 |
| Frost wallpaper |
Frost
wallpaper: Thinly compacted ice and frost on the tarmaced
path behind Easter
Compton had laminated dead leaves into fine patterns – a stretch of fallen reed
leaves created an elegant wallpaper
 |
| Frost wallpaper |
Pools
up & down: Sadly but probably inevitably, the large informal
areas of shallow pools at Dyers Common industrial estates near the Severn
Estuary edge, which hosted lapwings and other water birds, have now been almost
entirely filled in as the ground is built up for further development – though a
small new reedy pool has been created in recent developments at the nearby
shopping centre...
 |
| Albatross skeleton by Marco Vinci |
Bird
bones: I watched a fascinating TV programme on bird bones. Two things that
struck me:
- The albatross with its 3m
wing span, has a shoulder joint that locks into place when flying, and a rigid
bone support at its ‘elbow’, that together mean it needs virtually no actual
muscle to glide endlessly as it does throughout its life – almost like being
suspended comfortably from an organic hang-glider!
- Birds that hunt underwater
like penguins have needed to re-evolve heavier bones - apparently the guillemot is one of the few birds that
truly spans both effective flight and underwater swimming...
Waxwings: There are waxwings feeding
in the carpark of a local large supermarket, and a colleague wrote: ‘Still lots
of big rowan berries in the car park of the Tesco Extra that they seem to be
ignoring at present. I met a chap a few years ago who had been doing research
on waxwings & he said they could smell the sugar content of the various
berries and went for those with the highest sugar content. So berries that look
good to our eyes might not look (or rather smell) so good to waxwings. But as
they devour them, I guess their priorities change.’
 |
| Birds & Berries photo by Des Bowring |
Birds & Berries: I responded: ‘That is very interesting
about waxwings being able to smell the sugar content of berries.
Presumably
most foraging birds will have equivalent abilities. Reading that fascinating
book on Birds & Berries a few years, ago, it included research on the food
content (sugars, proteins, fats) of different berries with their popularity
with different bird species, and at different times of the year. Speed was part
of the equation - very watery berries that could be gulped quickly were
sometimes better value than denser berries the bird couldn't gulp down easily.
It was a very tricky, time-consuming piece of work, dealing with wild birds
rather than lab animals.’
 |
| Charnia masoni by Smith609 |
As the sun lowered, we visited the elevated sloping
outcrop containing the fossils. Some are a few inches long and look like
delicate leaves inlaid into the rock surface, hard to find and to see – but
easier in low evening light; while their bases look like seaweed holdfasts making
circular indentations in the rock. Many have been crudely hammered where people
have tried to chip them out. But it felt extraordinary to be able to lay ones
hand on this pioneering organism – our almost-ancestor, whose fractal form
turned out to be an evolutionary dead-end, but whose close relatives found in
Australia were the start of an explosion of the new complex life forms who are
our predecessors.
Precious
things:
There was a small but perfectly-formed exhibition at Bristol Museum called ‘Stone
Age to Iron Age’, displaying some of their choice artefacts - exquisite stone
and bronze axe heads, refined jewellery etc. One object was a small ingot of
gold: it sat quietly on its shelf just glowing, and I was struck yet again with
the power of its imperishability. When people say of gold and diamonds – ‘Oh,
they’re only valuable because humans make thems so’ - they misunderstand that
some things have an intirinsic value. Gold is the only natural mineral / element
that simply won’t tarnish or decay, that taken from deep underground or from the
sea floor or a cesspit or an acid bog
after hundreds or thousands of years,
comes forth gleaming as brightly and purely as the day nature forged it. And
diamonds are the hardest natural substance – treat them as rough as you like,
abrade them all their life non-synthetically, and their crystal beauty remains
undimmed.
 |
| Ancient gold ingot by Frank Basford |
Avant
Garde Pigeon: I saw a funny pigeon today in a local car park - I call it Avant Garde
pigeon because of its unusual stylish
asymmetrical markings!
 |
| Avant garde pigeon |
Poured
Pewter:
Low tide, low sun peering through a murky day. Mud banks south side flowing
smoothly down to the water – in this subdued light, shining like sheets of poured
pewter. You don’t realise how fast the river is running until a gull lands on
the water and is immediately thrust fast downstream...
Running
across the sky: Stoke Lodge Estate where I do weekly art classes is full of
grey squirrels. Today they were running through the very fine upper branches of
some woodland trees – so fine that, outlined against a bright background, the
squirrels appeared simply to be running across the sky...
Atmospheric phenomena: Up on the
Marshfield hills on this changeable day with cumulus, mist and assorted
weathers, we saw rainbows, and ‘sun-dogs’ showing some of their rainbow arc around
the
sun. We also saw another phenomenon that
I have not seen before: above the sun, while it had a sun-dog arc to its left,
almost overhead was another smaller circle of rainbow light. I quizzed a friend
who flies but he hadn’t encountered this. However a recent newspaper showed a beautiful
photo of rainbow nacreous clouds above Yorkshire – apparently a phenomenon of ice
crystals very high in the atmosphere, probably here a result of a polar vortex
encroaching Britian - so the Marshfield phenomenon may be linked...
 |
| Nacreous clouds by Thincat |
Cuttlefish
magic: My computing friend is working on a light suit for some acrobats which
will express their movements through changes in speed, colour and rhythm of the
LED strips incorporated. His test LED strip is fastened to
the edge of his
desk, and undulating colours run up and down it exactly like those that cuttlefish
use on their bodies to woo their mates... I feel humans could learn a trick or
two there of a more beautiful way to approach potential partners...
 |
| Cuttlefish by Tongjin |
February
Waxwings: I went to
watch the waxwings who seem to have made a long-term home of this large
supermarket car park with its many tempting rowan trees full of berries.
