I Love Arnside and Silverdale: Snippets of Wealth - Saturday 27th July 2019 - Dalton Crags

Saturday 27 July 2019

Snippets of Wealth - Saturday 27th July 2019 - Dalton Crags - Hypericum Montanum/Scollies etc

Hypericum Montanum (Pale St John's Wort) - Click over to enlarge and see the spots

Photo: Dalton Crags 27th July 2019

I decided for the odd hour I had to visit one of my favourites DALTON CRAGS. It is always good for thrushes holding up during the Winter, but never did I expect to see a party of about 40 Blackbirds including one or two other thrushes as well eg: a Mistle Thrush and a Song Thrush at this time of year.

I love the word "merle" of Blackbirds which is one of the nouns, but neither forgetting 'A cloud of Blackbirds' or a cluster of Blackbirds, or extending the range to thrushes we can have 'a hermitage of thrushes' or even a 'mutation of thrushes'

A young Dunnock party with contact calls as though they were all over the place, but I did manage to see the sentinel parent looking down on her circle of offspring...

I made my way to check out the irregular scollies which included the beauty that forks over at the end which I am told is a variety called 'Ramosum' and nearby a terrific area with lots of 'marginatum' variety, you just can't go wrong for ferns just in the couple of hundred yards or so of the lower Dalton Crags eg: Male Ferns, Lady Ferns, Hard Ferns, Brittle Bladder Ferns, Harts Tongue Fern, Rigid Buckler Fern, Limestone Fern and Wall Rue.

I also wanted to check out our rare Hypericum Montanum (Pale St. John's Wort) of which we are lucky enough to have one of our three Hutton Roof populations within the lower Dalton Crags area, and to see if I could get a photo of one of the perforated leaves - remember according to the books they are not supposed to have translucent spots on the leaves... (humbug!!) all ours on Hutton Roof show them..