US social scientist Kenneth Boulding : ‘If you believe exponential growth can go on in a finite world, you are either a madman or an economist’.

Thursday 10 September 2009

9+10/9/09: On the way to the Cray - via Thames Road

I hadn't been along Thames Rd since the 'improvement' works were in hand (aka how to increase road traffic - build it/widen it and they will come ....).

At that time there was a lot of bare earth along the verges with numbers of (Sea) Beet and 'cabbage' (Rape?) plants. I also found a single Common Fumitory.

On this occasion some Common Toadflax was still in evidence. There was a very large number of Wild Carrot seed heads on the site of the former Engineer's 'encampment' by the Perry St roundabout. Ox-eye Daisy was on a bank between the houses on Shearwood Crescent. Also half a dozen Wild Mignonette (Reseda lutea), pictured below. This plant seems a lot less common in the north east of Bexley (this being my first record of it in the Borough as far as I can recollect) than its near relative Weld.

Wild Mignonette (Reseda lutea) flowering on a bank by Thames Road.


The area around the eastern end of Crayford Way was good for Starlings and House Sparrows. There were 16 Starlings on TV aerials at the Thames Rd end of Iron Mill Lane and 48 (possibly including some of the former by now) on roofs at the Crayford Way end of Mill Place. There were around 30 Sparrows (apparently finding food on the ground) at the end of an alleyway at the eastern end of Crayford Way, and more than 26 in an Escallonia by a bird feeder at 170 Crayford Way.

The alien Rosemary Beetle, a spreading alien that damages Rosemary and Lavender, was spotted on Lavender in Crayford Way. I have previously recorded it in several loactions in Barnehurst and Bexleyheath.

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