Heather, its Heather time and it makes the wood look great. Now there is Heather and there is Ling and also Heath, and what I have at Ninewells wood is Calluna vulgaris which some folks call Heather and some call Ling but not many call it Heath.

This is the problem with common names. Most heathers are Erica, and they have larger flowers and often flower a bit earlier. I do have a very small amount of Erica tetralix growing in the wood and that is commonly known as Cross-leaved Heath. However my main purple plant is Calluna. 

What I would like to do is get some bird photos with a bit of Heather in the foreground and a blur of purple as the background. I remember reading a photographic book by the Spring Watch chappie, Packham, who is himself a very good photographer and one of his recommended techniques was to make up a sort of wreath made of a suitable wild flower like heather and then photograph the chosen bird through the gap in the middle of the ‘wreath’ so that some of the flowers were part of the photo but produced a blured surround. It looked quite natural and made for a more interesting photo.

This week I have only been to the wood once to take photographs, we did have our normal Sunday morning walk but that was with the family. So Thursday I was there and it was a fairly average day. Half-eye came down fairly soon after my arrival and spent some time on the ground, well actually most of it on one of the stumps. I have noticed that lots of the birds prefer the elevated position of a stump to being actually on the ground. Often they will get a bit of food from the ground and then fly up onto the stump to eat it, a more secure position no doubt.

After Half -eyes visit, it went quiet but I did take a few shots of the run of the mill birds, like Great Tit, Nuthatch and Great Spotted Woodpecker.

Later one of the young Buzzards turned up and was on the ground(or a stump) for a long time, so long in fact that I eventually left the hide and disturbed it, something I don’t like to do and obviously the Buzzard did not appreciate it as it gave me a low fly past and a loud mew as it passed overhead.

Getting back to the Heather, its presence indicates to me that originally this site was more of a heathland habitat with some trees and not a full on Woodland rather like the neighbouring area of Trellech Beacon. Also the presence of large amounts of Bilberry adds to this view. Anywhere where it is open and the light gets in then these typically heathland plants pop up. I have written about this before on this blog.

https://catbrookwood.wordpress.com/2017/04/29/hairs-tail-cotton-grass-eriophorum-vaginatum/