Saturday, 13 March 2010

Spring has sprung!











Lesser Celandine Ranunculus ficaria is a common weed in my garden and is one of the earliest of Britain's wildflowers to appear in the Spring. I have been waiting for it to appear this year and there was a solitary bloom in the sunshine today.



William Wordsworth wrote:



There is a flower, the lesser Celandine
That shrinks, like many more, from cold and rain
And, the first moment that the sun may shine
Bright as the sun himself, 'tis out again!
*
I have also found a couple of beetles today, only one of which I can identify with any confidence. The Varied Carpet Beetle Anthrenus verbasci was flying around my lounge and, after reading of its larva's predeliction for soft furnishings, I released it onto a crocus outside!
The unidentified wood-boring beetle is an inhabitant of a decaying sycamore trunk. It is 3mm in length; Could it be one of the Anobiidae?
And finally, a Red Kite Milvus milvus flying over the Tranmere Park housing estate in Guiseley. They seem to be getting closer and closer to my home in Baildon.



2 comments:

  1. Variegated Carpet Beetles are having a very successful year. I have found a few in my home in S. Yorks.

    There is a celandine on Wordsworth's memorial plaque inside the church of Saint Oswald at Grasmere, but unfortunately it's a Greater Celandine (Chelidonium majus). :(

    In that spirit of possibly mistaken i'Ds I think your hoverfly of Saturday 27 March is Eupeodes luniger

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  2. Thanks for the hoverfly i.d. Ray.
    Hope your carpets survive :-)

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