Wildflower stroll in Durlston Country Park
May 27, 2009 by Bird
Filed under Blog, Flora, Good Stuff, On My Travels, Summer
After the excitement of “Meet a Moth” day, we set off for a walk in the meadows around Durlston Country Park. This has to be one of the best places in the UK for spotting wildlife, a 280 acre countryside paradise consisting of sea-cliffs, coastal limestone downland, haymeadows, hedgerows and woodland. At this time of year it is glorious, stuffed with birds, rare and unusual plants, butterflies and if you are lucky there are dolphins, whales and basking sharks to be spotted out to sea.
N knew which fields are home to the rare Early Spider Orchid and had seen them on a previous walk, but sadly it was too late in the season and the flowers were all finished. This was barely a dissapointment given the beauty of the meadows, decked out in the brilliant deep blue of Chalk Milkwort and fat, hairy clusters of Kidney Vetch.
The day was hot, but a cool sea breeze and a bit of atmospheric haze kept us from shrivelling up as we walked along the clifftops, watching guillimots on their nests and Kittiwakes zooming about below us on stiff wings. This pair of herring gulls were disarmingly affectionate, displaying to each other within a few feet of us. At one point the male coughed up a nice bit of fish for his mate, but rather ungallantly changed his mind and ate it himself… charming!
On the cliffs nearby we found some Houndstongue, it’s deep red flowers only just beginning to open.
Working our way inland we came across white drifts of Sea Campion.
Into one of the meadows now, where we spotted this brilliant green beetle eating buttercup pollen. It’s name, Cryptocephalus aureolus, seems bigger than the insect its-self.
Crossing some cow pasture, the short fine turf revealed tiny, delicate flowers of Eyebright. Each is only a couple of millimetres across.
Eyebright wasn’t the only thing that the short, grazed turf revealed. As we scoured the meadow for any sign of Early Spider Orchids, an even rarer flower came to light. This tiny Early English Gentian studded the turf with lavender stars, and though my picture is out of focus I still wanted to share this lovely little flower.
We did find some orchids eventually, in a meadow shining yellow with tall waving buttercups and filled with birdsong. But that I will save for another post…
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Beautiful!! What a great walk. The gulls made me laugh. And I love the photo with the beetle!! Gorgeous.
Thank you Kit! it was a perfect early summers day
)
Oh, you have such lovely wildflowers I know so little about! I think I shall have to plan a pond crossing for some future spring.
Meanwhile, I’m happy to have your blog so I might vicariously explore your bit of the world. Peace and an ongoing happy spring to you!
Thank you and I wish a wonderful springtime to you too! May is a perfect time to see our wildflowers Greg, although there are many beautiful things to see in late summer too. I’d recommend the south west coast to anyone. But until you see it for real, I’ll just keep posting
Really gorgeous pictures! Its wonderful what you can find just out on a walk, eh?
Too right Svasti, whenever I find it hard to leave the house I should remember that. It’s not as beautiful as Durlston where I live, but there is always something lovely to see if you keep looking
So many plants that, as Greg says, I know so little about. As a recovering orchid nut I would have been a little disappointed about missing the spider orchid, but you’ve got so many things to compensate. Thanks for the excursion. With blogging friends around the world we can watch spring happening all year round…
Well we were too late for the spider orchids and too early for the bee orchids… somehow timed our visit to miss them both, can you believe it? But it is such a rich environment there that the orchids were just one thing of many to see, in those meadows you almost don’t know what to look at first.
Looking at the changing seasons from around the world, different climates, habitats and seasons as described by other bloggers has been one of the best parts of blogging for me.
Hey there! Me again…
Ahhh, what a beautiful place…I just love the water. And your flowers are so different from anything I’ve seen here, in Virginia, at least. That Kidney Vetch, Houndstongue and Eyebright are really unique. The Eyebright looks as though it was “splashed” with the yellow color.
The other day I took a picture of a similar-looking beetle, but it didn’t come out. And it was brown, nothing as striking as that beautiful green.
Beautiful photos, as usual, Bird!
Thank you Holly! I’m always so interested to hear what my friends across the sea think of my finds… Durlston is quite a special place so you get these wonderfully species rich habitats just bursting with life… both common and uncommon. One of these days I intend to write about all the really truly common wildflowers we have in the UK and I bet you will recognise quite a lot of them – I’ll be interested to know!
This is a fabulous post and I am sooo impressed with your knowledge here. I take photographs of allsorts but often don’t even know the name of common wildflowers and these all look to be rather uncommon. The beetle shot is gorgeous and thanks for sharing the gentian, I don’t think I have ever seen one! Lovely!
Well thank you Chrissy! …puffs out chest proudly… But I have to admit I didn’t know some of these gorgeous flowers on sight. I bet I wouldn’t know a third of the birds you know, although I’m trying to learn more all the time. Anyway I have a couple of tips for looking more knowledgeable than you actually are when it comes to wildlife…
A/ Go for walks with people who really know their stuff, then pick their brains
B/ Take a field guide
C/ If all else fails and there is one available, ask a Ranger! (or anyone lurking about with binoculars, notebook and a camera, they are almost certainly going to be happy to help)
So a lot of the knowledge in this post was quite newly gained
There is a fabulous site called Wild about Britain where I’ve picked up a lot of interesting facts
http://www.wildaboutbritain.co.uk/
which has some extremely helpful forum members who have helped me with a few insect id’s in the past.