Things with wings

I walked into the kitchen yesterday morning and there they were, a whole flock of them – great tits, blue tits, coal tits, chaffinches – dancing between the birch trees, swooping down to the feeders, back to the fence, back up to the trees... It’s a sign of approaching autumn when they group together like this, and there were fifty or more in this flock, the first such visitation of the year. Unlike the sparrows they take turns, playing follow my leader round and round, tree, tree, fence, tree, fence, feeder, fence, tree... All of them bright and shining with new feathers in the Late Summer Bank Holiday drizzle. What had I gone to the kitchen for? I’m afraid it was forgotten in the whirring, whistling, chirping exuberance of the display.
The phone rang, I went to answer it, and when I returned less than five minutes later it was as if they had never been, all was quiet and still apart from the few sparrows who had come over from Sparrow Central in the Escallonia hedge just to remind all comers that they had first dibs on this particular feeding station.
This flocking behaviour is a sure sign that the birds’ breeding season is over and autumn is on the way, as if one couldn’t already tell from the proliferation of blackberries, elderberries, hips, haws, sloes, etc in the hedgerows. Trees are still in full green leaf and the woods are as green as they ever get, but there’s still the feeling that the season will be turning any moment. The weather doesn’t help, of course – autumnal drizzle leads to autumnal thoughts and behaviour.

Another sign of autumn, so they tell me, is that wasps start to take an interest in beer and jam and that sort of thing. When I got to the Copley after walking through the valley with Ty in the drizzle in the afternoon, the gang was there on the terrace under the big umbrella, having a lovely time as usual, plus a couple of visitors and a wasp. Visitor from Midlands took delight in destroying said wasp by drowning it in J2O. Another wasp wandered in and was swatted with a menu. Yet another tried his luck – swatting AND drowning. This went on all afternoon and quite spoiled the day for me. Watching a man in his sixties take a delight in murdering things that weren’t doing him any harm or posing any threat, time after time, by methods as cruel as he could think of, was quite depressing. The wasps kept coming, though, one at a time - I wonder if they can sense that a sister is in trouble?
I can understand and accept that wasps’ nests occasionally have to be humanely destroyed if constructed in a place which clashes with human activity. It’s sad, but it’s life. This was something else altogether. He also mentioned casually in passing that the most stings he had ever had was 25. Why? He’d been digging out a nest to take the grubs as fishing bait. Serves him right, say I. Not out loud, though; he’s a very good friend of a very good friend and it was too trivial a matter to argue about, although it won’t be forgotten.

Sunday, Saints Way...

A sunny Sunday stroll along the Saints Way. That's what we'd planned, anyway, but the day dawned cloudy and the clouds rapidly came down to ground level, where they stayed for most of the seven mile circular walk starting and finishing at the Crown, Lanlivery, and taking in bits of the Saints Way. When the rain clouds lifted slightly we found ourselves walking through clouds of butterflies instead!
It was lucky, in a way, that it was raining when we set out, as the wet weather gear gave us some protection from the totally overgrown public footpath that started the walk. The usual summer walking shorts and sandals would have been quite inadequate, and a machete would have been nice. The second section, also public footpath, wasn't much better; it wasn't particularly well marked and involved stepping over a section of electrified fence which was just lying on the wet ground. Two of the dogs didn't quite manage to miss the wire and found it quite distressing. Two fields further up the hill we met the farmer on his quad bike, who found our exaggerated respect for his electric fences quite amusing - he said they weren't on. When we told him about the bit at the bottom he went racing off to put it right, blaming other walkers for knocking it down, which is probably right.
Through Luxulyan, which has some very old and attractive houses and gardens, then on to the Saints Way proper along another short but very overgrown stretch of path. This part of the path goes through green and secret mossy woods along a disconcerting stream - it seems that you are walking down hill but the stream flows the other way. Then up and up, through a bit of a nature reserve to Helman Tor (which we skirted round) and along a green lane full of butterflies and back down to Lanlivery for lunch at the Crown.
I spent almost the entire walk with wet feet, so I'll need to look for new boots before the rainy season proper sets in. On the other hand, the Peter Storm waterproof overtrousers I found for a pound in a charity shop worked jolly well on their first outing.
Today, Monday, it really is sunny, which is nice. My new pond is almost two inches deeper than it was yesterday, which is even nicer...

We dig, dig, dig, dig, dig, dig, dig...

This is my new pond. It is quite small, although it's as big as it possibly can be given the size of my gravel patch, and has cost an inordinate amount of effort.

