High Elms Country Park near Downe is a procession of pushchairs, straining dogs and track-suited walkers meandering and marching under tall pines and Wellingtonias (Sequoiadendron giganteum). At the top of the hill, protected by grandstands of tall ash (Fraxinus excelsior) and sycamore (Acer pseudoplatanus), are the Sunday golfers. The hedgerow birds hide from men hunting their lost handicaps…
Tag: Protected Area
Hunting Pinks
The wheat and oil seed rape has dried to a soft gold in a blink. The huge fields are somehow less mundane than when growing dull, deep green. The tangle of tall rape below Farningham Wood holds an abundance of house sparrows and linnets together with a smattering of corn burnings. The sparrows have finished breeding in the nearby…
Up Fackenden Down
The change in the meadows at Fackenden Down over the last two weeks of June is marked; the fragrant orchids (Gymnadenia conopsea) are in their prime in mid June but tiring by the end of the month whereas the pyramidal orchids (Anacamptis pyramidalis) were emerging and now are at their best. Some are a deep purple in the evening light. Fragrant…
Lovćen Mountain
Lovćen is a mountain within the heart of Montenegro’s coastal range, rising abruptly from the dark maquis and olive-clad hills between the coastal towns of Kotor and Budva to descend more gently inland to the old capital of Cetinje. The mountain is the most accessible of them all, as there is a road running round the base…
Žabljak Crnojevića Emperors
If Freyer’s purple emperor (Apatura metis), or FPE for short, is abundant around Lake Skadar as I think it maybe, having found a handful of territories at Vranjina and knowing that its food plant, white willow (Salix alba), is very commonly distributed around the wetter areas of the lake, then an easy test is to go…
Lake Skadar’s Emperor
The weather the other morning at Vranjina was sunny, clear and warm. The squacco herons now joined by a couple of little egrets rushed from the water’s edge as usual, some perching motionless in the nearby trees. A little bittern flew across the road; this is a much more reserved heron species and only seen…
Around the Lakeside Village of Dodoši
On the last day of April, I head to the north side of Lake Skadar between Podgorica and Cetinje and the lakeside village of Dodoši. The hills are south facing and the vegetation less lush than on the opposite side; the plants here are also more advanced with wild sage (Salvia officinalis) flowering as well as tall…
Lake Skadar Transitions
The enclosed lake beyond Vranjina has transformed from the winter view of ice blue waters and bare brown woodlands to water, jam thick with algae, lilies and reed, surrounded by shades of spring green willow and poplar. The rate of growth of the emergent vegetation over the past weeks after the temperatures increased and the cold winds died has…
Ostrog White, Durmitor Dark, Biogradska Gora Light
The fast road from Podgorica to the large town of Nikšić runs up the south side of the Zeta valley and gives a distant view of the Ostrog monastery, white against the high, dark cliff. The monastery is a principal place of pilgrimage within the Serbian Orthodox Church and also much visited by tourists. A smooth road from…
Lake Skadar’s Resurrection Plant
Today I found Ramonda serbica on a sheltered, small, north-facing cliff face on the south side of Lake Skadar along the winding road from Virpazar to Ostros. This plant is endemic to the southern Balkans and known as one of the few so called ‘resurrection plants’. This is the ability to dry out to a brown crisp during…
Plavnica Water Meadows
The road from Golubovci runs arrow straight for six kilometres, so the sign says, to the isolated riverside resort of Plavnica through a flat landscape of small farms. Each holding and their house is different but nearly all are growing vegetables in neat plots, with cabbage and lettuce being most prominent. These are planted out by hand with a long…
Vranjina’s Pelicans
We came back the other evening down the main road from Podgorica to Virpazar across Lake Skadar. Just before the small fishing village of Vranjina, there is a section of open water fringed by spring green willows that over the past two weeks has had a pair, sometimes three, Dalmatian pelicans. These have always been loitering…