River Wey

This week I've been in Guildford, enjoying the last of the gorgeous summer weather we've been having! It honestly hasn't felt like October at all- I went for a long walk along the River Wey with the bf on the 3rd, and we barely needed our hoodies until 6-7pm at night, when the sun was starting to go down!

The River Wey Navigations are a 20 mile waterway that runs through Surrey, made navigable through widening of the river channel and installation of locks along its length at various points. There are also a few big weirs along the river as well, used for measuring current and such. The river splits at a few points, creating a navigable channel and a smaller one- we had our lunch between the two at about 3pm, a good 7 miles down the river from Guildford.

The towpath was really flat and easy to walk along, which is how we managed to walk about 15 miles in total... quite a feat, after setting out at lunchtime with just a vague "let's go for a bit of a walk and see how far we can get"! One of the most interesting things we came across was Newark Priory at Pyrford, a fantastic old ruin that we certainly didn't expect. Despite trying to work out a way to get closer than a view from the riverside, unfortunately it's on private land, so this is the best view you can get of it. The crows made the picture even better, flying around in big clouds every time they got into arguments over whose bit of rock belonged to who.

We came across quite a lot of other interesting wildlife too on our walk- damselflies and dragonflies are prevalent at the moment, with the blues amongst these the most striking. There were kestrels hovering over the marshy fields near Pyrford; we were lucky enough to see one dive down to catch some prey, but unfortunately it came up empty handed, something it was quick to loudly bemoan from a nearby telegraph pole shortly after. The normal moorhens, mallards and mute swan were around too, although no coot today.

Eventually we did make it back to Guildford, although it took us a good 7 hours or so... a bit of a longer walk than we expected when we first set out! Really nice though, and an awesome end to a lovely summer.

Someone else didn't make it back home so safely...

Widget

 This is Widget. He's the Durlston Country Park resident dog, belonging to head ranger Katie. I've not got much to say this post, but these pictures were too sweet not to use!

Widget generally comes out on wednesday work parties with the volunteers at the country park, if it's safe to do so. Obviously, if we're working along the road or cutting down things that are likely to fall, he's not around. Ragwort pulling I think perhaps is one of Widget's favourite work party activities, as there are lots of people always walking round a big field, and plenty of opportunities to run around, chase deer if there are any (once he absolutely belted it after a roe deer that was in one of the lower fields, and it took a good five minutes for him to come back, unsuccessful of course). 

He loves fetching sticks and generally messing about, although he's fairly old now, so doesn't have quite the same energy levels as a younger dog! He'll still put up a fight if you try and take away his stick though. His favourite thing is eating leftover icecream from visitors to the castle, and he can get quite fat during the summer months...

A Bee Tree

 Honeybees are very important in my family, as both my Mum and brother are beekeepers. So, when I went to the Natural History Museum a few months ago (I can't believe it was such a long time ago!) and we were wandering around the garden, their honeybee tree really stood out to me.

Investigating the bee tree

There was a live colony inside, which you could see when you opened up the back (there was glass seperating too, of course). Then the foragers flew out the other side of the tree, away from the path and visitors to the museum. I thought it was really cool how they had put a hive actually into a tree, and even cooler that they didn't seem to be using frames; the bees were just naturally making their own wax boards in whatever shape they liked, and they were absolutely stuffed with honey.

They also had some standard bee boxes further away from the visitors' path, which were also very active given it was a warm day. The Natural History Museum is really great in that their garden is really informative and has a few planted up areas, but also is a wonderful wildlife space, with lots of trees and less carefully managed areas that provide hiding and nesting places. All the planting is native species, and there are plenty of flowering plants and trees that the bees can use to collect nectar from.

Marbled white butterflies

Marbled white butterflies are one of my favourite things to see during the summer season. Of course, it now being October, there aren't any about any more- but I'm very behind on writing posts! 

Widespread in the south of England, their major distribution reaches up to about the midlands. Here in Dorset, they're one of the most common butterflies I see, especially up at Durlston, where there's loads of unimproved grassland, their favourite habitat. Walking through the fields on a Ragwort picking mission, you can stir up tens of them during the peak warm season, which is quite a sight to see!

Unfortunately I don't have very many good pictures at all, as butterflies are tricky to take pictures of. They just don't like staying still! This one was a bit crumpled from being caught in a spider's web, so it was having a rest on a stalk before attempting flight.

 

A look at UKbutterflies.co.uk rewards some more specific species information, with subspecies and the like. I'm not that good at identifying between male and female, so the one in the photos above will remain a mystery unless someone knows! I'd give a stab at saying it was a male though, as it's got a more greeny underside than reddish, which a female would have.

Spiders are cool

Spiders are cool. Like, really really cool. There's this massive stigma that they're absolutely terrifying, but, I've never really understood why. There's nothing more gross about a spider than there is a grasshopper, or a beetle, or even a butterfly- just because they're a different shape and like to come and chill in the corners of your bedroom in the winter, apparently that makes them incredibly scary.

