Wild mustard Sinapis on the bank by valley road. You can use these yellow petals to garnish and lightly season a salad or wait for the seeds to get a stronger flavour. They were standing slightly taller than myself and mixed in with milk thistle, vetches and other wild plants, .
Saturday: Lovely warm day today, skies mostly clear but for some stretches of high altitude cirrus.
Last night, due to clear skies and full moon we were able to go all the way down to look-out corner late at night by just natural lighting, which was so pleasant. We only heard various crickets though we were on the watch out for other wildlife.
Still no luck with migrating stork flocks. One of my boys noticed a flock while we were napping, high, dark birds, probably raptors, not enough info for ID.
When we headed out, almost 5 p.m. I was lucky enough to catch sight of a very nice single alpine swift Apus melba quite high over the east edge of the neighbourhood. These large swifts (almost two foot wingspan) are quite obvious because of their very light underparts and typical swift shape outline. Martins and swallows have light underparts are much smaller and don't have that gliding perfect arc in flight.
We noticed a few common swifts hunting over the orchard later and there were plenty flying insects on the wing, particularly crane flies.
In the garden this morning I heard house sparrows, white spectacled bulbuls, cooing laughing doves and a great tit in song.
Later in the woods we noticed quite a few hooded crows about, one heading toward the nesting site in the pine grove which was parasitized by the cuckoos last year. We're watching out for them too of course.
At about sunset I was very happy to see another returnee, a nice male Black eared wheatear (Oenanthe hispanica melanoleuca) up on the security fence, and in song. I'd never heard the actual song before and was surprised by its almost lark like quality though it was much briefer. He'd hop down a few times, then return to a prominent position on the wires and sing a few more phrases. (Two families of these wheatears were chronicled in this blog last breeding season)
The most curious thing we saw on a patch of beautiful two-tone purple vetch by look-out corner was a cluster of at least half a dozen bees in a huddle behind a vetch flower, totally still. Husband poked at them gently with the handle of his pocket knife and they all just tumbled to the ground. At first we thought they were dead (and I was busy looking around for a crab spider or something that might have done it but only found an innocent katydid) when I noticed that one by one they were all crawling up the stalks back up to the vetches. Perhaps they were all torpid ('drunk')from a huge nectar sipping binge! They didn't quite look like honeybees, though similar, but a smaller species and slightly fuzzy. (in more ways than one today!)
Anemones and asphodel pretty much spent now and shepherds purse all spikes of little heart shaped seedpods that make such good anti-bleeding tea. (though I wouldn't use them if there's any hypertension). I found a purple Orchis orchid right by the valley road. Rock hyrax were active today up on the west slope by the pumping station, one making a sort of alarm call that sounded like a mini donkey bray. Graceful warblers were vocal, Eurasian jays busy, feral pigeons cooing, collared doves cooing and getting into their display flights in the valley ('falling with style') , blackbird alarm calls and song about dusk. Some stone curlew calls.
Chukar partridges heard 'chuckling' at the bottom of the valley.
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