The Lark Ascending

[puddleshark]

The west wind is still March cold, but along the Priest's Way the skylarks are singing.





An early morning walk from Acton down to the coast in search of Early Spider Orchids.



A landscape of stone quarries and spoil heaps, thin-soiled pastures bounded by dry stone walls.




Dunnocks singing scratchy songs from the blackthorn.


Dry stone wall under repair. The waller sorts the stones roughly by size, then puts the wall back together like a 3D jigsaw.



Onto the Wares, an area of rough pasture above the sea.





On the short-grazed pasture, if you look carefully, the first few Early Spider Orchids appearing:


Ophrys sphegodes.

Comments

[house_wren]

Thank you for another great walk. Orchids and ocean...lovely.

[puddleshark]

You're welcome!

Such strange flowers, those Spider Orchids! But it's lovely to see them back again this year.

[heleninwales]

We managed a walk this afternoon around the small back lanes. We normally do our walks in the morning when we go together, but it was raining, yet again and there is more rain forecast all the rest of the week. This is getting beyond a joke.

[puddleshark]

I was quite lucky with the weather over the weekend, and managed a couple of good walks. But trying to come back through the fields yesterday instead of along the chalk track, this turned out to be a big mistake. My boots were being sucked into the earth at every step. Everywhere is just sodden.

And today it is raining again.