First Butterflies of the Year.

 Yesterday's (Wenesday, 25th) sunny warmth brought out the first butterflies of the year. Several pale yellow Brimstones and and a very welcome Small Tortoiseshell, flew quickly through my front garden, not settling so no pictures. The Small Tortoiseshels have not been very plentyful in recent years so perhaps we can hope that this early emergence might be a sign off better numbers to come.

A walk down the path to Ashton  in the afternoon where several Peacocks and a single Comma settled on patches of bare earth sunning themselves, long enough  to get pictures of sorts. 

Peacock. Photo. John Elliott. Click to enlarge.

  Comma. Photo. John Elliott. Click to enlarge.

 

 

 

News of my Cuckoo, Arthur.

 

Arthur surges west to Ivory Coast!

Suffolk Cuckoo Arthur arrived in the Congo Basin in late October and spent most of the next three months in eastern Gabon. In mid January he moved north and west into southern Cameroon, where he remained for the rest of the month. On the 6th February it was clear that he was making his move to west Africa as he was by then passing over Ghana. He pressed on and by 8th February he had reached Ivory Coast, almost 1,200 miles from his previous location in Cameroon. The latest signal from his tag shows him on the outskirts of the city of Soubré, in the south-west of the country. This move completes the first leg of Arthur's migration back to Suffolk. Will Arthur continue at this pace and be the first of our tagged Cuckoos to tackle the Sahara? Watch this space!

 The rotting log on the Church Green is covered in a mass of fungi at the moment, mostly Tripe Fungus , Auricularia mesenterica, which is described as 'a fairly common species that forms dense tiers, often laterally fused, on old stumps. (I must admit that it doesn't look much like the tripe I ate in my youth up North and which doesn't seem to exist now in Dorset).

    Tripe Fungus. Photo. John Elliott. Clic to enlarge.    

 On the end of the log, as well as Tripe Fungus, the is also the much commoner King Alfred's Cakes, Daldinia concentrica, which are the globolar, burned looking bits on the lower half of the log 

   King Alfred's Cakes. Photo. John Elliott. Click to enlarge.

In spite of their name they are classed as 'inedible', as is also the Tripe. We seem to have lost our, once plentyful, Field Mushrooms and the very best of mushrooms, the Parasol Mushroom.