How is some moss, lightly covered in frost last month, a sign that spring may be on the way? The clue is in the delicate-looking structures rising above the rest of the plant. They are setae (shoots). What looks like a blob of greenish fluid at their ends contains the spores, ready for being dispersed by the breeze.
The most common moss species in this area growing on the tops of walls (and elsewhere) sends out it setae early in the year.
Cat door in Exeter cathedral. The cathedral accounts include a record of carpenters being paid to make it around four hundred years ago. Entries for the expenses of keeping a cat go back a further couple of centuries: one old penny a week to keep the building free of mice and rats.
The cathedral still has a resident cat. Search the web and it’s possible to find pictures with a present-day cat poking its head out of the hole. Getting those pictures must have taken a lot of time and patience!
Feeding enthusiastically to get into peak condition before the breeding season, two male house sparrows spend time eating the fat balls in a bird feeder.
Cleavers, stickweed, sticky willy: most of the names for this hedgerow weed point to its persistent clinginess. Mostly, plants which stick to clothing do so with hook-like attachments to the seeds. It’s a method for having the seeds cling to fur or feather and get dispersed from the parent plant.
Not this weed. It seems like very part of the overground section of the plant has a magnetic attraction to fabric. At the moment, the plant is just a few inches long. It will grow, possibly, to stretch some to three or four feet, with the leaves also elongating.
One of the shovellers on West Park lake, a drake, taking a pause from swimming round in small circles to eat. It was dozing in the lee of the island, an eye still half open looking out for trouble.
Heather buds just before the flower buds began to open. When they did, the plants were a mixture of white and green heathers.