Author: BrownhillsBob

I told the truth - but told it bent. Wandering around bemused and ranty since 2007.

July 26th – The very hot weather seems to be coming to an end, timing almost perfectly with the end of the major session of the harvest. Locally now for a couple of weeks, the grumble and whine of fantastically large and complex harvesting machinery has been a continual backing track to rural life, and often I’ve ridden through clouds of wheat dust from this year’s crop being threshed in the harvester.

Not much spilled this year, which is interesting, the roads are usually thick with spilled grain, called ‘gleanings’ as traditionally workers and the poor were allowed to collect – glean – this harvest bounty and they’d feed it to their animals and fowl.

Interesting also to note the return of the rectangular bale. Well, they do stack better.

And with harvest and the end of the heatwave, the year gallops on…

July 26th – At Telford, the new footbridge at the station continues to take shape. Steel is being erected, steps and glazing are being added and lifts seem to be going in too. 

There are now five distinct building sites that make up this construction. Getting to the right one to start work – across a railway, a major dual carriageway and slip roads – can’t be much fun!

July 25th – These oak knopper galls actually took me by surprise a couple of days ago, but the photos I took weren’t great, so I revisited the saplings they’re growing on today.

I spotted them on a tree near Victoria Park in Darlaston and I don’t think there’s a single normally formed acorn on that tree at all, and yet several adjacent ones have no knoppers at all.

These mutations of normal acorns are of course caused by a tiny wasp that lays eggs in the acorn buds earlier in the year. A secretion the eggs are coated in causes the acorn bud to mutate and grow in a distorted form, forming a gall, with the wasp egg at the centre. 

The larva hatches, and eats it’s way out of the gall, which provides it enough nourishment to grow to maturity.

Insect galls like this don’t hurt the tree, but of course, do affect it’s fecundity.

Isn’t nature amazing?

July 25th – The thistles are still in flower, but now going over to seed too. This is great for many songbirds like goldfinches who like to eat the seeds, which are spread from the seed heads by the breeze, and to this end are attached to fluffy wind catchers to transport them in the air.

The fluff thistles generate – along with rose bay willowherb, or old man’s beard which is also in seed at the moment, was always called ‘fairies’ when I was a kid, and it was considered lucky to catch a ‘fairy’ on the wind.

They are actually rather beautiful.

July 24th – It seems early for blackberries to be ripening in such quantities right now, but they are. I think in reality we’re maybe only a week or two ahead of schedule, but it just seems wrong.

The foragers and animals won’t mind though – this juicy, black-red sugar laden fruit will sustain many a bird or rodent and make for many a decent pudding the the coming month or so.

Again, it seems like a good crop too.

July 24th – Also coming on to show well right now are the rosehips – the fruit of the rose flower, either the dog rose, or the feral scopes that dot the hedgerows, canal towpaths and footpaths of the area.

I love the variety of textures, colours and shapes.

They bring a second splash of welcome colour when the rose flowers  themselves have decayed for another year…

July 23rd – Saddly poor photo of something that caught me by surprise: A wayside pear tree in Clayhanger (I won’t say where) is fruiting very heavily this year, and despite the dry conditions, the fruit look like they’re going to be quite large.

Watching this one carefully, but expecting the crop to be decimated by birds (bless them) as it has been before.

July 23rd – I ought to know what this plant is. But I don’t, and the guide books haven’t been helpful. It looks a bit like cow parsley, but isn’t: smaller, flatter flower heads and that curious ball formation which I can’t tell is a flowerhead opening or going to seed.

Anyone know? Loads of it in Darlaston at the moment.

July 22nd – Not much riding today, which was sad. I had a lot of maintenance jobs to do on the bikes, and I had to be at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Brum in the late afternoon. I took my bike on the train.

Leaving in the early evening, I noticed the bunnies on the edge lands near a path through the hospital site. I’m glad I caught them; they were skittish, and in all there must have been more than ten. 

Sorry, the picture is a wee bit poor due to the speed and the camera being at full zoom.

I love to see wildlife thriving in urban settings like this. A joy to the heart.