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BCUK Springwatch Thread

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I've been seeing some large (for this species) herds of Roe Deer at the moment. Anything up to 10 in number all moving together.
Quite unusual to have numbers this high as they don't like each others company.
Apparently it's because they're low on hormones at this time of year.
 
Peregrine. Nice. I haven't seen one in ages.

Today was the first Lesser Celandine for me. Two of them in flower, and masses of leaves. Garden crocuses coming through as well. Ravens display flying at each other, and song thrushes in good voice. Oh, and a mature male house spider Steatoda bipunctata above the kitchen sink.

Do fruit-flies all round the house count, or should I just change the bins?
 
Geoff Dann said:
Harvestman,



The common name "house spider" is usually applied to spiders of the genus Tegeneria. Steatoda bipunctata normally goes by the common name "false widow spider" or "rabbit hutch spider."
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Yes, but it usually occurs in houses/buildings. I was using the term more loosely, to include any species that are commonly found indoors - Tegenaria, Scotophaeus blackwalli, Pholcus, Psilochorus, Scytodes etc.

I've not heard the name Rabbit Hutch Spider before. That's a new one on me. Thanks for the info.

Curiously, I've found S. bipunctata in buildings all over the country, except Plymouth, where it is entirely displaced by S. grossa instead. I tend to think of S. grossa as the False Widow Spider, as it (together with S. nobilis) is the species that gets sensationalised by the media now and then.

Regardless, it was nice to see a mature male wandering around with those enormous palps of his. Must be mating season...
 
Muddypaws said:
A pond which I pass regularly on my afternoon dog walk was an absolute seething mass of frogs spawning today.
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Nice. I checked out a few ponds today but nothing like that in my area. In fact, despite all day outside my only new find was two dandelions flowering in a bank, which brings my flowering flowers total to 5 for the year.

Lovely day though.
 
New leaves and opened buds on several of the shrubs in work today, but there are so many weird exotics and non-native species (or just plain odd cultivars - e.g. the beech cultivar 'Asplenifolia') that I have no idea what the things are. It feels more like a botanic garden than an industrial estate. I need to take my tree book to work with me!
 
Spring comes around about a month later on the high moorland. I came across a Dartmoor pony nuzzling her stillborn foal the other day. It was perfect in every way but hairless. She was covered in blood so I contacted the local pony protection folk; they went to her aid.

Blimey that sounds terrible doesn't it. Survival is part of spring too.
 
Today I have seen Violets...
P2170236.jpg

and also Celandine. This solitary chap has been out for a couple of weeks now, but there are buds now forming on the rest of the plants in the clump
P2170237.jpg
 
Violets are something I haven't seen yet this year. Today I found about 6 wild strawberries in flower, and a clump of dog's mercury, although the green flowers of the latter are not exactly obvious. Daisies suddenly in huge profusion, and the local barn owls were in spectacularly good voice last night.
 
Out on friday, and saw signs that willows are starting to emerge from the leaf buds. Also my first ant of the year - a very slow-moving specimen on a bench by the river.
 
Hmm, I have a couple of days indoors due to illness, and i go out today and there are roadside daffodils, primroses, and emergent shoots of reedmace.
 
Had a quick knife tip in a birch today and the sap is starting to rise. :) The cow parsly and hogweed is also well underway.
 
Today I saw one or two blossoms out on a Cherry Plum. As I was looking, a tiny Goldcrest came flitting out of the bushes and perched on the branch right in front of me - just perfect!! Needless to say that I didn't have the camera with me.
 
There's a blackbird (I think) nesting in an ornamental Lawson Cypress outside my window at work. I keep only glimpsing it as it goes to and fro.

Yesterday I could have sworn I saw a flowering bedstraw, but I just can't make it work. What I saw was a yellow, 5 petalled flower, but on checking, bedstraws (Crosswort aside, and it isn't that) have much smaller, white flowers. I'm stumped. I'll have to wait to the weekend to go back for another look, but the not knowing is driving me silly!

My flower list to date:

Groundsel
Daisy
Snowdrop
Gorse
Dandelion
Lesser Celandine
Primrose
Daffodil (not really wild, but naturalised in road verges in my area)
Wild strawberry
Dog's mercury

My mysterious bedstraw would make it double figures without counting the daffodils. I'll go and look for wild daffodils on the weekend though.

Oh yes, my first frogspawn of the year was yesterday too.
 
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