Thirteen of these beautiful birds were sitting in the top of big oak trees
behind the park, and coming down at regular
intervals to neatly pluck one
rowanberry apiece from their chosen tree, then return with it to the oaks to
eat... Funny to see the little group of
bird watchers from far and wide, huddled by the car wash to catch the action
and rather impervious to the shoppers around them.
 |
| Waxwing at Tesco's by Rod Holbrook |
 |
| River Frome in central Bristol by Dr Duncan Pepper |
Iconic
Bristol: I stopped by the now disused Filton Airfield,
where the iconic Concorde
plane was built and tested and where one plane is still parked and open to
visitors. A large fine-looking fox appeared on the far side of the runway and walked right in front of the parked Concord –
I thought that was a fine conjunction of iconic Bristol symbols – the plane,
and the urban fox for which Bristol is also famous!
 |
| Concorde coming into Filton runway by John Allan |
Sardinia: I went on a
geology trip in Sardinia – an odd plain-but-interesting island. It grows rice
and saffon, flamingos stud its coastal lagoons, huge areas still consist of
native maquis
(Mediterranean scrub) held ancestrally and still now as common
land.
 |
| Flamingos in Sardinia by Jerry Gunner |
March
Walking behind Easter Compton towards
Dyers Common industrial estate on this very early Spring
day, the drainage rhine
banks were covered with flowering celandine, wild plum were in blossom, and
birds were out in force. In the hedgerow I inspected a lovely small deep nest
of unlined grasses – an unfinished robin’s nest?
 |
| Wild plum by Rich Tea |
Squirrel
love: I watched a pair grey squirrels in a tree – first mock-fighting, then
snuggling lovingly up together...
Foraging
Rooks:
On a busy main road out of Bristol, ten rooks were foraging along the roadside gutters
as the vehicles zipped right by them – but what were they looking for? It always
seems a surprise to find rooks – often shy birds that only seem to favour the
company of other rooks - away from their more rural habitats and in harsher manmade
environments. Yet they love to nest by motorways, in service stations and
schools, and nesting season in particular seems to find them foraging or
scavenging in unusual situations...
 |
| Rook by Andreas Trepte |
At the Taunton Service Station
on the M5 motorway coming home, there were rookeries on both sides of the car park
totalling at least fifty nests, including three or more in trees actually arching
over the building’s busy main entrances... Ten or more rooks were on the ground
outside a parked car where the driver was sitting eating her sandwiches: they
were looking up into the car and doing a ‘begging’ routine... so very un-rook-like!
But maybe this apparent scavenging behaviour is to do with egg-laying and
hungering for some specific nutrients?
 |
| Brimstone by AJC1 |
A
sheltered lane at Pilning Wetlands: Wherever was sheltered from the harsh
north-easterly wind held abundant flying insects, including a Brimstone, a Peacock
and Small Tortoiseshell butterflies...
Smart
Wagtail: On the moors I saw an outstandingly
smart grey wagtail: he was a vivid yellow from stem to stern
beneath, with immaculate black and greys
above...
Evening
Jackdaws: From my loft at 7.30pm last night which is sunset, I watched scores of
jackdaws flying north-east across our house to their still-mysterious roost
sites... In my head I imagine them going to the high wood of Winterbourne’s
Bury Hill which forms a rather magical misty rise a few miles due east from us.
But they actually always go north-east – what is there? Perhaps the
little
hamlet called Latteridge, which actually feels far more remote than its
position warrants? Roosts remain mysterious...
 |
| Latteridge by Jonathan Billinger |
April
‘Pimp
my tractor’: On a walk on a high hill above Bristol, we watched a local driving a
massive new tractor finished in deep metallic purple-red, with the front
radiator sculpted in the form of a devilish animal head. It was an unusual example
of pimping a vehicle, and when our walk
leader pointed out its 2017 vintage – I thought how loath the owner must be to
use it and risk scratching its pristine beauty!
Even
bolder Jackdaws: Over the years the jackdaws who have colonised our
street have gone slowly from very timid to ever bolder... I was gardening in
the small vegetable plot at the end of our back garden, and as I faced it, a
jackdaw landed a few metres away at the other end of the plot and calmly strolled
towards me... In the early days the jackdaws wouldn’t even come into the
garden; considerably later they felt able to play ‘grandmother’s footsteps’
where they would creep closer to me but only as long as I kept facing away – then
they would still fly off as soon as I turned round. And look at them now – as
bold as brass!
St Mark's
Flies: On
Solsbury Hill above Bath on the 18 April, the St Mark's Flies were out in numbers
- seven days earlier than the day of Saint Mark on 25 April for whom they were
named, and whose feast day they often hit with spooky accuracy.... easy to
identify as they fly with dangling legs.
We wondered why, and it seems that
they and other ‘danglers’ use the legs to clasp mates and prey.
 |
| Horse Chestnut blossom by P Caroline |
Is it a late
or early Spring? The horse chestnut and hawthorne trees are out in full
bountiful leaf and bloom, yet many ash and beech trees are still almost bare – making
a strange contrast of lush late spring with only-just-out-of-winter...
May
 |
| Handkerchief Tree at Shepperdine |
Shepperdine
snapshots... On a walk near the estuary north of Bristol, we saw a beautiful Handkerchief
Tree in full blossom –its exotic large flowers indeed like fine pieces of
gathered cream material...
Along the estuary, shelduck had
left their webbed tracks in the mud in an evocative record of their
wanderings...
