Hips which have remained on a dog rose bush since they ripened in the autumn, rejected by birds. They may be shrivelled and shrunken now, but they didn’t start out that way. I don’t know why they were ignored: perhaps being in an area where lots of people put out food for the birds.
Bluetits and great tits eating peanuts and fatballs on bird feeders. Five minutes or so of titmice eating peanuts and fatballs from hanging feeders. most of the footage is of bluetits, with an occasional great tit for variety.
I’m noticing more about the detail of the patterns of the plumage than I would from a series of still pictures, which would themselves give more detail than watching the birds through binoculars.
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.