Latest Critters from our Campus

 Welcome back!

What have I been up to? Well, struggling with food is where I have been. I'm now wheat intolerant as well as lactose intolerant, and have to avoid foods high in FODMAPs like the plague. 

No more normal bread - I'm on gluten free stuff that is only free if toasted. No more cheese or milk. No more fried food. A lot of fruit and veg is now out. No more caffeine. 

Worst of all, no more rum. Jack Sparrow would be weeping. 

No more joy lol. 

So, rice and chicken anyone? 

There have been some improvements, but working out what is best for me as an IBS-M sufferer is proving to be really really tricky. This is a long term slog. 

I'm still keeping my eyes out on nature. Today's big prize was the sinister bee-wolf, a solitary parasitic wasp that likes to paralyse honey bees before feeding them alive to its offspring. 

A charming creature, to be sure. 

Hope you are all well. 

Si 

All text and images CreamCrackeredNature 08.08.25 

Well I'm Still Finding Things!

 I've been doing a fair bit of running again, and getting faster to boot! This seems to be spurred on by the purchase of a new semi-smart watch, an Amazfit Bip 5 with onboard GPS. Sadly, because I live in the centre of town the GPS is often borked on one one of my main running routes and has me running 2km before it even registers one, but outside of that one road it seems fairly accurate, and I'm now running 5km in just over 29 minutes.

We are still getting days of mild weather, often preceded by grimly misty mornings for me to cycle through. Lights are on all the time now, including my head torch at night. Sadly, I haven't been able to see Comet A3, town lights are too intrusive. 

So that's running, cycling and being rubbish at astronomy covered, what of nature? We have entered the autumn holding pattern, with goldfinches flocking up and robins the only birds still singing. Meadow pipits have arrived at work for the winter. When I can find something in flower, there's still the occasional hiney bee around which gives me joy and delays winter sadness. 

Counting down already to the first snowdrops.

Si

All text and images copyright CreamCrackeredNature 23.10.24

More Critter Hunting

 After the dismal cricket destroying weather of last week, we have had a few nicer days this week, enabling me to hunt for pretty little things in the library nature reserve and on the badlands of our work campus. 

It has been fruitful, finding new species like the tiny common furrow bee, five spotted club horned wasp and a thick legged hover fly. I found my first cinnabar moth of the year today, which led me on a merry dance as I tried to photograph the recalcitrant little insect, and have picked up some nice action shots of bees. 

The library gardens, rich with scabious, seems to be a favourite haunt of both vestal and bohemian cuckoo bumblebees. no doubt on the look out for a buff tailed bumblebee nest to parasitise. It seems to be a terrible year for butterflies however, there's been so few on the wing even on bright days.

I hope you are finding pretty things to look at. 

Si

All text and images copyright CreamCrackeredNature 18.06.24

The Disappaearing Inkcap

 I'd never realised until now how quickly shaggy inckcaps dissolve themselves as part of their sporing process.

They are a common sight on our campus at this time of year, a magnificent sight - for a fungus - when they are at their peak with their white scalloped fruiting bodies. It's easy to see why they are known as "lawyers wigs".

But they begin to dissolve almost immediately, the cap curling up and turning black at the bottom as it drips spores into the air. But I hadn't realised how fast it happens.

The first two photographs were taken 5 hours apart yesterday, the third today. Dramatic, I'm sure you'll agree.

Charms of goldfinches up to 20 strong are flitting about noisily around the various clumps of teasel - they love the seeds. Random wildflowers are emerging in the meadow - an ox-eye daisy, and another flora incognita find, a pink flower called a musk mallow.

But the autumn rains are falling and now we have the damp greens of October setting in, and in Nottinghamshire, a new lockdown setting in. 

Plough on, is all I can do.

Si

All text and images copyright CreamCrackeredNature 07.10.20

The Importance of Ivy

Sources of food for pollinators are getting fewer and fewer as the sun makes its journey southwards, over the celestial equator and down into the constellation of  Libra.

That's why Ivy, with its ironically coronavirus like flowers, is so important to end of season insects. Wasps love it, as do hoverflies and more mundane flies. But they are all doing their bit for the environment. 

Of course ivy bees are famous for their attraction to these most pungent smelling of plants, but I've never seen any around here. Ordinary honeybees aren't keen on ivy, but over in the library gardens they are enjoying the sedum with its almost cauliflower like blooms.

What I always think of as being the grim months now lie ahead, October, November and December where no new life emerges in the plants and verges. Of course this year, the pandemic adds to the feeling of lifelessness.

Perhaps the late winter and the spring will see the new life emerge as we emerge from this mess. But I don't know how hopeful to be.

