Welcome – British wildflowers
Welcome to my blog! I love spotting wildflowers when I’m out and about in nature. I’m always taking pics – often with my smartphone – some better than others! Recently I’ve been making more effort to identify them but I’m not a botanist.
Two themes
This website is intended to be a blog where I put all my most recent pics, but I’m also building an identification resource. Every time I ID something new, I try to explain a bit about it. See these in the Wildflower links down the right hand side. You can see I still have a way to go! The pages I have put up may be incomplete because I only write about flowers I have seen. There may be related species I haven’t come across yet. There are many more wildflower pics on this site – just use the search box (top right) to find them or scroll through my posts.
You might notice that the month given in the blog post heading doesn’t match the month the post was written. This is because I’m often out and about and busy in the summer and then write it up in the winter.
Nature notes
This is where I put things spotted while out and about that don’t justify their own blog post:
21/04/25
Our wren was very feisty hopping about on the patio today (we don’t usually see him) and singing loudly. There was a heron on the island of the small pond at the bottom of our road.
19/01/25
Today I saw a wren, five or six chaffinches and a magpie on my walk back from the shops. There was also a juvenile herring gull at the pond pestering its mum for food.
In the garden, building on the previous list, I’ve now also seen one fox, one squirrel and a male blackbird. We never did see a male blackcap, so maybe the female was just passing through, as some are migratory.
08/01/25
Birds seen in the garden this week:
- 1 Dunnock
- 1 Blackcap, female
- 2 Blue tits
- 1 Robin
- Sparrows
- 3 Pigeons – a pair plus one
- 2 Collared Doves
- 1 Blackbird, female
06/07/24
I’ve been seeing a lot of Marbled white butterflies recently so I guess it’s a good year for them! They like unimproved grassland and long grass. This one is visiting Tufted vetch, Vicia cracca in our local dog walking field in Seaford, called the Last Meadow.
01/01/24
Starting the year with a flowering plant!
Hottentot fig Carpobrotus edulis on Bexhill seafront in East Sussex. Apparently the plant was introduced to UK gardens from South Africa in the 17th Century and has been quietly spreading since. It likes seaside areas where it can be invasive.
For earlier items check out my Nature Notes page