In the distance a little boat
was struggling up river hard against the wind and tide – getting soaked as it
hit each wave and the north-east wind blew great drafts of
spray back down its
length...
 |
| Shelduck tracks at Shepperdine |
BBS
Moan: For the second year running I participated in the British Trust for
Ornithology’s Breeding Bird Survey, which entails two 2km walks in Ingst on the
South Gloucestershire levels near the estuary with complex recording
strategies, early in the morning in April and May. I seemed to have a lot more
trouble than my (mostly male) colleagues, and finally I had to vent on the
Bristol Wildlife forum:
‘Besides the
actual surveys. in total I've now gone round that damn patch a whole load of
times - trying to get used to the transects and those damn distances, doing the
environment survey, pruning the almost-impassable overgrown stile-bridges,
little legs soaked in over-long grass, little boots clotted up like plates from
muddy field, getting chased back by bullocks, always carrying stuff that gets
wet and dropped and lost..... Too early in the morning for my bird-walking
friend to be willing to help me with it...
Every single
time I have started with two pens, found one unsuitable (ink runs), dropped the
next while going over stile - then lost it in a rhine or deep grass. Then
reduced to using a drawing pencil dredged from depths of bag. Oh the clumsiness
of juggling clipboard, pens and binoculars. Bins usually hauled up too late and
birds have flown. Then the thought of having to enter the data... grudge
drudge... But of course I love it really. Just having a moan...’
The
Swifts are back! It’s the seventh of May and the Swifts are back –
five of them circling joyfully above our Filton patch...
 |
| Bee Eater by Suk Trippier |
I was part of a bird group who
spent a week in Herzegovina (Bosnia) in the first half of May. I had never ‘done’ Mediterranean bird before
and it was an extraordinary experience – of the 130-odd species we saw, a third
were new to me... (Garganey, ferruginous duck, rock partridge, pygmy cormorant, purple
& squacco heron, cattle egret, honey buzzard, short-toed eagle, Montagu’s
harrier, Kentish plover, black-winged stilt, collared pratincole (my spot! Tho
I didn’t know what I was spotting...), white-winged & whiskered tern, rock
dove, turtle dove (seen), scops owl, pallid swift, bee-eater, wryneck, lesser
spot & yrian woodpecker, woodchat shrike, golden oriole (proper views),
crested lark, crag martin, sombre & penduline tit, rock nuthatch, great
reed, icterine (Cavtat), eastern orphean & subalpine warblers, rock &
blue rock thrush, black-eared wheatear, black-headed yellow wagtail, cirl,
ortolan, rock & black-headed bunting, serin, and Spanish sparrow)
And many lovely butterflies...
(Swallowtail.
Clouded Apollo. Clouded Yellow. Brimstone. Painted Lady. Queen of Spain
Fritillary. Duke of Burgundy. Bath White. Wood White. Green Underside. Common
and Chequered Blue. Eastern Baton Blue. Pearl and Small Heath. Brown Argus.
Speckled Yellow Moth)
I think what I then understood
most forcefully was – that
birdwatching abroad is not just ticking off names on
a list: every new bird is a character who enters and embeds itself in your life
full of its unique personality and charm, its habitat, its mannerisms...
 |
| Sand Martin colony, Herzegovina by Suk Trippier |
Special
sights & experiences:
- A nightingale singing at
every stop...
- Honey Buzzards migrating
across Mostar...
- Seeking the Scops Owls late
at night in old Mostar amongst the minarets, and hearing their single-note call
all night long...
- Standing on a bridge across
the Nervetna River on the industrial outskirts of Mostar, to watch Pallid
Swifts nesting beneath, emerge at a million miles an hour and shoot away,
strong and pale...
 |
| Black-winged Stilts by Rhyzkov Sergey |
- A short distance from
Mostar, an extensive sand quarry with a bird-friendly owner, whose rock
faces
house literally thousands of sand martin pairs, and hundreds of bee-eater
pairs. The noise! The excitement! Like a giant beehive...
- On the Nervetna delta in Croatia
– Black-winged Stilts, surely the most exquisite, elegant birds of all with
their outrageously long red legs...
...and the shockingly tropical
size and exoticness of Bee Eaters – yet so common almost everywhere we went!
- Golden Orioles in quantities
enough to see their gorgeous plumage properly -
fighting, resting, jinking through woodland poplars – and hear their
gorgeous liquid calls...
- Seeing a Wryneck properly,
just sitting on a tree trunk...
- By the willowy banks of the broad
Nervetna River, glimpsing a
Cirl Bunting fledgling sitting quietly tucked into
undergrowth, waiting for its parent to feed it –
lovely back patterns already
on display...
 |
| Pomegranate flowers Praveen Grao |
- ...and adjacent, a Penduline
Tit busy sculpting its marvellous nest...
- Up in the mountains – Sombre
Tits, little loves that I initially thought were Blackcaps... Swathes of
deep
blue gentians...
 |
| Gentians |
- On wild limestone uplands –
the fabulous blues of Rock and Blue Rock Thrushes... and Ortolan Buntings who
had picked a
most eccentric bleak spot for their nesting (apparently it is
their wont to pick ‘untypical’ spots!). Who doesn’t love a Bunting! – and there
were so many species to search for, stout, cheerful and colourful, heads
chucked up in song...
 |
| Blue Rock Thrush by Suk Trippier |
- In a Muslim area, a teenage
girl in jeans and backpack watching the family flock of sheep with her two
massive mountain dogs, while reading a
book...
- Watery wonderlands –
limestone-clear rivers large and small, lush wetlands, lakes and reservoirs.
Richness of flowers, butterflies, dragonflies, reptiles...
- First views of a male
Montagu’s Harrier – the huge grey wings and that unbelievably graceful,
balletic flight...
- Wide, flat empty limestone
valley bottoms with natural meadows, again full of lovely birds, butterflies,
flowers... Old lady making her own sage-flavoured mead... The two-foot bulky bronze
Glass Lizards who love to sunbathe on the gravelly road verges (and are prey of
the Short-toed Snake Eagles hunting above)... Turtle Doves pottering along the
road...
 |
| Turtle Dove 'pottering'... by Suk Trippier |
 |
| Buna |
War-torn:
Marks of war were ubiquitous. Up into the Dinaric Alp mountains, ‘Beware
Mines’ signs lined the road (mines being kept ‘just in case’), and we were
warned not to stray off the road for a pee... Mostar was full of
unrestored
buildings whose roofs, doors and windows had been removed leaving just stone
shells. Wherever buildings hadn’t been repaired, gun shot marked every surface
– and this was true no matter how densely urban or remote the place we visited,
or how humble the building. A striking example was a multi-storey block of
flats on Mostar’s main street, all surfaces re-plastered except for a
full-height flanking wall left disfigured... it was impossible not to think of
the women, children and old people who had either fled or had
cowered within...