I've been wanting a pond ever since my first attempt at landscaping - the rockery - two years ago, and experimented with a miniature water feature (old roasting tin recessed into the gravel, pretty stones and a couple of ferns round it) but wasn't content with that and have been looking for a nice small deep preformed pond for ages. Finally found one on the internet, it came last Tuesday and I've been digging more or less ever since.

I knew that there was heavy duty plastic under the gravel, and that under that there was red clay, because I got down that far when siting the compost bin, but what I didn't realise that under a couple of inches of clay there was solid slate. Should have done really, in hindsight, there's slate everywhere else... What's worse, about three inches down alongside the wall where I started digging there was also quite a thick layer of concrete extending about a foot from the edge. With my little trowel and Ron's entrenching tool I made quite good progress for the first eight inches or so down from the surface as the slate was fairly loose but the last few inches (pond is just over a foot deep) was really, really, hard. And I couldn't do anything about the concrete at all - it's got a lot of granite in it and was causing sparks to fly every time I hit it feebly with the digger. Ron sorted it, though. In about ten minutes with the big sledgehammer then the small sledgehammer and a big chisel he made more hole than I had in two days, and left me with just the finishing off.

It's in now, bedded in with nice soft compost, ferns replaced and a few muscari bulbs and other bits stuck in here and there. Almost empty still, of course; I keep looking out at the clouds and hoping it will rain. I've got lots of buckets and bowls strategically placed to catch as much water as possible, as well.

I want it to be a proper wildlife pond, and internet research suggests that the very best way to do this is to leave it to be colonised naturally - just fill with rainwater and wait for stuff to arrive. I don't think I have quite that long to live, though, so I may have to help it a bit. Come the spring I shall probably be stealing frogspawn from somewhere...

I do like to be beside the seaside

It was perfect picture postcard seaside weather on Sunday, warm, sunny, just enough breeze to make it bearable...
Our walk, for walking was the purpose of the trip, started at Bigbury-on-Sea, just a few miles east of Plymouth, famous mostly for having an almost island, Burgh Island, accessible along a causeway of perfect picture postcard golden seaside sand. We briefly admired the island, the causeway and the people enjoying the beach from above in the (pricey) car park before turning our backs on all that and trekking uphill and inland, climbing high above the Avon but following its path for a while. At the top of the hill we looped westwards through the village of Ringmore and back to the coast at Toby's Point. A magnificent look-out point this, with Burgh Island to the left and views all the way to Wembury at the entrance to Plymouth Sound to the right. From there we walked down through Challaborough, a small town of holiday caravans with its own shops and a more or less private beach, and back up and over to Bigbury again. About four miles in total.
I was once more extremely impressed by the standard of waymarking of the paths we followed and slightly surprised at the absence of any other walkers on the inland part of our route. South Hams council do seem to keep their public footpaths in better repair than most. Part of our walk was SW Coast Path, but not all of it, by any means.
The two most interesting bits of wildlife, oddly enough, were both right at the end of the walk, on the very busy path between Challaborough and Bigbury. I heard a peregrine falcon, looked up, and saw a buzzard. Strange! Then I saw that the buzzard was being buzzed by a pair of peregrines, who were flying up above it and divebombing it, while the buzzard flapped slowly round in circles. This is not behaviour I've seen before. Then, moments later, my eye was caught by a couple of scabious flowers which were being visited by three red and black variable burnet moths each (and one had a bumble bee as well). There were plenty of other scabious flowers around, but only these two seemed to be of interest. I thought perhaps the flowers only produce nectar for part of their flowering cycle, like gorse does, but they have such a short season that it would surely be counter productive.
Anyway, there it was, lunchtime, high tide, and the only pub on Burgh Island. Out of reach? No, not at all. There is a sea tractor which plies its way from Island to shore (about 200 metres) at high tide for those who do not wish to get their feet wet (and have £2 to spare) but with neap tides and a gentle sea there was only a matter of ten metres of ankle deep water to cross at the Island end to get to the pub, so we walked and paddled it. The pub is famous, apparently, for being a favourite of Agatha Christie, but I was somewhat disappointed in it. They know they have to cater for summer visitors, but they don't want to and do it with extreme ill grace. Half the pub is out of bounds to visitors; in the other half strangers who have braved the tide are allowed to queue (out of the door) for an overpriced drink and a choice of overpriced tired baguettes and sit on the non reserved benches outside in full sun to consume them, while the shady outdoor tables are reserved for 'proper' customers, of which there were none.
The island is privately owned, so I suppose one should be grateful for being allowed to step on to it at all. There is a path up to the top and back and after lunch my companions wandered up there, but I didn't bother. And another disappointment - two of my friends were determined to try to sea tractor to go back, but the tide had gone out again and it had stopped running by the time we were ready to leave. I paddled all the way back along the eastern side of the causeway, just so that I can say I have actually been in the sea (up to my knees anyway) this year, and Ty swam.
So there it was, our day beside the proper seaside. Enjoyable, as long as one can avoid actually sitting on a beach!

