In the green Black Country
WE have more fantastic nature photographs sent in by Bugle readers.
First up is a dandelion (Taraxacum officinale) by regular contributor Richard Pursehouse. These flowers, often viewed as weeds, get their name from the French dent de lion, meaning lion’s tooth.
A common folk name is “blowball”, from the children’s game of blowing away the seeds to tell the time. Another game is more cruel. If a child should blow away all the seeds in one go it means that their mother no longer wants them, but if a few seeds are left then they should run home as fast as they can.
Another name for the dandelion is “piss-a-bed”, from their notorious diuretic qualities. However, somewhat perversely, if a child sniffs dandelion flowers on May Day they will not wet the bed for a whole year.
Richard’s second photograph is of a bird he spotted while on a walk over Cannock Chase. It’s the bird that has the best known song of all, a cuckoo (Cuculus canorus).
Richard was lucky to see the bird as these summer visitors are becoming increasingly rare and are now on the RSPB’S red list of endangered species.
The birds are associated with the arrival of spring and summer and the famous 13th century round begins, Sumer is icumen in, Lhude sing cuccu.
Cuckoos return to Africa for the winter and to explain their absence Pliny the Elder, in his Natural History, explained that they turned into hawks; cuckoos do resemble and can be mistaken for sparrowhawks, with their grey backs and barred fronts, but the cuckoo lacks the raptor’s hooked beak.
Cuckoos are notorious for their brood parasitism, where they lay their eggs in the nests of other birds and leave them to raise the cuckoo chicks.
Cuckoos are associated with foolishness. The search for a cuckoo’s nest is a fool’s errand; one of the tales about the Wise Men of Gotham tells how they tried to trap a cuckoo so that it would always be summer; and the theme tune of comedy legends Laurel and Hardy is The Dance of the Cuckoos.
Finally, we have this picture of a beautiful carpet of bluebells (Hyacinthoides nonscripta) in the Clent Hills, sent in by