jungli

 It is always a massive honour to see a wild cat species in the wild, be it big or small. Of course having said that there are times and places where some cats may be expected more than others which is why this jungle cat was both a special surprise but at the same time "not the droid we were looking for".

 

When we picked the cat up it was prone and I spent at least 20 seconds of my initial scan of the water hole pondering whether I was looking at a bit of drift wood, a small croc or a big(ish) varanid. It was only when our guide said jungle cat that I instantly managed to resolve what I was seeing into a cat. At that point it stood up and gave us a decent show.



These are biggish small cats (about half as big again as an ordinary moggie) and are apparently reasonably common in their habitat. Nonetheless they are a good way from the top of the food chain and understandable secretive so getting good views of one in broad daylight was a treat.



They have surprisingly delicate little faces for a relatively burly cat I think.



He was not the only cat to use that waterhole that week......

More than just irises of course....

It wasn't just irises at the orchid fields of course. As the name suggests other things grow there too...


This is ragged robin, another moisture lover (it is very wet this year - my swank new fivefinger shoes got soaked through).


Loose-flowered orchids are the plants that give these fields their name. I'm still looking for that elusive white morph. There are also a lot of the buttercup species shown at bottom left in this field adding a yellow hue.

I've photographed the above individual for the past three years; it's a hybrid between the southern marsh orchid (D. praetermissa) and one of the smaller common Dactylorhiza species like the D. fuschii below....

 

Last but not least is this delicate little bugle peaking through the grass....

Iris comparison

I happened to be out in the orchid fields the other day and noticed some yellow flag irises flowering. Having shared "ivory" last week I thought a comparison with the species might be interesting so here it is.....

 

Although I grow cultivars of this species I'm not sure whether I don't prefer the pure form more with it's bright colouration and it's big broad bib.

 

Here's ivory taken on the same day. Note the much narrower bib - as far as I know this is not a hybrid but rather just a colour morph.

 

I have at least one more cultivar coming in to flower so there will likely be more comparisons to come.

pool gone native.....

 As is my style, I've planted the pool not only with ornamental pond plants but with ornamental improvements on native species.

The first three shots below are differing looks at one of my Iris pseudoacorus. This species is commonly called the yellow flag and grows wild in a few places here. It is usually bright yellow but I've selected a few plants of this cultivar "ivory" which is rather more subtle.







I have a few other cultivars of this species but the local mallards keep standing on them. What are ya gonna do? Below are the remnants on one of my king cup (Caltha palustris) cultivars. I think this might be Auengold but I honestly don't know any more.



Meanwhile the lilies are just starting to wake up.....

Magic Eye Reveal

If you said "some rock" you were, technically, right.  If you said "some rock art" high5 yourself. If you said "an outline of a pleistocene bison carved into rock a long long time ago" then respect and/or you cheated. Eitherway this is what we were looking at yesterday with the addition of some helpful pink lines....

This is one of the UK's only pieces of pre-historic cave art and it's from Creswell Crags in Derbyshire. We'll get into some of the other beasties that roamed there not so very long ago in the near future (hint OMG - big carnivores in the UK; nature geek out stuff) but this is a bison (or I suppose more accurately a wisent?).

One of the things with cave art I always notice is how, even though it may not look particularly like the animal in question, it often highlights the things that are distinctive about the animal (the jizz of the animal would be a good way of describing this for birders). The line of that shoulder and related size and position of the head just screams bison (as opposed to say "cow") to me. Creswell is a beautiful little site and as the home of Britain's only significant cave art is well worth a look if you're nature, prehistory or even paleo/primally oriented. Some really cool stuff to look at and a really neat little museum housing artifacts and fossils. More on the fossils soon.