1066 and all what?

I went to the local leisure centre for an aquacise class this evening. All the doors there are locked with numeric keypads, and the code is changed randomly whenever the duty manager feels like it. Tonight the number stamped on my ticket when I arrived was 1066, and I made some offhand comment about somebody having been studying history. "Ah yes," responded the DM, a bright young man in his twenties, who happened to be sitting behind the reception desk at the time, "I had history drummed into me so hard at school that I will never forget. 1066 - Battle of Hastings." Don't know why, probably my schoolmistressy nature, but I asked him if he knew what happened at the Battle of Hastings. No, no idea, not an inkling, zilch. So he asked the new trainee receptionist, her having been at school rather more recently - "No, sorry, I gave up history in year 8. Was there a war?" The aquacise teacher, late fifties but very fit, walks past and joins in. "Was it the Vikings?" Her second guess was Normans, but even she didn't know who against, why, nor who had won. I'd have expected her to, she's much of my generation, so she was at school when education was education... By now it was becoming a challenge. The receptionist shouted up the stairs to the Gym Manager, who was leaning over the banisters looking down on us, and who actually knew the names King Harold and William the Conqueror, so he got a tick and a gold star. And I had a very enjoyable splash about, mentally tutting to myself about the standard of education today, etc.
But then it happened that I asked myself whether, in fact, knowing that the Battle of Hastings changed almost everything at the time, even the language spoken on this island, is actually relevant to these young people's lives? After all, it was nearly a thousand years ago. To them, the Dark Ages are the days of my youth. They cannot conceive of a world without computers, mobile phones, nonstop music in the ear, instant communication - blogs even. I don't often think of myself as being old, but am amazed sometimes at the things that have changed in my lifetime. And grateful for many of them...
1066 and - so what? 2009 is where we are at.

Nature Notes (assorted)

Here we are at the beginning of August. It's raining, which seems to be pretty much the norm for British summer weather. Nothing spectacular is happening, but I've seen lots of little things in the last few days which I don't want to forget...

Yesterday, 2nd August, I saw a moorhen chick which couldn't have been more than a day or two old. This was on the Dragonfly Pond in Seaton Country Park, which is pretty well covered with waterlilies this time of year, making it ideal moorhen territory. I also saw three adults and three full grown juveniles. The little one was being assiduously cared for, but only by one parent. There were five juvenile mallards in a group, as well. No sign of any dragonflies...

At home there are a fair number of baby sparrows sitting on the back fence and begging again. These must be the second or possibly even third brood of the year. There aren't nearly as many of them about as last year, however. I haven't seen more than about 20 at a time, parents and offspring, while on one occasion last year there were more than 100 in a single flock on my tiny patch.

Having devoured and no doubt relished my entire blueberry crop, the marauding gang of mixed tits and finches has now moved on to rowans. There are a dozen rowan trees around and about, all presumably planted when these houses were built. Every year they ripen in the same order over about six weeks - the first tree is feeding the birds now, while on another just along the road the berries haven't even started changing colour. The fact that the birds are now back in a flock shows that the breeding season is over for them, although there are still some fairly immature looking bluetits about.

Out of the window, right now - seven juvenile blackbirds, daddy and baby chaffinch on the fence with the rest of the family in the trees, one baby sparrow who is perching under one of the seed feeders with his mouth open (apparently quite an effective way to get fed) 13 other sparrows, lots of goldfinches in the silver birches, black headed gulls who've gone grey... Just arrived, a greenfinch and two baby bluetits. One of them is picking seeds out of the fat ball and spitting them out, which seems a little ungrateful.

Blackberries are ripe and are already being eaten. Again, like the rowans, there are places where they ripen earlier than others, but we know where to go... There's a pink early-flowering clematis on Henry's fence which is coming into flower again. Out of 12 nasturtium seeds I planted, only two have germinated, but they seem to be taking over the whole garden.

I saw my very first mole yesterday. It was dead, unfortunately, although only recently and seemingly non violently. It just seemed to be asleep at the side of a path through the woods in Seaton Valley - not at all what I would have considered mole country. Good to have the opportunity to study it (but not too closely!), sad that it had to die first.

In the Coombe, this morning, suddenly a fairy ring! Well, a fairy semicircle to one side of the path, to be precise, but the right shape and about four feet across. They looked just like the button mushrooms you see in the supermarket, but I doubt if they are, and I'm not hungry enough to take a chance on it.

I think that's about it for the nature notes, for now.