New Year flower count 2016

I've just heard back from the BSBI about their New Year plant hunt. The idea was to count wild plants in flower in a three-hour period over the New Year weekend. They have accepted my list of 21 species (from west central Scotland) found on 2nd January, so I'm rather belatedly listing them here. A few weeks later, after several days of frost and snow, many of these are no longer flowering. Most were either plants that can flower all year round or that normally flower into autumn and had survived the mild winter until New Year.

Unfortunately it was a very dull day and many of the plants were in a patch of waste ground that I could only view at a distance through wire netting, so it was far from ideal for photography.

Arabidopsis thaliana (Thale Cress)

Bellis perennis (Daisy)









Capsella bursa-pastoris (Shepherd's-purse)

Cardamine flexuosa (Wavy Bitter-cress)







Cerastium glomeratum (Sticky Mouse-ear)

Crepis capillaris (Smooth Hawksbeard)

Cymbalaria muralis (Ivy-leaved Toadflax)

Euphorbia peplus (Petty Spurge)











Fumaria officinalis (Common Fumitory)

Geum urbanum (Wood Avens)







Heracleum sphondylium (Hogweed)
Matricaria discoidea (Pineappleweed)

Myosotis arvensis (Field Forget-me-not)

Ornithopus perpusillus (Bird's-foot)

Poa annua (Annual Meadow-grass)

Ranunculus repens (Creeping Buttercup)










Senecio vulgaris (Groundsel)
Taraxacum officinale agg. (Dandelion)

Tripleurospermum inodorum (Scentless Mayweed)










Ulex europaeus (Gorse)
Veronica persica (Common Field-speedwell)


The following day I also found Erophila verna agg. (Common Whitlow Grass), but it didn't count as it wasn't within the three-hour period - a pity as it would have been the only true spring flower although I have found it flowering in almost every month of the year.

A Loch Lomond bestiary

Last Sunday, the one day when it was not raining, I went to Loch Lomond to search for interesting pieces of driftwood. Among my Christmas presents I received some interesting paints for use on wood so I was looking for some suitable pieces to paint, but these ones will remain as they are.

This one looks like a little fox to me, but maybe I should leave it to your imagination to decide.

This is the first one I found and he was rather heavy. I think he is a water horse. I left him hidden under some rocks until I came back. By that time I was so laden with driftwood that I left two heavy pieces with him and made a separate journey afterwards to collect all three.

I think maybe this bird is trying out a pirouette. His dancing looks a bit wooden to me though.

A baby dragon perhaps?

This smooth seal came from a previous trip, but the smiling crocodile-like creature in the picture below from Sunday's visit was perhaps safer left where he was.

Solar eclipse and ducks

This morning our ducks returned, and they came again this evening. We had seen them occasionally during the winter, but this looks like they may be back for the summer. Unusually last year they stayed until December instead of disappearing as normal in July or August.

That was a promising beginning to the day, though we were doubtful of seeing the eclipse since cloud was forecast. Five minutes before the maximum eclipse, the sun appeared through thin cloud and I was lucky enough to get this shot.

I took a sequence of photos at 10 minute intervals - more often around maximum eclipse - all taken at exactly the same settings. This gives an idea as to how much darker it became (though the contrast in the photos is far greater than was actually apparent). The numbers on the pictures are minutes before/after maximum.

I also took some automatic ones, and found that 1/125th sec at F4, ISO 80 at 25 minutes before maximum looked identical to 1/50th sec at F3.5, ISO 200 at maximum. That's equivalent to a difference of 3 stops, or 8 times the exposure.

27 minutes after maximum, the still partially eclipsed sun managed to produce a rainbow.

A few minutes later, the sun began to shine brightly, and I used a colander as recommended to get some rather fuzzy images of the sun by projecting the shadow onto a piece of white paper.

I also took the temperature every 10 minutes, using two thermometers for greater sensitivity, but the eclipse only shows as a minor dip in the generally rising temperature. Maximum eclipse (93.73%) here in Glasgow was at 9:34am.

I felt very pleased to have had such a successful morning, particularly as we had expected nothing but cloud.