Si

All text and images copyright CreamCrackeredNature 29.09.20

Cricket with Robin's Pin Cushion

The final final final game of the season today, a little friendly at Upton village, a very affluent settlement a couple of miles this side of Southwell, famous for its Horological Institute.

We played this corresponding fixture last year in warm sunshine, with butterflies and swallows plentiful up on the top of the hill. This year, it was grey, cold and windy, an autumnal scene nicely augmented by the mournful clanging of the out of tune bell on Upton church.

In comparison to other recent games, I was in a much better mood and able to field happily for over 20 overs without getting a bowl, helped by the knowledge I was being held back for the better Upton bats who were lurking down the order like hungry sharks. Our juniors got in with it early doors, and I was happily fielding - and fielding well - as the need arose. Even had two run out chances, both of which I missed of course.

Skipper's tacticts would have worked if I was able to bowl consistently, but the annoying habit of bowling 4 good, one indifferent and one terrible delivery an over that has plagued me the last month of the season cropped up again. I bowled some absolute screamers, quick swing balls that beat the bat and nearly took the stumps, and also some short balls on leg stump that got thumped.

I wasn't quite alone in this, the wind up there was making things rather difficult. But no wickets for me in my last game of 2017.

Chasing 160 on a very tricky wicket - you know it must be if I can get the ball going shoulder high past the batsman - I let my wonderfully welcome hot tea of pasta bolognese settle by taking walk round the rather peculiarly shaped Upton ground, and taking pictures of their slightly phallic looking logo.

In the wild rose hedges, I came across the most bizarre furry structure;  a sort of red and green candyfloss of tendrils and wisps upon the bark of a very thorny bush. Turns out it is a Robin's Pincushion, a gall caused by a parasitic wasp. Swallows appeared, chattering twitteringly to each other, but we were losing wickets too regularly to enjoy the surroundings too long.

I ended batting at 8, and was feeling really confident, defending the ball with purpose, knocking it about - and then my young partner committed suicide and ran himself out - and looking to sttle in to make a score. Unfortunately, my habit of playing positively at the ball rather than dead bat means I tend to leave a hell of a gate between bat and pad, and an Upton bowler with a striking resemblance to Mike Gatting castled me through it.

Luckily, with 9 wickets down, the rain, and some very generous drops of our skipper, meant we got away with the draw.

I did enjoy it though, felt in much better mood and really enjoyed my fielding out there. Must work on that positive thing, and then really sort some consistency out with my bowling. Batting, I'm better than 11 but need to work out how I'm going to play.

Ah damn. No more cricket for months and months.

Si

All text and images copyright CreamCrackeredNature 10.09.17

Hello Queenie

I had just returned from a 7km run in the wind, dark and drizzle, and was just settling in to do some research on hybrid bicycles - if we get a cycle to work scheme I rather fancy one rather than my good but slow Decathlon MTB for road rides - when I heard a rather out of place buzzing, and the familiar sound of an insect headbutting a lightbulb.

I looked up, and rather than the moth I was somehow expecting, I saw a large wasp orbiting the hot light source for as long as it could, before plummeting to the carpet.

It must have followed me in from outside.

For a wasp to be alive this time of year, it must surely be a queen, the size also suggested that this was no mere drone. I photographed its lightly furry body, then turned the light off to still it, before trapping it and releasing outside in the hope it would go back to sleep again once it found a suitable spot.

Bad night for a buzzer, I'm afraid.

Si

All text and images copyright CreamCrackeredNature 27.01.17

Devon Sojourn 3 - High on Hatherleigh Hill

After the first reservoir, came the second. And after the second reservoir came a trip up to the pretty village of Hatherleigh. Up being the operative word, because this is another sky scraping place, reached by a ladder like road I kept trying to imagine cycling up.

At the top of the village, was the former market garden-cum-nursery home of an entirely formidable couple with a combined age of 187. It may no longer have been used for commercial purposes, but it was still a jungle of apples at the back, and vegetable beds up the side.

Wasps had colonised the bird box, but luckily the garden was an avian paradise anyway. A bird feeder under the kitchen window was sheltered in a magnolia, offering great views of sparrows, tits, and a spectacular nuthatch, characteristically feeding upside down, I was told.

Outside swallows were plentiful, and honeybees and bumblebees fed on a rampant hydrangea and other garden flowers. The sweet peas smelt like they'd been picked on Olympus, and Le Crunch Bunch of days of yore could not have eaten all the apples in the orchard even if they'd had all eternity.

Si

All text and images Copyright CreamCrackeredNature 01.09.15

Stripey squatters

Nuthatch. Sorry that the pictures were taken through a window

Sneaky blue tit

Busy on the feeder

Carder bee

Still blooms to feed off

Sunflower bees

Fiery colours

Great tit now on the feeder

Moon over the moors