Autumn comes to the Creek...

Down at the top of the creek this morning, there where the rain-swollen stream meets the rising tide, a kingfisher was fishing. It didn't see me approaching along the stream until I got within about five metres but then flew across to the far bank, calling quite loudly. As I could still hear it calling I stood quite still - even the d0g was being quiet behind me - and the bird came back to the same perch. It was a perfect photograph, silhouetted against the sun on the water. Unfortunately, by the time I had carefully eased the cameraphone out of the pocket and switched it on, the kingfisher had seen a fish, dived and was gone in a flash of blue over to the bank again.

It's not often I see kingfishers down there - they only seem to fish there just when the rising tide fills the creek and sweeps the little fishes up towards the mouth of the stream, and although it is my normal morning destination it doesn't often coincide with fishing hour. Today I also saw a sandpiper - a sign that winter is on its way - and a couple of jays, as well as the usual gang of blackheaded gulls in winter white. And having remarked to a friend a couple of weeks ago that it seemed the grey wagtails which used to nest by the little bridge seemed to have moved on this year, I've seen at least one every day for the last week!

In the garden, too, the balance of feathered visitors is changing with the season. The largest group now is the goldfinches, who often arrive ten or twelve strong and quarrel loudly and aerobatically over the niger seed feeder. The 'losers' aren't that bothered, though - they just move over to the 'normal' seed feeders and fill up from them. On the other hand, the sparrows, who keep together in a group through the whole of the spring and summer, split up and go their separate ways more at this time of the year. They still visit the garden, of course, but one or two at a time rather than in a flock. The largest number I've counted this year - about when the second brood was fledged and independent - was between thirty and forty strong. (They just won't keep still to be counted accurately!) Now, as well, the blue tits, chaffinches and great tits are reforming their loose winter flocks and including the garden on their daily patrols. In the summer they stay in the trees in the coombe, mostly.

There has been so much rain lately that all the winter springs have suddenly started flowing again in the coombe. Because the sides are so steep, it's not unusual for trees to fall occasionally, and we've lost two in the last week. A substantial young oak fell and blocked the path on the north side completely until the Council came and cleared it. They've left the fallen tree; just sawn through the trunk and branches which were blocking the path. On the other side, up at the top, a rather foolish badger had dug a new sett in the summer. At the edge of the path and under the roots of an alder, it was already beginning to undermine the path itself - my walking stick went through into a tunnel only last week - and now the tree has gone, down into the valley. I suspect it to have been a young one setting up home for the first time, and it will either start again in a better place or perhaps move in to one of the three big setts. The tree itself probably won't die, either - when they fall down the slope like that, with some roots still in the ground, they usually resurrect themselves. I hope so, anyway.

Late night walk

After midnight after a beautiful summer day. It's clear and calm, not a breath of wind, when Ty and I go for our final stroll, me keeping as usual to the tarmac path and street lights along the top of the Coombe while he explores the scents of the night. A new sound - pattercrackle, pattercrackle - not the stream, which is quiet after a few dry days, not the crickets, which are murmuring in the background, not the traffic, which is almost absent and very distant now. I stand still, listening, feeling for the sound. It's raining leaves. All around me leaves are falling, dropping straight down to the dry earth below, pattercrackle, pattercrackle. A fox barks from further down the Coombe, eliciting a frantic response from Widget the Lurcher at number 21. Ty, mercifully, is silent, and we walk home.

Sunny Sunday

I put shorts on (well I unzipped and discarded the lower legs of my trekking trousers) for the first time yesterday. Even at 8.30, when I experimentally tested the bare legs down the Coombe, it only felt strange for a minute or so, then perfectly natural. Good, I thought, summer is here...

It was a beautiful day, sunny and bright with just about enough of a breeze to make it comfortable. We had a nice, gentle six mile walk around Wadebridge, starting in the Jubilee park, ascending gently up through footpaths and shady (even sometimes muddy) green lanes to Burlawn, down through the village then along the Forestry Commission track through Bishopswood to join the Camel Trail and thence back to Wadebridge. It was what summer walkies should be - no unusual sights but a general feeling of warm green brightness sparked through with bright flowers and birdsong. Lots of water for the dogs to play in, as well.

It was Ty's first proper walk since he hurt his paw, and he was fine. A slight limp when he got tired, but apart from that he seemed to enjoy himself. So much so that he slept most of the afternoon!

