Nature – Page 5 – Journeys of Heart and Mind

Image of the day – 60

Other species…include red kites, you’ll see these frequently in the skies around Cirencester, often flying very low, even over housing estates.

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What’s in an image? Sometimes quite a lot, more than meets the eye.

I’m posting an image every two days (or as often as I can). A photo, an image from the internet, a diagram or a map. Whatever takes my fancy.

These beautiful, water tolerant, native Irises pop up every year in the waterways in and around Cirencester. The photo was taken at the junction of Riverside Walk and Gloucester Street right by Abbey Way Services. The photo was taken in May, just as they were reaching their best.

Although our natural environment is struggling to cope with the many pressures we put on it, some species manage to do quite well. This is one of them. But there are many others that are in danger. Some of these, plants and animals, are fairly stable or even recovering in and around the Cirencester area with careful conservation management. Examples include the lovely snakeshead fritillaries that flower abundantly in North Meadow just south of Cricklade, pasqueflowers in a strong colony to the north of the town near the Stow Road, and the large blue butterfly on a reserve west of the town and on common land near Stroud.

NOTE: If you visit any of these sites, please treat them with respect. Stay on marked paths if they’re available, avoid trampling on plants, stay out of restricted areas, and definitely don’t dig anything up. Pay attention to signs and notices. Thanks!

Other species, once rare but now much more common include red kites, you’ll see these frequently in the skies around Cirencester, often flying very low, even over housing estates. Back along Riverside Walk you may be lucky enough to see a heron, a kingfisher, or a little egret.

Cirencester

For convenience, here’s a list of all the Cirencester area images:

A417 roadworks, Advent Market, Bishops Walk, Baunton, Canal 1, 2, Castle Street, Christmas lights 1, 2, Church 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, Churn flood, Countryside, Fallen tree, Fleece, Gasworks, Gloucester Street, Hare 1, 2, Hospital, Market Place 1, Phoenix Fest, Riverside Walk, Stone plaque, Stratton Meadow, Tank traps, View, Wonky 1, 2, Yellow Iris

Themed image collections

The links below will take you to the first post in each collection

Cirencester, Favourites, Irish holiday 2024, Roman villa

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Useful? Interesting?

If you enjoyed this or found it useful, please like, comment, and share below. (If you don’t see those links, click the article’s title above the main photo and they will appear.) Send a link to friends who might enjoy the article or benefit from it – Thanks! My material is free to reuse (see conditions), but a coffee is always welcome and encourages me to write more often!

Image of the day – 40

Nobody knows when rose breeding began, it may have been as far back as Greek or Roman times.

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What’s in an image? Sometimes quite a lot, more than meets the eye.

I’m posting an image every day (or as often as I can). A photo, an image from the internet, a diagram or a map. Whatever takes my fancy.

While we were at the Powerscourt Estate, Donna wanted to look at the rose garden; this photo shows a really beautiful example of the flowers on view. Looking at the image now I can almost smell the fragrance in my mind!

Roses like these are not part of the natural world; they’re the work of plant breeders crossing a range of wild species and selecting for characteristics they liked. Nobody knows when rose breeding began, it may have been as far back as Greek or Roman times, but was certainly underway in medieval Europe and perhps in the middle and far east as well.

I wrote an article four years ago that includes photos of a much more natural rose. Comparing the two images emphasises how plant breeding can make huge changes (the breeders might say ‘huge improvements’) to wild forms. The same is true for animal breeding, just compare any modern breed of dog with the wild, wolf ancestor for example!

Images from our Irish holiday 2024

For convenience, here’s a list of all the Irish holiday images:

28th Jul – Welsh Botanic Garden, Robin, Fishguard
29th Jul – Wicklow Mts, Glendalough, Powerscourt, Rose, Greystones
30th Jul – Liffey, Temple Bar, St Patrick’s Cathedral
31st Jul – Newgrange, Battle of the Boyne
1st Aug – Monasterboice, Mourne, Thrift, Window
2nd Aug – Spelga Dam, Hydrangea, Pipework, Lough Neagh
3rd Aug – Coagh, Springhill, Portrush
4th Aug – Beach at Portrush
5th Aug – Giant’s Causeway, Carrick-a-Rede, Portrush

Themed image collections

The links below will take you to the first post in each collection

Cirencester, Favourites, Irish holiday 2024, Roman villa

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Useful? Interesting?

Image of the day – 29

Tree roots probe small cracks and as they grow, heave even heavy structures aside.

