11/4/2010: Bulbous beauties in garden get-away

Suburbia throws up a lot of garden escapes. Here are some bulbous ones.


8/4/2010: Ipheion uniflorum, a South American member of the onion family, seen growing in the grass verge next to Thames Rd, Crayford. There were a few planted specimens, along with the odd Grape Hyacinth, but it appeared to be spreading as this one was hard up against the pavement some way from the rest.


10/4/2010: Narcissus are a common sight on railway embankments around London. Most look like 'developed' cultivars rather than seedlings reverting to a 'wild type', so are presumably thrown over fences while dormant and get covered in enough leaf litter and soil wash, and stay moist enough, to get a foothold and bulk up. These are just east of Bexleyheath station.


11/4/2010: Grape Hyacinths (Muscari) make a fine show backed by the bright yellow of a mass of Dandelions in this garden on Hounslow


11/4/2010: In some places the Grape Hyacinths had escaped into the grass verge between front gardens and the pavement. Here a few specimens make a colourful mix with Dandelion and Daisy

23/3/10: Flooded field birds decline, Kestrel kill

Bird numbers on the previously reported flooded field site, between the Cray and Bob Dunn Way, have tumbled since my last count on 10th March.

Today the numbers were:

Teal - circa 20 (down 12)
Gadwall - about 7 (down 8)
Lapwing - 5 (down 12)
Shoveler - 0 (down 8)
Shelduck - 0 (down 4)

There were also hardly any gulls.

But there was a solitary Little Egret making a probable three in the area, given the fact that I hadn't noticed one fly over en route since I had seen two a short while previously in the watery area south of the sewer bank on the other side of Thames Rd.

A feature of living on the edge of suburbia (apart from the rubbish frequently strewn across otherwise 'wild' greenspace), is the occurence of plants rendered incongruous for being in odd places. Here's a solitary clump of Narcissus, looking like it's got a bit of cyclamineus blood in the genome, by the confluence of the Cray (coming in from the left) and the Darent.

I walked back to Thames Road along the Cray embankment, taking the short-cut to the left of the Council depot, and spotted a Kestrel hovering over a field slated for yet more development (so much for protecting the marshes). Unsuccessful, it flew up and sat on an an electricity pylon cross-member for a while. After another abortive swoop it made a catch and took it to the top of a wooden fence post by Bob Dun Way, where it could be seen from a distance to be pulling some unfortunate food item apart.

Tonight's House Sparrow roost count by Imagination on Thames Rd gave a figure of about 43, but again it was a bit too early and there was still quite a lot of fluttering about in the hedge making accuracy problematic.