New Year re-start the blog.

 New Years Day meant the start of the New Year Plant Hunt. Organised by the BSBI we look for any plants in flower from December 30 to Jan 2nd. I chose to search my local patch which is Cuerden Valley Park. The first plants to note were some that I expected, Daisy, Groundsel, Gorse and Hazel. So many Hazel trees had large catkins which amazed us. Then approaching the river Lostock we startled a kingfisher which flew off quickly. This photo by Alan Graves one of our team

      

 

More surprises delighted us as we continued in the woodland, Scarlet Elfcup, a fungus and Goat willow with catkins showing.

           

We returned to the cafe area to look inside the Walled Orchard. The bird feeders were very busy with blue tits, great tits, coal tits, dunnock, bullfinches, nuthatches flitting back and forward. A mistle thrush was practising his song and a stock dove declared its presence nearby. At the Walled Orchard the outside wall hosted Ivy-leaved Toadflax in flower but inside we were surprised again by a primrose in full flower.

                              

 

As we were finishing it started to rain, but only gently so we decided to call it a day. In total we had 12 plants in flower. There were some locations in the south of England that had 70+ and one had an astonishung 100. It shows how quickly our climate is changing.

On January 4th I started another project - The January Moth Challenge. We'd had a couple of wet nights so I waited for the first dry..ish one. My experience was similar to that of the the disciples of Jesus in the period after the resurrection  - Simon Peter announced, "I'm going fishing."They went out and got in the boat. They caught nothing that night .

There will be more nights in January, so I will let you know how I got on.