Sunday, April 15, 2007

Newt nuts

Today as the leaves on the oak trees started to unfurl, the sun shone & we went to Redgrave and Lopham Fen. This beautiful and rare patch of open land is the largest remaining river valley fen in England. It's the home of the 'Raft Spider'. One of only 2 places in the world where this rare creature lives.
We went searching not for spiders (as I'm not all that keen on them) but for Newts. This is a picture of the Great Crested from this website.
I'd never seen one of these most English of creatures. Richard had regaled me with stories of catching them as a boy & keeping them in festering jars in his bedroom at home. We did see some as we stood staring into a pond. I was thrilled, but we only saw small brown ones...... not the Great Crested or anything.
There were violets out in the woods. ...........Soon there will be Bluebells & Lilac.We also found this tiny creature. A clump of sticks bound together moving along under water.


On the way home we stopped to try & capture this huge field of yellow. It was yellower in real life & smelled really good.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

so what is that field of yellow?

JoeyJoJo said...

I think it's 'Rape'. But I didn't want to put that on the main page. Seemed to slightly tarnish the blog-o-roonie.
It could be mustard though I suppose.

JoeyJoJo said...

I just did a google search & discovered 'Rape' or Rapeseed is actually canola.