Sunday 22 June 2008

Birds 0 - Plants 3

With strong westerly winds, my hoped for Little Shear did not show itself on the res, so I packed baby (10 weeks now!), dog (5 stone now!) and lady wife in to the jalopy for a drive down to Honeydon in North Bedfordshire. Having not been to this site in years I was a bit worried I would not find the exact spot...Fortunately I had had the foresight four years ago to put a little ring round the spot on my OS map, which helped no end. As soon as we turned up I could see hordes of Spiked Star-of-Bethlehem in full flower along the verge - nice! Although it is also called Bath Asparagus, we decided not to sample any. Next, we wandered north up the road spying some Sulphur Clover and then shortly the main target, Crested Cow-wheat. This mad looking alien of a plant is simply stonking and I have only ever seen it here. I was pleased to see there was plenty of it growing in magenta patches along the roadside.

We then headed over to Paxton to look for fly-over Black Storks or rare raptors, but only managed some Tufted Ducklings and a Chiffchav before leaving the site to the bull terrier-toting Sunday afternoon crowds.

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