I went home and collected Ron at three so that we could spend a typical Sunday afternoon at the Copley - sipping cider by a trout stream in good company. The sunshine was a bonus - and in fact at one stage we gave some consideration to moving over the bridge to the shady side of the stream, but decided this was still a little previous.

Today, though, Bank Holiday Monday, all has changed. It's cool and dull and slightly spitting with rain. I was pleased to observe that for the first time this year it was drier under the trees in the Coombe than out in the open.

Why aren't bluebells always blue?

When I came to live here in 2002 there was a small clump of Spanish bluebells in the front garden which had one white flowerspike among the blue. This year the rather larger clump has nine white flowerspikes, which is roughly one more each year. They are evenly scattered through the clump, what's more, not all in one place. Over the years I have looked, idly, at other clumps in other people's gardens, and have never seen any white ones.

In the coombe there are quite a lot of native bluebells, as there should be, but there are some Spanish ones as well. I suspect that some kind soul has attempted to improve on nature in the coombe in the past, as there are a few other not-quite-native species. Daffodils and narcissi, for example, which although naturalised are definitely not the native daff. The garden bluebells. Pittosporum, that NZ import which scents the nights so strongly this time of year. A lone clump of cyclamen. There have been at least two bouts of tree planting, probably coinciding with the storm water drainage that was put in there; at the top of the coombe, the earliest planting, there are still trees, both native and non-, with support stakes either side, and down at the bottom a later session which have been given the marginally less ugly curly plastic protectors. Luckily, however, there's been more neglect than 'management' over the years.

However, I digress. A couple of years ago I noticed that one patch of native bluebells had a couple of pink flowerspikes. Not barbie pink, more a delicate mauve, but definitely not blue. And again last year; same patch, same pink bluebells in among the normal ones. This year they are there again, but now there's another four pink flowerspikes, some three feet away from the originals. I could understand a mutation spreading in one place, but a yard away seems quite adventurous.

Now green. I saw the first green caterpillar of the year today, quite well grown. There are more and more butterflies about - an orange tip last Sunday at Hessenford, for example - and quite a few crane flies. I seem to have mosquito bites on both arms, but just in case they aren't mozzies I've given Ty a dose of Frontline. It's coming up to tick season, after all, and we are going on the moors at the weekend.

I think my white jasmine is definitely dead, which is unfortunate. Poor little cutting wasn't strong enough to resist the unnaturally cold winter. On the other hand, last year I shoved half a dozen lily of the valley in here and there, and thought I had lost them all to slug attack, as they didn't really flower, just dwindled. But suddenly at an inch or two a day there are at least two in the back garden and the one in the front garden has become three!

May is Out...

...or at least there are flowers on one particular Hawthorn, a red flowered tree in Kings Road, Plymouth, which always seems to be a few weeks in advance of the rest. People are casting clouts all over the place - the sun is shining, true, but the wind's still cold and the temperature in no way justifies the shorts and suntops I am seeing all over the place. The nearest I will get to 'summer' clothes for a while is the replacement of the woolly hat by a cotton one and a slightly thinner fleece!

The last few days have been wonderfully springlike. Every day there is more and more evidence of the changing season - that Hawthorn is a case in point, but it is happening everywhere. This year, as so often before, I promised myself that I would faithfully record the 'firsts' of spring, but as usual much of it has got away from me and caught me by surprise. There are bluebells now on the sunnier hedgebanks, although not yet in the woods. The hedges are white with blackthorn blossom, gardens pink with flowering cherries. The smallest wild cherry in the coombe, not much taller than I am, is already in bloom, as is the despised cherry laurel. Primroses, celandines, violets, campion, are all competing with the ramsons for ground space among the trees. Cuckoo-pint has come up overnight, seemingly.

One 'first' this afternoon - the first lizard I have seen in the wild in England. A male common lizard walked across the path in front of me in Seaton Valley and I was able to follow its movements for quite a while through the undergrowth. It can only recently have come out of hibernation.

It's almost midnight, and there has just been some consideable commotion outside in the coombe. First a jackdaw started chattering and scolding, then a female tawny owl screeched back. The jackdaw and the owl argued for a minute or two (I guess the owl woke the jackdaw up, rather than the other way round). Now the male and female owls are calling to each other up and down the coombe.

