Dandelions

Dandelions are just coming into bloom, and, en masse, as they are around here, they're an undeniably handsome plant. 

The spring edition of Lapwing, the quarterly journal of the Wildlife Trust for Lancashire, Manchester and North Merseyside, has a feature on this ‘fine and dandy flower’ and tells me that dandelions provide a reliable source of food for pollinators; certainly the plants growing on the nearby verges are regularly visited by bumble bees and beetles.

The problem with dandelions, as every gardener knows, is that dandelion clocks are so effective in dispersing the seeds, meaning that the plants get everywhere. But, it helps to be told that dandelions are good at improving soil conditions for worms as well as for other plants – maybe I’ll just pull up the monstrous ones invading the lawn, and leave the others alone. And I do always root them out by hand, I never use herbicides.

Lapwing, by the way, is always well worth reading, and although my personal circumstances mean that I never get to any Wildlife Trust events, I enjoy the journal, and the Trust’s weekly newsletter. I’d encourage anyone with an interest in local wildlife to join.

Bud burst

Today was the day the trees came into leaf. Not the oak – although there are few of them around – but the hawthorn, the alder, the birch, and even the late-leafing ash. On the canal, geese, and a couple of mallards – lonesome males. The geese were not barking at each other, as they usually do, but miaowing; maybe a miaow is more comforting to unhatched chicks.

An unusual calm

Thanks to the Covid 19 pandemic, there's much less traffic around, and I hear sounds I don't usually hear. 

This morning, out doing a spot of gardening before rain sets in for the day, I realise that the odd scratchy, burbling sounds I had thought were magpies, are in fact heron chicks begging for food. The heronry is close enough for me to see the youngsters without using binoculars, but I've never before been able to hear them. 

And, bubbling up through a moment of silence - a curlew. Sheer magic!