common_nature | May Meadows

Such a cold wind this morning. Winter come again. Took a walk through the streamside hay meadows, with the wind combing the tall grasses, jostling the buttercups.

Yellow Rattle, a semi-parasite, stealing nutrients from the grasses.

Buttercups and Pale Flax.

Ragged Robin. Lover of damp fields.

The buttercups mostly only ankle high, and the ground unusually dry for May. Normally these fields are extremely damp, wellies required except in high summer, but this year the mud in the gateways is already dried hard, cracked with drought.

A cuckoo calling in the distance. Chiffchaffs singing from the willows. Still haven't heard any willow warblers this year.

The wind full of fluffy willow seeds:

I thought the orchids might not be flowering yet, but everything is a few weeks early this year:

Common Spotted Orchids, I think, mostly, though extraordinarily variable, in the way that orchids always are. Some of them may be hybrids with Southern Marsh Orchids.

The aspen just coming into leaf, much later than the oaks and willows.

Walking through fields full of tall grass on a windy day is pretty much a guarantee of hay fever. Came back sneezing, but I don't care. The beauty of the meadows in May outweighs the effects of grass pollen.

Detoured to stop off at the little tea room at East Creech Farm on my way back, for coffee and a pain au chocolat. Sat outside in the cold wind and the sunshine, the first customer of the day, with the place to myself, just me, and the tea room sparrows hopping onto the table to cadge bits of pastry.