Upper Cwm Cadlan

Having failed to find any Wheatear at the upper end of Cwm Cadlan, last Sunday, I went back up there yesterday afternoon and had a lovely male, where I usually get my first. A search around the small quarries, looking for Wall Rue fern (Asplenium ruta-muraria) and more specifically the rare rust fungus (Milesina murariae) which can be found on it. There wasn't much of the fern and what there was seemed either devoid of the rust or too small and inaccessible to allow inspection.

It is a pity how overgrazed that site is, given its potentially rich flora. In the small clefts in the limestone, I found quite a lot of the distinctive foliose lichen Solorina saccata.

Solorina saccata

It is fairly common on the limestone. I looked for the rarer Peltigera leucophlebia, but the turf it would have been present in was far too closely cropped, so no joy there.

There was a half decent sunset, in a subtle sort of way: almost worth freezing my kneecaps off for.

While waiting for the sun to get on with it and set, I was interested to see this airliner, with contrail, casting a shadow directly ahead of itself, onto a thin layer of cloud below it. At this time of day, with the sun almost on the horizon, it almost defies the brain's version of common sense to see something as high as the aircraft casting a shadow below it. To our brain's strange idea of reality, the sun is below the aircraft, so it should cast a shadow up.

Aircraft moving from bottom right, casting shadow to top left.

This morning, while sorting out the garden moth trap, I was overjoyed to hear my first Chiff Chaff of the year, singing briefly from the other side of the field behind us.