{"id":86,"date":"2014-03-22T14:26:23","date_gmt":"2014-03-22T14:26:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.obsessedbynature.com\/blog\/?p=86"},"modified":"2014-04-11T08:35:45","modified_gmt":"2014-04-11T08:35:45","slug":"summer-spring-winter-in-a-day","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.obsessedbynature.com\/blog\/2014\/03\/22\/summer-spring-winter-in-a-day\/","title":{"rendered":"Summer, Spring, Winter … in a day"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Large<\/a>
Large Cumulus at Wraysbury<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

We had summer already. Yes, in March.\u00a0 It was baking hot for two weeks, then it ended as suddenly as it began. Then we had spring: the grass started to grow; the gooseberry bush is covered in its fresh green dress; the cherry trees in the streets are glowing with white and pink blossom; now the plum tree too is following with its delicate white flowers.<\/p>\n

I grabbed my binoculars and went down to Wraysbury Lakes to see if any warblers had arrived. Even from the road I could hear a Chiffchaff singing; there were at least 10 singing around the lake, so plenty of migrant birds must have arrived to join any hardy overwinterers in the springtime. A Cetti’s Warbler, too, sang its loud brief song from the waterside. But no other warblers, yet; the chorus included a Song Thrush as well as the usual small birds, Great Tits making an odd rasping noise today (nothing like the typical ticha-ticha-ticha call), Robins, Dunnocks, Wrens, a Blackbird.<\/p>\n

On the water, I had a surprise: there were two female Goldeneye still present, and a handsome male not far from them. Their biological clocks are still on the ‘Winter’ setting, clearly; their far northern breeding grounds guaranteed to be bitterly cold, devoid of food so early in the year. And near them, two pairs of Pochard, the handsomely rufous-headed males gleaming in the bright sunshine.<\/p>\n

A loud splashing alerted me to the presence of an aggressive Mute Swan, its neck folded back, its wings raised threateningly; it had flown a short distance to warn off a rival male, which did its best to appear unconcerned. They both swam very fast, repeating the flying off a short distance\u00a0 (the rival) and noisily giving chase (the threatener) three times. Eventually the rival decided he had saved face enough, and flew off a hundred metres or so, leaving most of the lake to the victor.<\/p>\n

I turned to walk on, and out of the blue sky came a minute’s hail, the grains about 5 mm across, pattering cleanly on to the ground. The wind freshened to force 4 from the southwest, feeling wintry on my ears; presumably up at Cumulus cloud level, the wind was strong enough to carry the hail some distance sideways from where it had formed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We had summer already. Yes, in March.\u00a0 It was baking hot for two weeks, then it ended as suddenly as it began. Then we had spring: the grass started to grow; the gooseberry bush is covered in its fresh green dress; the cherry trees in the streets are glowing with white and pink blossom; now … Continue reading Summer, Spring, Winter … in a day<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[88,25,6],"tags":[47,10,54,53,52],"class_list":["post-86","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-nature-reserves","category-wetlands","category-wildlife","tag-cettis-warbler","tag-goldeneye","tag-hail-stones","tag-pochard","tag-wraysbury-lakes"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.obsessedbynature.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.obsessedbynature.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.obsessedbynature.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.obsessedbynature.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.obsessedbynature.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=86"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.obsessedbynature.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":89,"href":"https:\/\/www.obsessedbynature.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86\/revisions\/89"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.obsessedbynature.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=86"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.obsessedbynature.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=86"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.obsessedbynature.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=86"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}