Apparently there was no international help to rebuild and had to be done
entirely by the people themselves, so the general spruceness seems a
marvel.
But even though there is obviously a massive will to move on from old wounds,
we all felt how hard it must be and how much bitterness and unfairness must
lurk, winners and losers... But we were fascinated by the ancient integration
of Muslim and Christian cultures so we couldn’t tell one apart from the other –
we had to be told that our hotel owner and our driver were both Muslims. Old
Mostar holds most of the mosques and other traditional buildings; in early
mornings the muezzin called...
 |
| 'Don't Forget 1993' Mostar Bridge |
 |
| 'Mines!' |
 |
| Shelled flats Central Mostar |
 |
| House Martins by Des Bowring |
House
Martins at Sea Mills: The house martins have arrived- about sixteen of
them. As usual they
prefer just one particular little hillock of river mud for
building purposes ('not too wet, not too dry, not too hard, not too soft...’), and a few
nest are already well advanced. And how super-flobbery the Avon mud was today!
– the freshest kidneys jostling together on a butcher’s tray wouldn’t beat
their glossy, cracked, bulging unctuousness.
Abundant
life: Looking out from my loft window, the upper air was full of aerial insect
life, and the garden was full of bees...
 |
| Starlings by Des Bowring |
Gangs of Starlings: I asked a colleague - when you get small gangs of starlings rushing about and shrilling at this time of year, but who look black rather than brown - ARE they young, or who or what are they?
He replied: ‘Could it be relieved
parents - glad to be free of their offspring? - just a guess. Normally the
noise is generated by juveniles flocking together and being very excited - SO
full of joie de vivre!’
Where
do Swifts nest? Yesterday along our road in Filton, and today on
Severn Beach high street, swifts were persistently flying around below eaves
level. I kept a close watch in case I could see them dart into a roof space,
but no luck yet...
‘Our’
Blackbirds - update: Over the last few years I gradually realised that
our original blackbird
with the distinctive refrain and amazing repertoire who
had graced our local area for years, had been replaced by another bird. Why
this had been so difficult to understand was because I still heard snatches of
his refrain between a louder new refrain – one of those cheeky-chappy
‘dooby-doo’ calls. After two or three years of this I finally decided that the
new bird had actually copied the
older bird’s refrain and incorporated it in his own repertoire – but sadly
musically he is a far inferior composer and improviser...
A friend replied: ‘Great stuff. I love the
fact that Blackbirds are 'open-ended learners' and add song phrases from their
parents when they are juveniles (which might be the case in your individual).
Even 'old' birds learn phrases from younger birds and add them to their
repertoire making them irresistible to the ladies!’
Blackbird song is remarkable in its
complexity and richness and ability to incorporate new phrases throughout its
life.....ain't nature wonderful!’
 |
| Young Robin by Peter Trimming |
A colleague responded, ‘Yes we had
two fledge back in April in our shed. Robins in sheds are the tops!’
June
Robins
continued: A few days later... though we think the young robins and their parents have
left our shed as far as nesting is concerned - they have now returned and are using it for flying
practice! – a nice safe sheltered space to hone their skills I suppose...
Sparrows are nesting in the
front eaves – a first for us.
Next day: The young robins are
now hopping about outside – their tails just stubs...
Arne
Reserve: We visited the Arne RSPB Reserve in Poole Harbour, an area of rough
heath, piny woodland and lagoonal shores. Among the things I learnt are:
- The reserve holds slow-worms,
smooth snakes and sand lizards – I have never seen the last two. Apparently smooth
snakes eat slow-worms...
 |
| Silver-studded Blue by Gail Hampshire |
- Meadow pipits replace
skylarks here in that ecological niche, and they are the local hosts for
cuckoos.
- The local deer include Sika
deer, medium-sized exotic ornamental escapes, now naturalised.
- Delightful hairy Hungarian
Mangalitza pigs are allowed to graze the heath.
- There are high nesting poles
for ospreys.
But we were unlucky!
Here’s what we didn’t see that we ‘should’ve’: Any terns at all – almost an
impossibility in Poole Harbour! Nightjars, which have been so open and abundant
that they were roosting in the trees round the cafe in the daytime! Mediterranean
gull, wood lark or osprey... and only a brief glimpse of Dartford warblers though
they are so abundant here...
New
Passage today: A very young pied wagtail was sitting on the low
front wall of a house – fluffy, gapey, striped tail a mere stub. Time – and a
cat – passed without a parent appearing, but finally the parent flew in and
encouraged the youngster off the wall. They flew off together - the youngster
so very much more capable in the air than its innocently foolish demeanour whilst
perched would suggest...
Meanwhile five adjacent sparrows
were having a delicious-looking dust bath on the ground nearby...
 |
| Peacock caterpillars by Gail Hampshire |
And down the side lane of the
Wetlands, there were masses of squirming spiky black Peacock butterfly
caterpillars on the nettles.
Botany
at Bigsweir to find Wood Stitchwort: Stitchwort found – unobtrusively
along the wooded Wye path, larger and downier leaves than most stitchworts. Other
nice plants new to me: Three-veined sandwort, round-leaved mint, meadow rue,
common valerian, marsh yellowcress. Also white-legged damselfly, scorpion fly,
& straw dot & longhorn moths – the latter with enormously long
antennae. A hobby attacked a crowd of house martins
 |
| Longhorn Moth by Bj.schoenmakers |
Little
engineers: Today, the house martins’ selected mud-gathering patch ignored the
Avon’s ample tidal banks and was a meagre puddle on the tow path, much grittier
and less unctuous than the river mud they usually use. I used to be an
architect – how I’d like to know what criteria these little engineers are using
to select their construction material of the day!