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What’s in an image? Sometimes quite a lot, more than meets the eye.

I’m posting an image every day (or as often as I can). A photo, an image from the internet, a diagram or a map. Whatever takes my fancy.

Today’s image shows a piece of ground lightly covered with silver birch; but the history of this area is interesting. During the war it was an RAF airfield (RAF Riccall) with runways, brick and concrete buildings, bomb stores and more. The airfield was in used from 1944 to 1958, and today the brick structures are collapsing, the runways have cracked and are mostly covered by layers of moss, grass and other low vegetation, and the other areas have become scrubland and lightly wooded areas as shown in the photo.

This clearly illustrates how much time and maintenance effort is required to hold back the natural world from recolonising our built infrastructure. What begins with the typical grass and weeds of cultivated ground soon becomes an impenetrable mass of brambles and young trees. As they grow larger, the trees shade out the brambles, and fallen leaves cover the concrete and tarmac and accumulate as fresh soil. Tree roots probe small cracks and, as they grow, heave even heavy structures aside. It’s a fascinating process. Skipwith Common, with the old airfield on its north-western edge, is representative of Yorkshire’s lowland heath ecology.

We think our built environment is solid and secure – not so! It’s easily overwhelmed once we stop maintaining it. Look at the land around the site of Chornobyl in Ukraine for another example of the speed of wildlife return to an area substantially left alone by humans.

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Image of the day – 23

By cooperation and coordination they manage all the behaviours and activities that we see on the larger scale.

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What’s in an image? Sometimes quite a lot, more than meets the eye.

I’m posting an image every day (or as often as I can). A photo, an image from the internet, a diagram or a map. Whatever takes my fancy.

There are few things as amazing as life. Perhaps there’s literally nothing as amazing as life in the entire universe! The photo shows the young, expanding leaves of a small-leaved lime tree (Tilia cordata).

Like all deciduous, temperate trees, leaf buds are formed the previous summer and over-winter after the old, mature leaves fall in late autumn. As temperatures increase in springtime, these buds swell and grow and the young leaves appear and expand. At first they’re a beautiful, pale green (lime green) but become a darker and duller shade as the days lengthen and they mature.

These processes all take place naturally in ways that are more complex than most of us might expect. Both plants and animal bodies are composed of countless tiny cells in much the same way that a large building might be made of bricks. Each cell is alive, contains a full copy of the organism’s DNA, and many of them have specialised roles to play. By cooperation and coordination they manage all the behaviours and activities that we see on the larger scale. So in some respects an expanding leaf is a lot like a growing community of people working together as a village or business. Having specialists makes it possible to do so much more, but cooperation becomes essential, not merely optional.

The rioting we’ve seen in some British cities in recent days has been disruptive and damaging to society as a whole. When the cells of an organism behave in uncoordinated and uncontrolled ways we call it a cancer. Rioting is a kind of cancer in a human society. We all know what happens when cancer becomes so widespread that the organism can no longer function. But organisms have ways of dealing with errant cells before they become overwhelming, and so do societies. Both police action and peaceful counter-demonstrations have been effective in controlling the UK riots in recent days.

Themed image collections

The links below will take you to the first post in each collection

Cirencester, Favourites, Irish holiday 2024, Roman villa

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Useful? Interesting?

Image of the day – 2

Come on mate, get preening! How do you expect to find an attractive female robin with scruffy, untidy feathers like that?

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What’s in an image? Sometimes quite a lot, more than meets the eye.

I’m posting an image each day, or as often as I can; a photo I took, an image from Wikipedia, NASA, or some other open source, a diagram or a map. Whatever takes my fancy. This is the second in the series.

Pretty & Pip is one of my favourite coffee shops in Cirencester. I wrote ‘the robin‘ because he’s always there, in their lovely courtyard. If I didn’t know the guy that owns and manages this place I might even think the robin ran it! He certainly thinks he belongs there, and he does a pretty good job of picking up cake crumbs and generally keeping the place spick and span.

But come on mate, get preening! How do you expect to find an attractive female robin with scruffy, untidy feathers like that?

Favourites

For convenience, here’s a list of my favourite images:

Anemone, Cloud, Honeybee, Hydrangea, Kiftsgate1, Kiftsgate2, Large White, Mugshot, Nelson, Robin, Rose, Spilhaus, Sunset1, Weston beach

Themed image collections

The links below will take you to the first post in each collection

Cirencester, Favourites, Irish holiday 2024, Roman villa

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