Is November the new October?

I mentioned in my last post that a very late and accordingly feeble sunflower is still trying to grow in the garden. So here it is for all to see:

Sunflower

The point of course is that we would normally have had a substantial frost by now and it looks like we will be into the second half of November before there is one, so it's good to focus in on the flowers we wouldn't normally be seeing.  In fact there are several garden patches where things are continuing to bloom, notably a couple of sweet peas and some survivors from a pack of seed I hopefully spread on one of the borders next to the lawn.

Sweet Pea

Border

Border

There are a couple of hanging baskets still thriving and one or two other bits and pieces.

The trend has continued on my trips out. On Saturday I finished off a cycle run at Wylam on the off chance there might still be ivy bees around.  There weren't but the ivy was certainly still in flower and there were honey bees and a single buff-tailed bumblebee plus an imitator that I haven't so far identified.

Honey Bee

On Sunday I had another trip to Seaton Sluice where I again failed to catch up with the snow buntings.  Here there was a fair quantity of white dead nettle in flower and a few sprigs of what is apparently Valerian (never heard of!)

Valerian

As far as the birds were concerned, there weren't any stonechats this time, but I did find a couple of goldfinch feeding on seed.  Sometimes also you notice something new about a bird that's common - in this case that starlings have some brown wing feathers.

Starlings

Goldfinch

Similarly, what did these sparrows find so interesting about the harbour wall?

Sparrows

Although temperatures will be falling slowly, it looks like the October weather will last for at least another week.

Betwixt and Between

I don't like this time of year, when the butterflies gradually disappear and the bees become scarce.  

There still is the odd butterfly around of course but the last ones I saw were a large white and a speckled wood around 8th October and nothing since.  A week afterwards I thought I'd found some ivy bees next to the cycle track north of Styford but it proved they were all honey bees.  It was the pale version of western honey bee that I was confusing. 

The temperature does however remain mostly above seasonal norms and the birds are still gobbling up the sunflower seeds and hearts with gay abandon - particularly coal and other tits but nuthatch and bullfinch of both genders continue to visit regularly.  A good trick would be to catch one of each species feeding together but they are obviously not friendly so the best I managed was male and female bullfinch together.

Bullfinches

A pleasant surprise was to find a green lacewing on my shed window and, with no frost so far, some flowers are still blooming including a very late and rather pathetic attempt at a sunflower. 

With some reluctance though I decided it was time to concentrate on birds.  I started out a couple of weekends ago at Newbiggin.  It was a Sunday so the golf course was busy but on the coastal path I found a twitchy flock of about thirty birds I thought might be twite.  They weren't settling for long and the only ones I snapped were linnets, though I cursed the hiker who walked straight toward one settled group I was trying to photograph, thinking that linnet and twite often mix.

Linnet

I suppose though that twite tend to turn up a bit later in the year.

One or two snow buntings have been turning up, some apparently on the grass at Seaton Sluice so i set off to find them the Sunday after.

It looked like they'd be easy to find but there are a lot of twisting paths through grassy areas at Seaton Sluice so I didn't find them.  By way of compensation there were several stonechats, which I always like and also a solitary pair of male chaffinches, which I must say I regard almost as a rarity as they are one species that I never see in the garden.

Stonechat

Chaffinch