Leybourne and Salix city

Its all very difficult when you want to start to get to grips with the genus Salix. At Leybourne there is plenty of scope and there may be Salix alba, Salix fragilis, Salix caprea or Salix x reichardtii, Salix cinerea, and Salix viminalis, together with a large number of variants, cultivars and hybrids. I have suddenly remembered that there is a reference collection of Salix at the Sevenoaks Wildlife Reserve!

This is a suspected Salix cinerea ssp. oleifolia, but it will need checking and re-checking! I noticed one strium on the small section of last year's wood I remembered to collect.

Llyn Brenig

Off to Llyn Brenig reservoir, where there were good common wildflowers, very few birds, and not much at all in the way of insects!

I was very glad to see more Smooth Hawksbeard, Crepis capillaris, along the roadsides, having identified it at Bod Petrual yesterday. This is the Hawksbeard I have most commonly seen in the past I think, and is said to be the only common one with smooth rather hairless leaves and stems. The involucre by contrast with the rest of the plant, is rather bristly, as with most Hawksbeards! The first thing to note about Hawksbeards is the distinct double row of involucral bracts, the outer ones either adpressed or spreading.

NOTE - in retrospect I would have liked to be more careful with my ID, as I feel it is potentially easy to confuse with the Marsh Hawksbeard, Crepis paludosa, although I think that is even more bristly on the involucre. These two species are most easily separated in fruit, and the relatively short achenes that I picked out the following day, did appear slightly curved, suggesting the Smooth Hawksbeard, Crepis capillaris. The Marsh Hawksbeard, Crepis paludosa, together with the Beaked Hawksbeard, Crepis vesicaria, are two of the few other species that I am ever likely to come across in Wales - together with the largely introduced Rough Hawksbeard, Crepis biennis.

If I look further into these I really do need another excellent Loupe lens! However even I was able to see that this plant branched from near to the base, eliminating the Marsh Hawksbeard, Crepis paludosa, from consideration, which only branches half way up. Another fairly obvious feature was the adpressed second/outer row of involucral bracts, a feature I believe only shared between these two of the commoner species, so if it isn't paludosa, it really should be capillaris! The styles should be yellow rather than blackish-green. A further difference is that the pappus of capillaris is a flexible pure white, while that of paludosa is a brittle yellowish or brownish-white, rather like a member of the Hieracium genus, with which it seems intermediate. Much less clear was any orange tinging to the outer florets, which may or may not be a feature of this species, among others.

The flowers are about 1 - 1.5 cm in diameter, but can be as much as 2.5 cm across. The involucre is generally wider at the base than the middle. The stem leaves are small and lance-shaped, with few lobes, apart from the two spreading basal lobes, that seem to gradually develop. The BRC Plant Atlas points out that it is a ruderal, and morphologically variable. The basal leaves, while present should be much more greatly lobed than the stem leaves, almost filigree, but I didn't see any of these!

These are the upper stem leaves, with their arrow-shaped backward-pointing lobes at the base.

I can compare this plant with the one tentatively identified at Cliffe Pools on the 6th September 2014. The colouring of the outer florets appears different, and the degree of darkening of the bracts, but the stem is similarly channelled. Also noted on Warkworth Beach, 26th June, 2015. The degree of variation is extreme, making it "polymorphic"!

I have already eliminated the Northern Hawksbeard, Crepis mollis, from the possibles, as it has not been found in Clwyd since 2000, and in only one tetrad then. A perennial with a short rhizome, it has a longer, 20-ribbed achene. http://www.bsbi.org.uk/Crepis_mollis_species_account.pdf. Worth keeping an eye out for though!

Bod Petrual

A nice walk around this Forestry Commission site, with some buzzards seen, and three wrens heard. Some different passerine calls were heard overhead and in the trees, but nothing I could distinguish for sure, except one Great Spotted Woodpecker that flew over the path, calling.

The Hypericums along the pathside all had black streaky lines on the petals, which, despite the key to the genus in Francis Rose, makes them Hypericum maculatum, or perhaps possibly the hybrid Hypericum x desetangsii. I think I need to look lower down the stem for the square section, and most other things seem to fit, translucent veins but no spots in the leaves, no stalked black spots on the sepals, . However the sepals might seem to be not quite blunt enough, according to the BSBI crib sheet diagrams.

There were Spiny Sowthistle and one clump of Perennial Sowthistle, a Hawksbeard, Catsear, Common Birds-Foot Trefoil, Meadow Vetchling, Gorse, Lesser Spearwort, Creeping Buttercup, Field Buttercup, Upright Hedge Parsley, Bramble, Greater Sallow, Birch, Rowan. Lesser Knapweed was nearer the car park. 

A Screech Owl while bat monitoring

While Pam and I were doing the second bat walk of the year, we heard an unearthly screeching across the fields towards Golden Green. A moment later a dark shape flew over and I called out "owl". Pam's torch revealed a pale body and wings, and we had seen a Barn Owl. The old country name was "Screech Owl", although this was the term also used for Tawny Owls and Little Owls, at least in some parts of the country. The sharpest call is however definitely that of the Barn Owl, Tyto alba.

As we were getting back in the cars we heard several Tawny Owls, Strix aluco, calling as well, slightly more tunefully.

Oare before the torrential rain

At the front of the East Flood there were a couple of Ringed Plover with the larger flocks of Golden Plover, resplendent in their black and gold.

Here is the best photo I got of the Ringed Plover, Charadrius hiaticula. The rounded cheek pattern is clear, and I am fairly convinced of the stout bill, but rather less so of the orange as opposed to pink legs!

There was a Meadow Pipit, with very clearly pink legs, feeding on the mud close to the road:

A Little Stint (on the left) was feeding and chasing a Dunlin around a muddy spit fairly close in,

Leybourne Lakes

Common Blue Butterflies were starting to roost on the flowerheads in the meadow, but the first butterfly I saw roosting was actually a Brown Argus, with the two spots vertically, rather than horizontally arranged:

and this is a male Common Blue,

and another, from the upperside,

There were some fascinating Rose Sawfly larvae, the more orange species, Arge ochropus, massacring the leaves on the wild roses in the meadow.

Cliffe Pools before the rain

Just made it to the first viewpoint before it started raining.

On Conoco, there were lots of Coots, Redshank, Little Grebe, Great Crested Grebe, one Moorhen, five little Egret, and just one Tufted Duck. Met a nice chap called Marcus.

From the first viewpoint and the spot on the West side of Radar pool, there were some lots of Coots, Little Grebe, Great Crested Grebe, with some Black-tailed Godwits and Avocets, Redshanks, two probable Greenshank, some Little Egrets, a few Tufted Ducks, Black-headed Gulls, one Grey Heron and also a Wren chitting off to the right. A group of Greylags flighted over, but the rain soon set in and I bailed out!