The most impressive thing I think about spiders, are their webs. When I got lost on Godlingston Heath with the boyfriend a couple of weeks ago (no doubt I'll write about that eventually, there's lots to tell), we blundered across so many spiders, it was like something out of Aragog's lair, or Shelob's minions or something equally fantasy-bookish. We were a bit busy trying to work out which way through the forest of gorse bushes towards Agglestone Rock was least prickly, so we neglected to take pictures of the (hundreds) of spiders we came across (and their webs), but we found something even better once we got to Agglestone.

 Boyfriend for scale

This absolute beast of a web completely covered just one gorse bush next to Agglestone- strangely, every other gorse bush around was normal, with only a few webs here and there. It was this one specific bush, that didn't seem different or special from the rest, that was utterly covered. To the touch, it wasn't sticky, just very firm, with layers and layers of web.
Thankfully touching it didn't reward something like this (which I do admit, would have been a little bit frightening). It was amazing what such tiny creatures had managed to construct though, covering the whole bush so well!

I've seen webs cover gorse before, but not to quite the same amazing extent, and there's always been a few other webs around on nearby bushes, so this was quite a surprise! Especially when, poking the gorse itself, the webs were actually fairly good protection from the spines- something we had found out hurt all too well only half an hour before, when trying to get to Agglestone in the first place.
Now, with a little bit of googling and some good luck, I've found that these webs weren't actually woven by spiders, but something called gorse spider mite. Technically not spiders, they live in colonies and spin webs that act as shelters. This was a really massive colony! It's a biological pest control method that's used in a few countries where gorse is a weed, as they can cause massive damage to the host plants. This one looked fairly happy though, despite being absolutely swamped. Hopefully both will survive the winter season!

After an impromptu hiatus...

Whoops, I let this slip a little. Summer has been so busy though; I've been out enjoying the lovely weather, rather than being inside writing! It's not so nice today though (rather grey), so time to re-start this little project of mine.

Hopefully this will give me a few things to write about in the next few weeks though, with a stack of things I've done. Also, lots of photos.

The thing I've done most this week, on my few days off, is rock balancing. It seems like a bit of a weird thing to do, but after an afternoon wander to Peveril Point a couple of weeks ago, I had the idea when someone else had left a couple of piles of rocks. They weren't especially difficult, but looked really cool. So, when I had nothing else to do at the start of this week (and the weather was nice), what better to do than head out to the point again and give it a go myself?

As a kid, I tried this a couple of times on Chesil Bay, which is a bit of a way down the coast, and has much more prevalent rock than Swanage beach. Unfortunately, I was pretty terrible at it, so never gave it another thought after then. Turns out I am actually fairly good at it once I get started though... As I was working on some of the taller stacks (11 is my current top number of rocks balanced on one another), it struck me how similar it was to dry stone walling. You have to find the right rock to balance (just like the right rock for the hole to fill in a wall), otherwise it's not right.

I did start to get a little bit carried away with it, and ended up making quite a lot of stacks the first day. There were a lot of comments too as I was working, near the end, as some of the stacks were fairly tall, and balanced on quite precarious edges!

 There are different techniques to rock balancing apparently, as a quick google afforded me that evening when I had come back and was uploading my pictures. The technique I had been using was called 'pure balance'; each rock is in near-point balance on one another. If you take the top rock off, the rest of the stack's still okay (unless you knock it). Another techinque some of the better rock balancers use is called 'counter balance' though, which affords some impossible looking structures, with rocks balanced at crazy angles. If you take off one rock, the rest is likely to fall.

The next day I used more angular rocks, which gave me a few crazy stacks like the one above. There were more impressive stacks I made, but forgot to take pictures. By the end of the day, I had ended up with 24 of my own stacks, and 1 other that someone had made overnight, apparently inspired by my own left-over creations!

Unfortunately the next day I went to try and stack rocks, it was much too windy and every pile I tried ended up falling over only a few minutes after I'd managed to put them together. A lot of the stacks I had left the day before had gone too, so I called it a day fairly quickly. When the conditions improve a bit more though, no doubt I'll be out there again!

Sparrows at work

It's been a busy few days! That's nice though. But, back to my normal schedule now... which means, time to fit in some more posts, hopefully.

At work, there's a dusty bank that the house sparrows really love using for dustbaths. They're super-common pretty much anywhere, as they're really good urban adapters.

Photo from Internet Bird Collection

Unfortunately, there's been a bit of a decrease in this species over the past few years, possibly due to increased use of pesticides in gardens, killing off insects, their major food source. They still top the RSPB's garden birdwatch list, but are certainly not as common as they used to be in some areas. Seeds and leftover crumbs are their favourite foods, and often I've seen them buzzing around a picnic table even before its human occupants have left to see what they can scrounge up!