cooked them together but one child didn't fancy so she had a plain omelette.  That night, she had the most terrible stomach pain and I was glad as fuck she'd had no 'shrooms.  Bit like your thoughts on the eating weeds and trees, I think.

gib

saw a bunch of ragworts yesterday all covered in cinnabar caterpillars

paruses

Quote from: Buelligan on July 15, 2020, 10:36:25 AM
Be careful on the mushroom one, friend of a friend went on one and had to have a liver transplant.  Not really worth it.

I also took some smallish children mushroom hunting.  Found some nice edibles.  Cooked them together but one child didn't fancy so she had a plain omelette.  That night, she had the most terrible stomach pain and I was glad as fuck she'd had no 'shrooms.  Bit like your thoughts on the eating weeds and trees, I think.

Yes quite. I love the idea of a mushroom course but am so wary. Even specialists get caught out - I remember reading about one who made an error and ended up liquified internally. I have  Eastern European friends who have grown up gathering them (now well into their 50s)  and they leave anything they have the slightest doubt about (or whatever is several degrees below "slightest").

Loads of magic mushrooms where I live but don't quite have the confidence to have them as another revenue stream.

I did a foraging course several years ago with a bit of an oddball down in Dorset or Devon or somewhere. Was enjoyable but I haven't put much into practice. Alexanders are very nice though. But even with plants I am surprised how deadly stuff looks much like edible stuff - Lords and Ladies vs wild garlic for example.

Buelligan

On plants I'm sound as a pound, I've spent my whole life reading and thinking about them, reached a small understanding.  The other day, I was walking on the mountain when I came across some rather lovely tall leguminous vetch-like lads, beautiful composite pale mauve pea flower tassels, one sniff and I knew.  Purest licorice, Glycyrrhiza glabra.  These are the joys.

ZoyzaSorris

Quote from: king_tubby on July 15, 2020, 08:45:48 AM
I've done a morning with a local version of that. My take was just because you can eat weeds and trees you've foraged, doesn't mean you should.

I expect a mushroom one on the autumn would be good though.

Always interesting though, but yes, there's a reason we have bred plants to within an inch of their lives to be more appealing to eat. Don't know if it has been a good thing for our health for everything to be sweeter, less fibrous, bloated sacs of things compared with their wild forebears but there's no going back now without the loss of 99.9% of the population, it would take a lot of bulrush rhizomes to feed the UK.

gib

Quote from: gib on July 15, 2020, 10:49:05 AM
saw a bunch of ragworts yesterday all covered in cinnabar caterpillars

went back the next day to get you lot a photo


gib

and saw one of these ichneumons trying to fill them with wasp eggs

this one isn't my photo but is exactly what i saw




BlodwynPig

Biters and stingers were out in full force yesterday. Big welt in my lower leg and it was numb until about 4am this morning.

Spoon of Ploff

Quote from: gib on July 17, 2020, 12:58:08 PM
went back the next day to get you lot a photo



Thanks! There's a lot of these in the fields near me. I'll keep an eye out for those wasp muthas.

Attila

We have identified three different fox kits that visit the hedgehog party palace of a night anymore -- a scruffy big boy, a medium sized girl, and a girl about the size of a housecat. Still youths, as they have the big white pompom on their tails.

Loads of juvenile hedgehogs bopping around all night, as well.

There are so many in and out all night it's really surprising we don't hear them clattering around the crockery or the kits barking.

Brian Freeze

Flying ant day here today. Loads of birds getting well fed, spiders too.


tao of wub

I have been going into some nearby woods everyday since lockdown and have managed to see some good wildlife.  Always loads of deer, muntjac, butterflies and on a couple of occasions badgers.  Butterlies love weeds and wildflowers.

During the hot weather it was amazing and there was hardly any noise pollution from planes and road traffic.  I like to pretend I am visiting an alien planet, before I get brought back down literally to Earth.






BlodwynPig

Back to the big lake (big waters) after a few weeks away and the place is a travesty. All the swans now gone and the water stinks. I saw a group of kids drinking Budweiser on the small pier (which is off limits now due to it collapsing) and as I passed them heard two loud splashes. Turned around to see Budweiser bottles floating in the lake. I had a massive go at them..I'm fed up of this shit. An older guy on a bike passed by and he stopped to listen to my rant. The kids were arguing about their freedoms to do what the fuck they liked and I tried to appeal to their common sense "destroying your environment". In the end I left with them swearing at me but not before I saw the older guy say something to them and them all laughing. If I had a cheese wire that fucker wouldn't have legs now - the youths doing stupid things is nothing new, but this fucker...boiled my blood.

Twit 2

Right that's it, this ain't a wildlife thread any more, that's FINITO. We're gonna get that old cunt scumbag and those two scrots. You mention cheese wire like it's a joke HAHA, but I've got the cheese-wire, I've got it all. You and me we're doing this Falling Down style—they were the final straw and I've got the bloke on the bike's LinkedIn. We'll go round there: me, you and the cheese-wire, coupla three building buckets, have his by-Christ ankles off! Cauterise with an out-of-order hand dryer ripped from a Hexham bog. Bury him the bottom of a lake like Grendel's mother, the bitch.

bgmnts

God imagine being that older gent. Grim.

Twonty Gostelow

Quote from: tao of wub on July 18, 2020, 12:08:35 PM

How far away were you? It doesn't look like there's a lot of zoom.

BlodwynPig

Quote from: Twit 2 on July 18, 2020, 11:10:39 PM
Right that's it, this ain't a wildlife thread any more, that's FINITO. We're gonna get that old cunt scumbag and those two scrots. You mention cheese wire like it's a joke HAHA, but I've got the cheese-wire, I've got it all. You and me we're doing this Falling Down style—they were the final straw and I've got the bloke on the bike's LinkedIn. We'll go round there: me, you and the cheese-wire, coupla three building buckets, have his by-Christ ankles off! Cauterise with an out-of-order hand dryer ripped from a Hexham bog. Bury him the bottom of a lake like Grendel's mother, the bitch.

First time in my life someone has sided with me. Thank you. I'm off out now to with a machete to give them a fright.

Blue Jam

Shame the swans weren't around to BREAK THEIR ARMS.

I'll send in those big hardcase Embra swan parents. And a few bastard hard Embra cuntbeaks. You wouldn't mess with them, they'd throw those Budweiser bottles right back at you.

Blue Jam

Juvenile cuntbeak being a lazy fucker:




Blue Jam