I don't know where the sparrows are nesting this year - not in the escallonia, or at least not yet, and not in the eaves and soffits of the empty house in Frobisher Drive because it isn't empty any more and it's all been repaired. They still seem to be going round in groups at the moment, although most of the other birds I see are courting or fighting. Blackbirds are being particularly aggressive at the moment. I keep seeing one blackbird which is brown but with a bright orange beak - is it male or female? No clue in any of my books...

Changes, changes

Every day things change out there in the woods. But most of the changes are so small that they go unreported. Perhaps that's a bad thing - I should make proper notes and compare seasons and write it all down in a diary, but I would rather wonder at it all than analyse it.

This morning the sun is shining and the sky is blue. If it weren't for the ash which has split about four feet off the ground, spreading its branches in all directions and creating a very big hole in the canopy, and the mud underfoot, it would be difficult to credit the contrast between today's weather and the day before yesterday. The bees are back buzzing round the ivy on the shore - I never realised there were that many different bee species - and the hazel at the top of the steps leading to the woods has tiny little unripe catkins all over its branches, mixed in with the unripe but rapidly colouring fruit.

Rowans are Ripe

Rowans were the decorative tree of choice when this houses were built; they are on every corner and along every path. A few years ago, one of my neighbours tried to get the council to cut them all down, claiming that they were poisonous and a danger to her children, and it was only when I went on the Internet and found recipes for rowan jelly (eat with pheasant) that she stopped complaining.

This morning the weather has reverted to 'normal' for this summer - steady but fairly
light rain. We went down to the creek as usual; tide was in, one egret on the shore, one swan over our side and a gang of five over the other, all very peaceful and normal in the drizzle. I was looking at the egret when I caught a flash of blue. A kingfisher swooped in near the egret from some distance away on the other side of the creek, landed momentarily on the shore then obligingly headed straight for me, veering off into the greenery on the bank at the other side of the stream. I know there are kingfishers around by the stream and the creek, but I going down there with the dog and just passing through I don't see them very often at all, perhaps three times all this year. It was kind of him to oblige this morning when everything else was so damp and grey.

The rowans aren't grey, though, they are very definitely hot deep orange, and ripe. I know they are ripe because on my way back from the creek I surprised a flock of starlings helping themselves to the berries. Perhaps the same flock as came into my garden the other day, but more of them this time, about twenty I would think. When they saw me they quickly scattered into the trees on the edge of the valley, but quite a few of them still had their beaks full!

A Boring Day

It's a dull, drizzly sort of day, and I'm in a dull, drizzly sort of mood. The sycamores in the coombe have now got dry, crinkly, dying leaves like the ones in Seaton Valley - it affects the young saplings first, then the more mature trees. It surely can't be drought, not this year, but I can't find any clue on the internet as to what it can be. It's not tar spot, because the leaves would look normal round the spots. These start with brown spots, then the whole leaf goes brownish, dry and dead.

The species count for my bird feeders is now in double figures. Apart from the sparrows, there are also now regular visits from goldfinch, greenfinch and chaffinch, blue tit and great tit, blackbird, magpie, jackdaw, collared dove and wood pigeon. I filled up late this morning, after I took Ty down the coombe to the creek and back, and from there being no birds in sight there were thirteen sparrows and a young blackbird by the time I had got back to the kitchen and looked out of the window.

Earlier today I had just neatly folded (one handed) 92 notices for the meeting next Tuesday, at which a director of the bus company was due to explain how they had improved our local services by taking most of them away and was about to go and put them through 92 local letterboxes when I had a phone call from the neighbour who had arranged the meeting. Apparently the nice bus company director can't come and play after all. He's given us another date, at the end of August, but somehow I am not convinced. At least I hadn't actually delivered all the flyers, so I only needed to put a 'postponed' notice in the noticeboard by the bus stop.

Will he or won't he actually turn up? Watch this space...

Bird Feeder Update

When it finally stopped raining about 8 pm last night I put out a tray of brown breadcrumbs and topped up the seed feeders, although it didn't look as if they had been used at all during the day.
By the time I had got back inside and looked out of the kitchen window a collared dove had commandeered the crumb tray, and methodically scoffed the lot! It even cleaned up the bits it had accidentally knocked on to the hebe under the feeder before departing.

As the evening cleared up - a bit of watery sun appeared low on the horizon - lots of collared doves started calling, and the goldfinches called each other together into a small flock before taking off somewhere. One particular goldfinch has selected as his song perch a TV aerial immediately opposite my office window - they are surprisingly loud. Well named, too; when they are in a flock their conversation sounds like someone rattling a gold charm bracelet.

