What is this Flower?

Any idea what this flower is? It comes out every year in May just for a few weeeks and goes as quick as it comes.

Picture taken on a grass bank on the edge of marsh land and open fields. Such a joy to see, would love to put a name to it.

We are soooo lucky!

This morning on our regular jaunt across the countryside to the beach we saw a Kestral, the Marsh Harrier a wonderful Yellow Wagtail and Mr and Mrs Swanny with their nine signets!

Its days like today that my friend and I and our posse of five dogs are truly thankful that we have our health to do this walk and we have all this wonderful wildlife on our doorstep.

Scrappy & Bo What you found?

Bo - 5 yrs old girl. Nice natured, affectionate, loves rolling in smelly things. Scrappy (no tail) - 3 yrs old boy. Nice natured but not with some other dogs! Affectionate, loves chasing things, never stops running, not frightened of anything and an absolute nutter (you wouldn't think he only weighs 7kg)Both love the car, the beach and going in the sea.

Did someone shout biscuit

Life is such fun when your young!

(Poppy thirteen months)

Bigger is better!

She may be called Minnie but when it comes to finding a stick to carry there is nothing Minnie about the stick!

Redbacked Shrike sighting

A couple of weeks into April I was walking the dogs in the fields from low road. It was early morning and looked to be a promising day. The dogs were dragging behind with too many lovely smells to hurry themselves. I myself had reached the footbridge by the gate and turned to wait for them to catch me up.

Sitting on the gate watching me was a simply lovely looking bird a bit bigger than a sparrow and such wonderful markings I had never seen anything like him before. He was shoulder height with me and about eight foot away, I chatted to him telling him how handsome he was and I could surely remember his markings for when I got home to look him up in the RSPB bird identifier page as I often do trying to improve my knowledge of our country birds and sea wildlife.

He had the mask of Zorro like a band across his eyes with the most beautiful grey/blue cap and striking reddy brown back. As he flew up to the trees I caught a flash of white, he had made my day such a lovely thing.

I met up with my friend and we continued our walk, not seeing the bird again.
Returning home and a cuppa later I switched on the laptop to start some work and remembered to check the RSPB web site first. I scrolled through all the possibilities until I came upon him, a red backed shrike, and now I new.

But no, how could it be, reading about him he was on the red alert list with only five known breeding pairs in this country! I felt I had to tell someone. I contacted the local RSPB guy from the web site to let him know and he was very nice but thought it was more likely to be the grey backed shrike or the wheatear. And so I checked them out.

Sorry folks and all that I know I am my only witness but it was definitely not either of those, this little fella stared at me for several long seconds before taking flight and he was definitely the red backed shrike.

I now always take bins with me and my hubby bought me some with a built in camera just incase I spot him again. The following Sunday he was mentioned in Country file saying they have not been seen in this country since the 80’s! How quite unbelievable that I actually saw one and here in Dovercourt!