Fox hole: I had just dug over a
vegetable bed and covered it with fabric weighted with stones, preparatory to
planting. This morning a quarter of the fabric was pushed aside and a large
hole dug, soil scattered everywhere. It presumably was a fox (though the scale of
the excavation was more like a badger) - was it just after worms or other
invertebrates? Or was it chasing something else?
A colleague repliedl: ‘Hard to say Lois,
but with the baked earth conditions at the moment any pliable soil would be
welcome to both species.’
 |
| Tree Mallow by Meneerke Bloem |
Hot,
early: Very hot weather. Viewed very early in the morning from my loft – a
nice snapshot of busy bird life: A heron flying south west. A very
newly-fledged jackdaw – its red under skin showing through the thin head
feathers. A young crow looking rather smaller than its parent – presumably
thinner feathers and crouching posture contributing. A gull flying past
carrying a whole sandwich in its mouth! A young sparrow on our eaves by their nest
site.
July
Tidenham
Chase: A botany trip between the rivers Wye & Severn, to study grasses over
an area alternating in bands between acid Carboniferous pale grey micaceous
sandstones and alkali limestones; with old woodlands, heath & grasslands,
and many interesting and
beautiful plants on one or other side or spanning the
acid/calcareous soil divide, including hard fern, lesser spearwort, bog
pimpernel, yellow pimpernel, flea sedge, lousewort, cross-leaved heather,
common spotted, heath spotted and pyramidal orchid.
 |
| Lesser Spearwort by Aiwok |
A goshawk flew with a buzzard
(always helpful for size comparison), and then rapidly ascended to a great
height apparently effortlessly... a hobby flew off with prey...
 |
| Hummingbird Hawk-moth by Jerzystrzelecki |
...&
yet more foraging Rooks... On the way to new Pilates classes through Henbury
(considered quite a rough edge of town though bordered by lovely woods and
parks), I have started seeing rooks foraging on the main shopping street –
which is Crow Lane, appropriately corvid-themed...
 |
| Marbled White on thistle by Ian Kirk |
Scenes
from the Loft – about half an hour’s viewing front and back...
- Small flock after flock of
starlings flew low northeast across the house – towards the ‘roosting’ conifers
up the back lane?...
- A gull fiercely mobbed a
sparrowhawk...
- Young crows around the place
– their heads still looking so small with beak/skull junction proportionally clunky,
making their pterodactyl-type ancestry very clear...
- I thought the sparrows
nesting on our front eaves had finished and gone – but the missis just flew up
to the gutter carrying a feather, with mister joining her... will they have
another brood?
Swifts
update: A few years back when our local group of swifts (centred on Filton’s
Millennium Park) was still a sizeable number, I could look out my loft window
pretty much any day, any time and see them flying. However in the last few
years numbers have been dropping (to eight this year), and often they are not
around at all for many days at a time. So perhaps below a certain group number,
they go off and join with another group for hunting etc? Three days ago was
that event that happens every year, when the group suddenly enlarges – up to fourteen
this year – with youngsters.
 |
| Emperor Dragonfly by Ian Kirk |
August
 |
| Whitethroat by Andreas Trepte |
Whitethroat
beauty: It’s funny how you can see a bird repeatedly yet not fully appreciate
its beauty. Today I saw a male and female Whitethroat pair nestled in hedgerow-
modest little brown warblers though with handsome white throats and perky crest
- but for the first time I fully saw, studied and appreciated their beautiful finely-patterned
chestnut lower wings neatly folded back and glowing almost orange ...was it the
light or their position that illuminated this to me?...
Rainbow: The sun was
nearly setting and the sky almost clear with a few high clouds, when we saw an
extraordinary rainbow outside: enormously high – because the sun was so low -
with an unusual darker orange-tinted cast to it, and an enigmatic quality
because absolutely no rain was evident!
Last
Swifts: The ninth of August and I thought our local swifts were long gone, but
last night six of them returned to dance together over the park at sunset. A
colleague wrote: ‘You're not
the only one to have this experience, I wonder what it means! I wonder if it
is parents coming back to persuade the remaining juveniles out of the nest
and once out, off they go? Fascinating.’
 |
| Chesil Beach from Portland sketch by Lois 2009 |
August
trip to Chesil Beach
My annual car-camping trip this
year was to Chesil Beach west of Weymouth in Dorset. Chesil Beach is a massive
curving, continuous, dark gold, mainly flint shingle bank 29k long and up to
12m high, separated from the mainland for 13k along its easterly end by the
shallow Fleet Lagoon; starting near Bridport and ending where it curves up to
form the land bridge between Weymouth and the Isle of Portland.
 |
| Chesil Beach by Brian Robert Marshall |
- Ferrybridge: I walked a mile or so west along the Chesil bank to
the first of many lonely fishing shacks facing the Fleet, and so had my first
experience of how tough it is to walk the loose, sinking shingle: if you commit
to continuing you have 13 non-stop exposed kilometres to trudge, great only if
you are training for the Foreign Legion...
