Walking with wild ponies

(picture by Vanessa)


Bodmin moor wild ponies aren't quite as wild as they're supposed to be. This one - the shortest, gingerest, hairiest of them all - has quite obviously worked out that the Foredown car park is the most likely place to profit from the visitors. It is the first car park past the cattle grid, coming out of Liskeard on to Bodmin moor, and very popular with walkers, kite flyers and people with interesting things in their pockets.

Yesterday, Sunday, was shining spring - three days of nonstop rain (good for the gardens) gave way to proper spring weather, and Caradon Hill beckoned. Round it rather than up it, a nice long moorland walk with proper Cornish mine workings (the picturesque stone kind) ponies, sheep, buzzards and skylarks, pools full of frogspawn, streams full of weed, ankle deep mud, gorse in flower, new grass being nibbled as fast as it can grow.

We started at Foredown, and as soon as we opened the car door the pony trotted over. Nose to nose it went with Ty, pony and dog breathing each other's breath for a good five minutes before Ty turned his head away. I got the treatment next, being thoroughly investigated in all the places I could possibly have pockets (all empty, alas!). I eventually gave in and gave the pony half a dog biscuit for sheer cheek, although I know this is not to be recommended, gets them into bad habits, etc. Duly rewarded, it strolled off and was last seen nudging a young girl in pink three cars down.

So to the walk. Five people, four dogs, from Foredown anticlockwise round Caradon Hill. The plan was to go to Crow's Nest but we got diverted by some really attractive mineworkings and the dogs' insistence on playing in every pool, puddle and stream we came across, so went up past Gonamena instead to Minions.

Minions itself was very busy with parked cars and serious mudrunners in lycra, but we had a very welcome pasty and cuppa sitting outside the teashop before moving on. From there we made our way back to Foredown along the old dismantled railway track to complete the circuit. Ty's friend had wandered on by then but been replaced by other equine panhandlers...

The weather wasn't perfect, or even very consistent. One moment the sun was blazing down and fleeces were being tentatively unzipped, the next the clouds came over and the cold wind made its presence felt - hats back on! Bracing, I think they call it... To complete a very pleasant afternoon we had a couple of hours sitting on the terrace at the Copley with Ron and the Old Codgers until the sun went down.

Good doggie, clever doggie...

I don’t like people who tell you how clever their dogs are. Dogs aren’t all that clever really, although it seems to me that they are manipulative. That’s not to say that they can’t think, or remember (somebody tried to tell me yesterday that they couldn’t, but what she meant was that they don’t/can’t reminisce, which is a different thing altogether). What is not so certain is whether they can anticipate and plan for the future...

One thing that dogs like is routine. Do the same thing at the same time two days running, and it becomes an unalterable habit and will cause the poor animal all sorts of unhappiness if it doesn’t happen on the third. In consequence, I am very careful not to do the same thing twice running, thus giving myself an edge and the opportunity to make my own mind up now and than when and where and what we shall do. Apart from bedtime – the bedtime routine is fairly similar, but not at the same time every day (edge, see!). I tidy the kitchen, then I take the dog out for his last walk, come back and put the babygate across the stairs so he can’t eat the post in the morning, then he usually has a late night snack and goes off to sleep, leaving me to go straight to sleep or stay up all night if I wish...

Last night we did all the above, then I went back in the living room while he went for a drink and a biscuit or two. Instead of going off to sleep he came back in and went into his ‘I need something’ routine – paw on knee, eyes boring into mine, etc. He only does this when a) he wants to go out, b) he wants to eat something (usually people food he thinks he has identified as abandoned, but daren’t touch without permission) or c) I am talking to someone else and he wishes to remind me that he is the most important being in my life. Well a) and c) were quickly ruled out as we had just been out and I wasn’t talking (Ron was watching TV). So – b)? When I stood up he led me straight into the kitchen and looked pointedly at his water bowl, which he had just emptied. I filled it. He watched me, then turned away and went off to sleep. He didn’t have a drink, obviously didn’t need to. So he must have been anticipating future thirst and preparing for it. Or am I just falling into the ‘What a clever dog I’ve got’ trap?

Lapwings

I saw a couple of lapwings at Churchtown this afternoon, in the field where horses graze between the green lane and the cemetery. This is the first time I have ever seen lapwings in Cornwall, and was a great surprise. I wonder whether they are merely passing through, or looking for somewhere to settle.

When I lived on Harris the lapwings were a constant presence day and night - if you couldn't hear them you could see them - and in the nesting season were quite aggressive if you walked near a nest. The only place I have seen them in quantity since them was up at Strensham in the fields there. I thought they only liked flat grassland or arable fields, and that Cornwall would have been too hilly, but the girl I was talking to at Churchtown who also saw them said that she had been brought up in the Scillies and there were a lot of lapwings there.

While we were comparing notes on lapwings, Ty was haring round the fields with her two Borzois. One of them is quite young, although many times Ty's size, and it was comical to watch him being all submissive and puppyish. Ty, unusually for him, was quite happy to play too.

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.