We had an "interesting" walk locally yesterday:
1. Local Husmannsplass (Small farm , usually owned by a larger farm) now a local museum – nice old Juniper
2. Strobilurus stephanocysstis, very common spring fungus which grows on decaying Pine cones (appears before the Wood anemones are in flower!)
3. Hepatica nobilis was in full flower carpeting the woods and rocks in places, difficult to capture by camera
4. Goshawk nest at the top of a spruce tree. This is an old nest last occupied 5 or more years ago, but obviously well constructed. Sadly the neighbouring old growth forest was felled and this species needs a extensive area of forest to breed, so that was that…
5. My son is a sound technician and likes to record natural sounds. As we started off on our walk we heard the loud calls of Cranes (Grus grus) – this is a locality where these fantastic birds bred a few years ago only a couple of kilometers from a big housing estate. We therefore headed up to the place and we were lucky to get some good recordings, although we couldn’t see the birds..
6. Veronica beccabunga emerging from under the ice..
7. Elk!
8. Mosquito larvae!
9-10. We walked back the same way as we had come and suddenly everything looked unfamiliar and we wondered if we had taken the wrong path as it was blocked by a fallen tree! No, the tree had actually fallen over the path we had walked along only 45 minutes earlier! A near miss! 50m away a Great spotted woodpecker was drumming on a neighbouring dead tree….
