Hornsea Wildlife and Walks: Where The Bee Sucks - It's Music Jim, but not as we know it

Cowslip looking good

The cowslips are well and truly out and, as usual these days, a word triggers a memory. This time "cowslip" brought to mind a song we were taught in junior school. I could only remember the first two lines that went:

Where the bee sucks, there suck I

In a cowslip’s bell I lie.

I had to Google the song to bring back the rest of the words and I was really surprised to find that it was by Shakespeare and is from The Tempest. The rest of verse is:

There I couch when owls do cry.

On the bat’s back I do fly

After summer merrily.

Merrily, merrily shall I live now

Under the blossom that hangs on the bough.

We used to learn all sorts of old folk songs in junior school that I don't think are taught any more. The Skye Boat Song, The Happy Wanderer, Hearts Of Oak and such like. Probably only oldies of my generation remember them.

Bluebells are in flower as well but I can't enjoy the full beauty of these flowers as I usually do in the wood along the walk to the (still closed) hide. A few are visible from the wood edge though...

The new month of May has been a disappointment on the temperature front with every day so far struggling to reach double figures. This just isn't good enough and it needs to change! 😂

Warblers are singing loudly each morning as I walk along the south side of The Mere and it's a wonderful sound. Chiff Chaff, Willow Warbler, Blackcap, Sedge Warbler, Lesser Whitethroat and Whitethroat all present and correct - just need to hear a Reed Warbler to complete the expected list. (Grasshopper Warbler is also absent but although we expect to hear one or two in early Spring, they don't hang about.)

Singing Whitethroat

Whitethroat

Our resident warbler, the Cetti's, aka the bane of my life, is doing a great job frustrating the life out of me. It sings loudly from deep undergrowth and has managed to avoid me successfully training my camera lens on it for nigh on 10 years. Blurry, out of focus, twigs in the way, dark - you name it I've had all sorts of so called photos of this little blighter. It happened again this morning but it was my fault this time.

Cetti's are skulkers and do not usually sit out in the open so you can get a clear shot, well not at The Mere they don't, so imagine my amazement when I saw a Cetti's on a branch with nothing in the way. Up up up went the camera, click click click went the shutter, zing zing zing went my heart strings as I thought I'd cracked it.

Just out of focus Cetti's Warbler this morning

As above, out of focus

Ditto

Turns out I had my focus setting wrong (again). I'd been photographiong birds in flight so I set the camera accordingly to have the centre section of the viewfinder sensitive to auto focus. Therefore the hawthorn leaves are in focus but the Cetti's isn't. It should have been set to a centre point focus but given the bird was only out in the open for a few seconds I didn't have time to correct it😢

There are a few Linnet still feeding in the fields around the set aside, but that has now been ploughed and harrowed - hopefully more wild flower seeds will be planted this year as this has been a great success over the past few years with good numbers of finches feeding there through winter.

Linnet

Little Egrets continue to visit us every now and then and it is surely only a matter of time before they breed near by. I see them in Stream Dyke more often than I see them at The Mere, but this one was a The Mere today.