I got up earlier than usual this morning and was rewarded by a family of blue tits at my bird feeder, the first I have seen actually in the garden. When I first looked there was one juvenile perched on top of the feeder watching the usual sparrow breakfast squabble. It had a tentative peck at the peanuts then skittered off into the silver birch just outside my fence, where I could see there were more blue tits. It obviously gave my feeder a good report, because two adults ad three juveniles all descended at once, testing the peanuts and the seeds. Oddly, when the sparrows saw all the excitement with the peanuts one of them had a good go too; normally they ignore them altogether.

The rain seems to have gone, although the sun which was shining straight into my eyes an hour ago has gone too behind a curtain of grey. Rain or no rain, the season marches inexorably on; last Monday I saw three black blackberries (possibly not properly ripe, but black anyway), one each on three different bushes at the edge of the coombe. Yesterday, in the rain, there were a dozen or so, almost one on every bush.

The Big Rain

It's July, and it's raining. After several days of showers and high winds, today has been unrelenting. It was pouring with rain when I woke in the night, it was heavier when I got up, and it is still doing it now. It makes me feel even more uncapacitated - wriggling into a suntop and shorts or trackies, slipping on sandals, fairly easy one-handed - waterproofs take a lot longer and require assistance. I haven't seen a sparrow in the garden all day, nor heard any birds in the woods, with one exception; there was a thrush singing its heart out when I took the dog out around lunchtime, its voice soaring majestically over the swollen stream and making me aware once more that there really ARE things to be grateful for in this life.

As I write this at 7.30pm the rain has diminished to a drizzle and there are collared doves calling... perhaps the sun will return some time.

Happy Birthday, Me!

Today is my 61st birthday. As I strode purposefully down the coombe this morning, carrying a stick but only because it's quite treacherously slippy in places after the recent rain, I reflected on the fact that this is the third spring I have delighted in since the one where I was saying to myself "Make sure you miss nothing - you'll probably never see this again." Not superfit, no, but I am getting around a lot more easily than I was, and I'm still able to enjoy the flora and fauna around me.

On the way back, walking along the stream where it flattens and widens into the creek, I became aware of almost stereophonic birdsong. A blackbird was singing his heart out in a tree about three feet from my right ear, and a song thrush was competing from the top of the fence on the opposite side, about fifteen feet to my left. While I can identify each individually, it was interesting to compare and contrast the two. The blackbird has a richer tone (and is louder) but the thrush seems to have a greater range of high and low notes. Both are beautiful. I am always amazed by the way that birds, who are furiously and busily feeding babies at this time of year, can still find time for a song. While I was standing listening to them, a robin came down to bathe in the stream just at my feet.

Tilly and the Blue Tit

After yesterday's relentless rain today was brighter - golden in the early morning, as is often the case here, then drizzly around lunchtime and dry but greyish later.

Ty and I went down the coombe in the afternoon, and in passing we collected his friend Tilly, who at 9 months old is already bigger than he is and not yet particularly obedient, being fast, excitable and headstrong as all collies are at that age. We went down the coombe then back up and crossed over to the other side, back down to the creek and back up again, which certainly tires me out even if it doesn't affect the dogs.

When we were almost back I called Tilly and got no response at all; I could see bushes shaking above the cow parsley, but I couldn't actually see the dog so I went back to investigate. In among the long grass, protesting VERY loudly, was a just fledged blue tit. Tilly didn't know what to make of it at all, but it was making noises like a squeaky toy so she was nosing at it gently and it was rolling/tumbling down the slope. I grabbed the dog with one hand and scooped up the fledgling with the other. Held on my palm well above dog height it immediately calmed down and shut up. I could see that it was unharmed, if a tiny bit bedraggled. While I was still debating whether to try and find the nest, just put it back on the nearest branch or take it home to keep an eye on (no! very naughty!) it made my mind up for me by taking off in a flapping flurry. Not very efficiently, it managed about six feet before it ended up back on the ground, but that is normal for a first or second flight so I took the dogs well away and left it to its own devices.

This was the first blue tit fledgling I've seen this year. I don't know whether Tilly knocked it out of its nest or found it on the ground or a low branch, but I didn't want to investigate while she was still around. I'll go back tomorrow to see what's what.