Spring Flowers along the Cotswold Way

While taking some holiday last week, we did some of the Cotswold Way from Chipping Camden to Dowdeswell Reservoir. As well as beautiful scenery, lots of cute lambs, birds such as bramblings, redstart and a first cuckoo of the year on Cleeve Hill, one of the highlights were the carpets of spring flowers, especially celandines, violets and the first bluebells along the path. Walking was a lovely way to spend several sunny Spring days, and I’m looking forward to doing the next legs of the walk South towards Stroud over the coming weeks.

Lesser Celandine (Ficaria verna)

Bugle (Ajuga reptans)

Jack by the Hedge (Alliaria petiolata)

Wood Anemone (Anemonoides nemorosa)

Belas Knapp

Belas Knapp above Winchcombe makes a great walk, listening to the skylarks and visiting the Bronze Age burial mound with its excavated burial chambers. Not that I really want it as a weed in the garden, but the candy coloured flowers of Field Bindweed really are sweet. Plants loving calcareous soil included Quaking Grass and Wild Thyme growing on the long barrow itself.

Field Bindweed (Convolvulus arvensis)

Bronze Age Burial Chamber

Quaking Grass (Briza maxima)

Wild Thyme (Thymus polytrichus)

Plenty of Weather

It’s a schizophrenic season. When the sun shines and the wind drops the birds are soon singing and bumble bees buzzing. A song thrush, robin, wren and greenfinches are all taking up territories, a noisy pair of Canada geese fly over most mornings and magpies are making a nest in the Beech tree. A calling little owl one still evening during the week, was new for the garden. But the rest of the time with gales, endless rain and the temperature dropping this week so we even had snow, the smaller species like tits, finches and sparrows have disappeared and the garden feeders are deathly quiet.

One excitement has been birds of prey with Sparrowhawk and Red Kite overhead, and even a passing Peregrine one day. I remember as a kid going whole years where I only saw three or four raptor species, so seeing three species on one day out of my window reflects a massive turnaround in their fortunes. I’m also lucky that my commute passes over the Cotswolds, so as well as enjoying some snowy scenes, I regularly see kites and owls along the road - this week I got great views from the car of Barn and Short-eared Owls around Hawling & Salperton.