Strictly speaking of course, these are not specifically pond plants. However, they are all plants that were found close to the pond and woodland environment in Three Crosses where we went dragonfly hunting last week (see earlier posts).
Anybody feel like identifying them for me?
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Following on from my weekend posts on the Countryside Connections dragonfly and damselfly hunt at Three Crosses community woodland, these photos are about the environment in which we found the creatures.
The pictures say almost everything about the kind of environment you are likely to find dragonflies but every time I see these wonderful creatures, I am reminded of another environment.
During my childhood in Northern Ireland we had regular visits to a cottage in the Annalong Valley of the Mourne Mountains. The riverbed of the Annalong River was pretty dry a lot of the time because the water was diverted to the Silent Valley reservoir, but it was a perfect place for dragonflies and my memories of those days, playing among the rocks and boulders of the river, are marked by the fantastic colours of the numerous dragonflies that also enjoyed that environment.
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Images are available for sale on the StillWalks Photography website.
Visit the StillWalks website for videos and more
Those dragonflies from yesterdays post were hunted and found in two places – Three Crosses Community Woodland near Swansea and Gelli Hir Woodland on the northern side of the Gower Peninsula.
Both places are beautiful and the weather was perfect for finding what we were after. I wasn’t doing any sound recording on this visit but I will be going back, so yet again, watch this space!
StillWalks is about promoting a sense of health and wellbeing, enjoying the sights and sounds of your local environment. Both the Three Crosses and the Gelli Hir woodlands are places that I will be visiting again with the assurance that, whatever the weather, I will enjoying a sense of wellbeing while I am there.
Images from this series are available on the StillWalks Photography website.
Visit the StillWalks website for videos and more
Swansea Countryside Connections Team, through which StillWalks ran the Sights and Sounds of the Countryside project, put on a number of events throughout the year for those living in eligible rural wards in Swansea. It was one of their dawn chorus walks where I first met Helen Grey and it was she, along with Tim Orrell, who was leading the Nature Detective Walk along the Gower Way from Felindre to Lower Lliw Reservoir last Wednesday evening. See the photos below.
As this was the route taken by the Sights and Sounds project on the production day for the Felindre Families group, I thought it would be good to go along – and indeed it was! I discovered what the funny lumps and bumps are in the first field we crossed. We found a very old ash tree with branches twisting and twining round each other, reflecting its age. We saw Deadly Nightshade amongst other plants and flowers, a badger set, mole holes, young Hazelnuts, whin, thistles, ducks, etc., etc.
“Helen, you will have to remind me of that last little yellow flower I asked you about. I cannot remember it it now!”
Click here (Countryside Connections Events) to see what other Countryside Connections events are coming up.
You could call these “sand sculptures”. That is surely what the wind on Swansea beach has been doing this week.
Nervous about the hazardous mixture of sand and cameras, the wind that blew those land surfers around on the beach the other day (see previous posts this week), didn’t stop me taking the risk and getting some low level shots of the public art work it was creating.
It is not in the same style as the work featured in yesterday’s post but over the years the wind and sand have blasted and changed those public art works in Swansea Maritime Quarter.
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Coming down from the hills at the end of the day and heading into the sunlight can provide some remarkable views of the landscape – dependant, of course, on the weather conditions and time of year.
The end of my journey home from Felindre brought me down from the hills towards Pontarddulais in South Wales where there is a vast network of metal giants criss-crossing the land as part of the National Grid.
Electricity pylons seen against the light and the land need not be a blot, but rather a fascinating part of the composition, creating patterns and networks of lines that may not be natural, but are something we are happy to live with in order to have the power we need for modern life.
These and more photos can be seen and purchased at StillWalks PhotoShelter.
I posted these sounds to all my other social media platforms this morning but held back until now to post it here.
The sounds were recorded during my recce walk for a new StillWalk video along a stretch of recently discovered river and woodland near where I live.
The video will obviously not include the Lancaster Bomber as it won’t be around when I do the actual production walk but it was good to hear on its way home from the annual air show at Swansea.