-
The Swannery: I camped for three nights in the Swannery car park, which has the
generosity to be
free and unrestricted with adjacent toilets and cafe. In
gratitude I finally paid the £12 to enter Swannery proper, which turned out to
be far more interesting historically, scientifically, artistically than I
expected. It is the only swan-breeding establishment in the world,
started 700 years ago by the Abbotsbury monks, and then run continuously by the
same local family for the next 500 years, since the Reformation that destroyed
the abbey (...remnants of the abbey are scattered throughout the adjacent
village of Abbotsbury...). Using swanherds, the establishment learnt how to
overcome the swans’ natural territorial behaviour so the birds will agree to
nest in very close proximity.
 |
| Abbotsbury Swannery by John E Lamper |
Some delightful Swannery snippets: - A display
of a Gladstone bag the size of a swan (with a toy swan’s neck hanging out...) –
lift it to feel how heavy a real swan is. The sign warns you to brace your
knees, you mock and then try - it’s over two stone weight (30lb +)! A swan
skeleton shows how
extremely robust the birds’ bones are compared with most
birds.
 |
| Bouncing bomb by Whaley Tim |
- A photo shows how the famous
English ballerina Anna Pavlova’s dance troupe came to the Swannery in the 1920s
to practice ‘Swan Lake’ on the spot! I imagine the swan poo on their points...
- The Fleet was used for early
trials of the Dambusters’ Bouncing Bomb, and there is a broken example on
display – a huge black golf ball...
- A swan-shaped maze of living
willows was recently created. Often willow structures are rather disappointing,
but these consisted of majestic high arched tunnels, like walking through a
magnificent building.
-
Rooks: There were over 300 rooks feeding on the adjacent hills and roosting in
the woods above the car park. In the evenings they made that lovely crooning
sound that is so soothing - if you’re not too close!
-
Walking: One way and another I ended up walking almost the full length of Chesil
Beach, from the Swannery to West Bexington to Burton Bradstock near Bridport on
the bank itself, and along the Fleet Lagoon. Twice I swam off lonely stretches
of the bank’s seaward side, where it
drops in steep terraces to the waves and feels elemental...
 |
| Fleet Lagoon - 'Langton Herring Boats' |
 |
| East Fleet Church by Ian Hall |
 |
| Knatchbull Arms, Stoke St Michael by Maurice Pullin |
My last camp was planned for the adjacent
Moon Hill Quarry science centre car park, which I’d visited a few weeks earlier
on a geology field trip and thought – there’s a peaceful spot. What I hadn’t
realised was that this area of car park wasn’t just for the Science Centre in
its peaceful grounds, but part of the full-on adjacent working quarry. So I woke
at 6am surrounded by lights, action, quarrymen – scrambled from my duvet into
the front seat and drove off hell for leather in my sleep shirt... If you camp
‘wild’ then a certain amount of indignity is all part of the experience...
 |
| Yellow Horned-poppy by Des Bowring |
 |
| Sea Pea by Mike Pennington |
·
Tendrils: the Sea Pea’s sturdy leaves end in short
but powerful tendril that bind round a pebble to anchor the plant as it grows
outwards/onwards.
·
Rooting: Many of the prostrate plants here push
down anchoring roots from their stems as they advance across the shingle.
·
Weight: the ‘marinum’ variety of Woody Nightshade
looks just like its woodland cousin, except it is prostrate with fleshier
(presumably succulent) leaves. Its stems are sturdy and woody, and I assume it
is the pure weight of its parts that keeps it grounded in high winds and lets
it sprawl onwards in large mats across the shingle.
A friend wrote, ‘Re the
Woody Nightshade, following a recent course on Scottish coastal plants, I too
was amazed that so many familiar woodland, field and hedgerow species have a
'maritime' version battling the elements on our beaches and saltmarshes in a positively
Churchillian fashion.’
-
Why Car Camp? I’m 68 and still car-camping – why? Logistically this means that I put
down the back seats of my Fiesta and insert sofa cushions to make a bed, as at
around 5 foot I’m small enough to lie full length in this space. In the
passenger footwell go a big bowl plus plate, mug, cutlery, and big bottle of
water. Food is tucked in the gap under the seat. I wash in the bowl and pretty
much eat cold picnic food and drink water for 4 days. Mostly I park ‘wild’ in
small lay-by’s or rough parking areas without restrictions, but then I need to
be up at about 5.30 to beat the dog walkers and have the privacy to wash, brush
and dress – sometimes I’ll go back for a snooze once I’m ‘respectablised’.
Finding early-opening loos is important, but otherwise peeing au plein air is
fine. I sort out my backpack requirements and am off for the day walking – I
live all day outdoors. (If I’d been tough enough I’d have loved to have carried
all my gear and slept in the open, but I’ve never liked feeling like a
packhorse (even my binoculars have to be ultra lightweight), and now I’m older
I’ve found I’m not hardy enough to sleep on the ground even with a mat. And I
do like the car with its waterproofness, warmth, light, door locks). People wonder
if I’m scared – mostly no, alert more like, there are often strange sounds and
interruptions at night when the adrenaline courses for a while.
So why not get a little camper van? Or park
in camp sites? Or rent a little chalet? Because I’ve realised the fundamental
things I want, are to be off the radar, and beholden to no-one. When my
car is parked it attracts nobody’s interest, and when I lie down in it,
passers-by can’t even see there is anyone in it. In a ‘wild’ spot I feel unnoticed
– off the radar – but in an orthodox camp site I am very visible again; and a
proper camper van also immediately makes you noticed. And renting a place, though
lovely and something I’ve often done,
means I am beholden – to the owners to keep it nice, and all that
psychological palaver. It is a mental thing – to have rest and relief from the
persistent pressure of other people’s eyes and expectations. I love a little
chat and interchange with others while I’m walking, but mostly I spend hours on
my own ‘off the radar’, and that’s what I yearn for.
 |
| Sea Mills - from Trym out to Avon by William Avery |
 |
| Starling murmuration by Walter Baxter |
Mini-murmuration: Mid-afternoon
down on the salt marshes a flock of about 250 starlings were doing full-on
shape-shifting murmurations between rests along the hedgerows – creating the
classic beautiful streaming clouds and swirling patterns... To see this in
broad daylight in such a relatively small group is unusual.
