Indoor orchids, a fallen tree and local birding

Back to what's been happening at home recently - well not a huge amount really! But I have been having some luck with my houseplants flowering. This first picture is a Mother in Law's Tongue (Dracaena trifasciata or Sansevieria trifasciata) which is having its second flower spike this year. The first was when we were away in June and I got our housesitter to send us some photos. I should have used one of her pictures, because every time I went to take a photo, the flowers had gone over. Eventually I figured it must be nocturnal and the flowers were only open in the morning. But by the time I remembered to take a photo first thing in the morning, the flowers had all finished! So here are some spent flowers and some buds at the top..... 😀

Onto the orchids - I am SO excited to discover a flowering shoot on my Cymbidium! I thought it was just a new leaf bud at first. I brought this plant home from my mum's house after she died and I remember it flowering prolifically for her (she had amazingly green fingers with her house plants and they all flowered for her). I remember way back she had it in the garden during the summer as well. Now I've bothered to read up about them I understand they like the difference in temperature between night and day in summer which helps to encourage flowering in the autumn/winter. I did that a few years ago and no flowers, this year I didn't do anything special and hey presto! I can't remember what colour the flowers are so it will be a nice surprise.

These photos aren't great as I'm taking them indoors but they will have to do as I don't like using flash. Below is my Dendrobium (commonly known here as 'the Purple Orchid') with three more flower buds after it has just finished flowering. My brother outdoes me every time though; he has the original plant (and two more taken from it) and says his has ten flowering shoots on his main one and some on the other smaller plants as well. I'm going to divide this one up in the spring, when I repot all my orchids and hopefully that will give it a boost.

I have a tip if you have any Phalaenopsises. Don't cut back the flower stalks when they have finished flowering unless they turn brown and dry out. On this plant which was bought with about four flowering stalks they just stayed green so I left them. I could see there were what looked like dormant buds on the end of some of the stalks and also on some of the side shoots from those stalks. 

Well I have discovered that they sometimes come back to life and provide you with more flowers! I had a whole new flowering shoot come out of one of these old stalks earlier this year, and you can see in the collage below (bottom right) how a shoot has suddenly come to life and grown a bit more with one bud on the end! On the left you can just about see a dried out looking dormant bud/shoot, and top right is another dormant bud/shoot which I think may be coming to life - time will tell. 

We had a conifer in the back garden which died a couple of years ago and we had been vaguely thinking of cutting it down, as you do. Well, after a windy night we were lucky that we were saved some work, and REALLY lucky that it missed the moho by about a foot! It's not a huge tree but had it fallen at a different angle it could have done some damage or at the very least, caused some nasty scratches. Phew!

The silvery thing is a tyre protector which had blown off, not rubbish!

We recently went to a social get together with Birding Languedoc and one of the guys we know, who lives about half an hour away from us near where some Black Winged Kites (Elanus caeruleus) live, mentioned that he had seen some near our village that morning! 

A few days later we went to check out the place at the end of the afternoon towards roosting time, and sure enough, we saw two! We returned again the next day, a bit earlier and saw three of them. It's so exciting to have them so close to home - maybe one day they will be flying over our house and can be added to our home bird list. By the way did I tell you that we had a Griffon Vulture fly over our house twice this summer? We are quite a way from the mountains and their kind of rocky habitat, so they must have been out on a distant hunting trip. Exciting times!

You can just about see the red eye in this picture below. They really are stunning birds. They seem to be spreading throughout France yet a few decades ago were mostly only seen on the Iberian peninsula. They hunt over agricultural areas and can be seen hovering like Kestrels. I'd never even heard of them before moving here.

A female Pheasant (Phasianus colchicus) who just stood in the road posing nicely for us.

A Buzzard (Buteo buteo).

There was also a large flock of Lapwings beyond where the Buzzard is which is the first time I've seen any inland since we left Brittany, where they were always around in the fields in winter.