30 DAYS WILD : 25 - TODAY I WALKED IN THE WOODS . . . WATER

Today I walked in the woods.

Cuckoo spit. Woods in Luddenden Valley. June 25th 2020

There was cuckoo-spit in the grass. (Cuckoo spit is a damp froth which conceals the nymph of an insect called a 'froghopper'. I once brushed the 'spit' away and found a little green monster inside. It was nothing like its adult form. It would seem cruel to repeat the experiment for the sake of a photograph so you will have to imagine what it looks like!)

I came to a gate.

The gate led to a grassy stone bridge.

At the far side of the bridge was a style into a field.

Luddenden Brook. West Yorkshire. June 25th 2020.

But I didn't go into the field, I went under the bridge.

And looked along the brook.

And into the water.

(This reads as if it's a story for very little children learning to read so perhaps I should finsish by saying

"THE END"!)

This post is part of the 30 Days Wild Challenge set annually by the Wildlife Trusts.

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30 DAYS WILD : DAY 8 - WATER BESIDE THE BRIDGE

Another bridge on the same walk.
Photographed last year, June 20th 2019.

So there I was, walking along, when I came to a bridge - not the bridge in the picture, a newer one, further along the path. And I thought it might be time for a 'stuck foot post'. A stuck foot post is where you stand still and see what you can see. You can swivel and stretch but must keep one foot 'stuck' in the same place while you do your 'observing'.

Standing on the bridge and looking down to the 'drain' (where water runs in a channel from the moor to the reservoir) I could see oil had got into it. Whether it was natural or from a farmer's machinery I couldn't tell but it was very beautiful and for the most part a lovely, delicate shade of blue - with marks on it. Had the pattern been made by something just under the surface or had something very light walked on water? (It was about an inch wide. Possibly a bit more.)

I thought perhaps I would find out if I enlarged the picture at home. Nope. That didn't help. I took some other 'stuck foot' style photos, a fern in the wall of the drain . . . some white flowers, some heather . . . then walked to the other end of the short bridge. This meant I could take a picture of the moor. (The white tufts are seed heads of Hare's Tail Cottongrass - Eriophorum vaginatum.)

Pond Skater?
See the Wildlife's Trust's page on
Gerris lacustris for more info.
Or for even more detail see Wikipedia on
Gerridae

Then, looking back down at the water, I took a photo of the bits of grass and sedge or whatever that seemed to have drifted into the corner against the side of the bridge and the drain. I thought it might make an interesting photo of a pattern. It didn't really. But while I was looking around in it (enlarged) . . . . . . I came across this. Some kind of water boatman would you say? (Though to me it's the wrong shape. I hope one of you will come to the rescue! Hurrah! Graeme at Imperfect and Tense suggests Pond Skater. That looks much more likely!) Is this the solution to the first puzzle? Is this who walked on the oily water and left a pattern of footsteps behind?

30 DAYS WILD
Today's Random Act of
Wildness is to
find an invertebrate.

In this post then, the eighth challenge for 30 Acts of Random Wildness in June can be to come across an invertebrate. (It's wonderful when you can make things up as you go along!) And in doing this, I realise I am also inventing another kind of post. There were the slug trails and the dandelion seeds and the bird which might be a lark or might have been a meadow pipit (opinion is divided) and before that there were the sycamore aphids. This new kind of post is a picture in a picture, a surprise in a photo, a 'Where's Wally' of the natural history world.

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