September
Urban Fox: At
midday a fox stood for some time on the pavement up the road from our house before
turning and heading into a front garden... it looked very thin and rather
pathetic, a youngster I think. Although foxes are common round here, it is
still surprising to see one out in the street in the middle of the day except
in hard winters…
 |
| Bird on hay bale by Viault |
A
Tickenham bird walk: On the meadow lowlands swallow and house martin
flew, including pairs apparently kissing in midair – probably parents
food-passing to young; buzzards, kestrel and wheatear all using the big
cylindirical hay bales as lookout perching spots... High up on the ridge with
its great views down the Bristol Channel six ravens rolled and displayed, a hobby
and a kestrel fought in mid-air and the hobby then did a long shallow stoop to catch
a dragonflies...
 |
| Centaury by BjornS |
Last Swift? On the 13
September we saw a swift flying over our house – the latest I have seen a swift, though the record dates are rather later.
 |
| Cassini in test NASA |
On another note – it was
marvellous to see an almost equal mix of men and women scientists making up the
international teams whose life this
had been for three decades and more, including
women heads of photography and engineering – the latter the people who brought
us the reams of astonishing pictures, and who kept Cassini on track through
thick and thin, including guiding it to new and unexpected tasks like close the
exploration of moon Enceladus. But when Cassini finally disappeared, it wasn’t
only the women in tears...
 |
| Saturn from Cassini NASA |
Abundance: Today the
salt marsh was alive with scores, probably hundreds of meadow pipits, as well
as abundant linnets, pied wagtails and starlings, and single whinchats,
wheatears, chiffchaff and skylarks... There is something so wonderful about
abundance in Nature, and it is definitely something we feel is threatened...
 |
| Half loving it, half not... |
Bird
Ringing at Walton Moor, 2.10: A colleague invited me to a
morning’s bird ringing at Walton Moor Reserve just inland from Clevedon and
Portishead, with another ringer who has done this work weekly for decades. They
have a hut deep in the heart of the reserve, and a round of about seven net
sites to be patrolled every 45 minutes
of so (we were there for six hours and went round about seven times). The
little birds are carefully untangled, put in cloth bags like old-fashioned gym
bags, and brought back to the hut to be weighed, sexed, wing-measured, and fat
stores noted. We gathered 58 in total including tree creeper, lesser redpoll,
bullfinch and goldcrest, and I was allowed to hold them at the end and release
them. And I saw the ringers’ nemesis – the flat fly parasites that resist
crushing...
I felt a dichotomy of emotions
that is probably not unusual: on the one hand tremendous privilege and
excitement to be allowed so close to these beautiful creatures. But as someone
who doesn’t like zoos or animals kept in any sort of captivity –even fish in
aquaria – I had an visceral repugnance for the birds entangled and sometimes
struggling in the nets, the need to unravel them and bag them, all the
handling... Dave gave me a long talk about the scientific value of ringing, but
how many birders disapprove of it even though they value the knowledge it
gives. I know it gives vital information, and I could see how apparently
fragile but actually incredibly robust the birds were – after all they are
built to survive predator attacks and all sorts of accidents and mishaps. So I
shall just live with this conflict of feelings...
Rackety Magpies: Early evening and ten magpies
were racketing about together through the treetops... youngsters I expect like
rowdy teenagers.
Starling
bath: At
Pilning Wetlands a crew of about 30 starlings settled onto a shallow pool’s
edge in a line amongst the lapwings and ruff, and started the most vigorous
bout of splashing and washing – water flying everywhere, a delightful sight.
Cornwall: - I was by the sea in St Ives as the major
Storm Ophelia approached. It was quite strange
– the sky remained cheerfully blue
as the wind grew and grew till it was completely slicing off the tops of the
waves and hurling them in horizontal slabs of spray...
 |
| St Ives Harbour by Mike Crowe |
- In the evening from the top floor of
our rented house, we could watch two grey seals come in to feed in the harbour
at high tide. Big crowds came out to watch them under the harbour lights as
they swam up to the quay and begged by a fishing boat...
- At the Hayle estuary I watched a
sparrowhawk neatly turn completely sideways, wings outstretched, to fly through
a narrow hedgerow gap...
My First
Sea Watch: I did my first ever ‘sea watch’ with about ten other people today, on
the Severn Beach esplanade facing the Bristol Channel. This is when bird
watchers gather during storms at known lookouts, to watch for ocean birds like
petrels, gannets, shearwaters and this time a tiny grey phalarope, driven
closer to land by powerful winds. (To put this another way: nutters seek out
the most exposed places they know in the worst weather of the year, to stand in
violent wind and rain for some hours with telescopes glued to their eyes) Storm
Brian was
approaching – another storm with lots of powerful south-to-south-westerly
wind but no rain, so a relatively ‘fair-weather’ experience for a newbie like
me. Others let me use their telescopes to follow the action out at sea, and I finally
managed to see a Leach’s Petrel with just my binoculars as it flew in close to
shore. This little bird, just six inches long but adapted for a constant life
on the ocean, was so diminutive it would disappear behind each wave crest as it
skimmed close to the sea’s surface.... It was an exciting and addictive
experience!
 |
| Leach’s Petrel by Richard Crossley |
Generous
Ivy Blossom: At Marshfield on this warm and still day, Red Admiral butterflies were out
in force, particularly on ‘selected’ flowering ivy bushes – some bushes being much
more popular than others in Nature’s mysterious way; and the numbers of Red
Admirals I counted rapidly climbed from scores to hundreds. The blossom was also
being enjoyed by Brimstone butterflies, bees and hoverflies: ivy is a generous plant for birds
and insects with its late-flowering blooms, and the resulting black berries
that feed creatures right through to Spring.
 |
| Red Admiral on Ivy blossom by Dave Dunford |
More late
flowers:
At Clevedon, south of the harbour – bristly ox-tongue and wild mustard still
flowered brightly.
 |
| Siskin by Estormiz |
 |
| Ballroom dancing... by Che |
November
 |
| Winter Heliotrope by Dave Hitchborne |
Late
Autumn colours& flowers... At this late date there is still an unusual
amount of gorgeous
Autumn tree colour including in maple, beech, oak and birch.
Down the Avon Gorge, hazels held catkins and pretty pink winter heliotrope
lined the path in profusion.
A Winter Bird Trip to Devon, including:
 |
| Cirl Bunting by Paco Gomez |
- Clennon Valley Reserve, Torbay, a modest urban-fringe reserve with
woodland, stream and lake to look for a Yellow-
browed Warbler. We didn’t find
it - though it had been there earlier and would be seen later - but we did find
a Firecrest and Kingfisher. I like these modest reserves, and I like looking
for particular species even if they’re not found because you get to understand
their habits and habitats... or to guess anyway – for instance, why is this
rare little foreign visitor so often found in this particular spot...?
 |
| Yellow-browed Warbler by Hugh Venable |
- South Molton Reserve, Thurlstone –where a large rock stack out to
sea had Cormorants and Shags sitting together for useful comparison, and a
Heron unusually huddled high on the sheltered side.
 |
| Wood Blewit by Gail Hapmshire |
- Then into the reserve round
the Ley (lagoon) behind the beach –
strikingly calmer and warmer, full of birds. Along the path were pale purple Wood Blewit fungi, and abundant rows of spiky Butcher’s Broom bushes full of red
berries. Black-headed Gulls on the lagoon were washing with great splashings –
the spray flying silver against the bright low sun...
- Steps Bridge and Dunsford Nature Reserve on Dartmoor’s
north-east edge: ancient woodland along
the River Teign where a lucky few saw the rare Lesser Spotted Woodpecker
showing fleetingly in low tree growth...
 |
| Butcher's Broom by Bernard Dupont |
- Matford Marsh, wetlands unobtrusively tucked between big roads on
the commercial fringes of Exeter, where kind locals pointed out an American
Wigeon on the banks of a stream, its
dark green face pattern almost black
against a greyish face.
 |
| American Wigeon by Tony Hisgett |
Starry Starry Nights: In my life I have been to some remote and far-flung
places. Having read other travellers’ descriptions of seeing wonderful starry
night skies I looked forward to experiencing them myself in such places - but
ended up being quite disappointed when the reality was much less dazzling than
expectation... Yet strangely the most beautiful starry skies I have ever seen -
have been on the Lizard in Cornwall about seven years ago, and during the two
nights we just spent birding at Hope Cove in Devon. Both these seaside places were
deeply quiet at night, their skies profoundly dark, and the heavens truly were
a rich, deep wonderland of gem brilliance, flung with an extravagant hand...
‘Faces’: There was an article in the latest Bristol
Naturalists’ Society magazine on how genetic study of British tits shows their bills
are getting longer as they adapt to pecking food from garden feeders. It added:
'Changes in specific gene sequences in
the British birds were found to closely match human genes that determine face
shape.' There’s something strangely pleasing about this relationship of a
bird’s ‘face’ to our own...
 |
| Hawfinch by Francesco Veronesi |
Hawfinch
banter: An article in the Bristol Naturalists’ Society magazine included a
reference to
hawfinches as ‘chunky’. I indulged in some banter with the
esteemed author with an email: ‘Oy, who
are you calling 'chunky'? We prefer 'well built'... Yours, A Hawfinch.’
He replied: ‘Very funny! The portly Hawfinch needs all
the support it can get (quite a strong twig anyway...).’
December
 |
| Snowy Marshfield December 2017 |
Shepperdine
View: Snow on the Welsh side, soft pearly light, estuary as still as we’d
ever seen it with floating birds leaving delicate wakes of light on dark or
dark on light ripples...
Cribbs
Moorhens: At Cribbs Causeway, our large nearby out-of-town retail centre, three moorhens
were browsing on grassy verges in the middle of the dual carriageways and
superstores . Though I frequently drive through this area I haven't seen
moorhens or anything similar there before, and wondered where they could be
based – they need their water and aren’t known for random searches. One
colleague said there were a variety of small hidden wet areas within the Cribbs
complex, and another replied, ‘That
Cribbs spot has produced some strange sightings. Osprey over Apr 2015, a mini
murmuration of Starling in Oct the same year. A Merlin in Jan 14 and a Red Kite
in April.’
New
Passage reeds: The stand of
tall dried reeds along the tidal river shimmied stiffly in the breeze...
 |
| View from Aust Wharf |
 |
| Blackbird on crabtree Dec 2017 |
New
Passage Blackbird and Wagtail: On the little road up to New Passage is a
small ornamental
crab apple right by the path, still bearing red-orange fruits
now soft and ‘bletted’. The last two times I’ve walked by, a blackbird has been
gorging on the crabs and taking no notice of me even when I was less than a
metre away.
On the inland side of the sluice that
blocks a small river from the tidal estuary, very fine algal particles were
floating down and gathering in a green scum, on which a grey wagtail was
happily pottering and feeding...
Like the
Rings of Saturn: On the salt marshes today was a pool of water coloured clear
brown from the peat, with a beige frothy scum just like the head on a pint of Guiness.
Persistent winds had blown line after fine line of froth to one side where they
had frozen into an area of clear ice, where the lines built up into curved
striations as fine, refined and defined as the rings of Saturn, or growth lines
on a bracket fungus...
Moonbow: We were sitting in my
friends’ chalet high in the woods looking down across the moors to the Bristol
Channel, when a rainbow appeared stretching from the bottom to the top of our
view. It made my friend remember some years before when he had been sailing up
the Channel at night with a full moon behind. Suddenly a moonbow appeared in
front – the full height of a rainbow, but the bands picked out only in shades
of silver greys... a rare phenomenon.
END
 |
| Severn Estuary |
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