Just as I was blocking out the last of a bleak mid-winter day, I noticed that the fog that had stubbornly hung around all day was finally starting to shift. Our house looks out over two shallow valleys (at least when the leaves aren’t on the trees) and I could see the tops of those valleys starting to peak out from above the fog. So I quickly put on my jacket and boots and walked down to the end of the lane to look over the fields and see if I could get some suitably wintry dusk photos. I’m quite pleased with the results below, showing how the increasing breeze was blowing the fog away…
It’s definitely a day for staying indoors. We woke to the forecast snow with the unusually bright light peaking in past our curtains. The light was from the snow on the ground and trees rather than the sun as that was obscured by a heavy and dripping fog cloaking the land.
The snow itself, the second fall of the winter (we missed the first while we were in Ecuador), wasn’t that lovely crisp white snow that squeakily crunches as you walk through it but that nasty wet and slushy snow that mixes with mud and turns to chilling puddles far too quickly.
The weather is bleak and so is the day, the last of a lovely Christmas break that unusually has lasted two whole weeks. We have taken down all the decorations and put them away in the loft for the next 11 months and my mind is turning to work once again.
I couldn’t stay locked up inside all day, despite how cosy it would be to do so. I ventured out to look for birds at a nearby reservoir to add to my, so far, very short list for the year. There is a White-fronted Goose about, mixed in with a flock of Greylags but it and they were not visible. Down by the water’s edge, I could see very little due to the blanket of fog but a small party of male Goldeye floated past and there were Mute Swans, Gadwall, Tufted Duck and Moorhen to add to the year’s tally.
The atmosphere by the water typified the bleakness of the day. Almost silent, the only sounds were the drips from the trees, an occasional subdued quack and the far off chime of a church bell, almost muffled by the cloud. The fog left a monochrome vision of the reservoir, nothing in the winter scene to add any colour, even the birds were black, white or grey.
Now for a warm and cosy evening indoors with a log fire, soft lighting and, maybe, a dram to round off the holiday.
After a very windy and rainy night and morning we made our way down to the coast and the beach at Blegberry near Hartland, Devon.
With the tide out, the waves were distant from us as we stood overlooking the shoreline but they were still an impressive sight crashing onto the rocky beach.
I took the following photos standing on the low grassy cliff top above the beach, focusing on the stream that cascades down onto the rocks beneath. The water level had increased markedly following the hours of rainfall since the early hours of 2025…
I’m writing this post on New Years Eve sitting in a cottage just a few hundred metres back from the north-west Devon coast. That distance is definitely a good thing as there is a storm outside (well gusts of between 50 and 60mph) and the sea looked pretty threatening, even this far away.
2024 has been been another great year in my exploration of nature, both at home and much further away. It has also been a very fast moving one – it really does seem to have gone in a blink of an eye, especially the months since the end of summer. I’m really not sure where the time has gone.
As is now becoming traditional in my life, the year started down in Devon as it is now finishing. We then had five months to wait until a first longer trip away from home. In between, we did have a short winter trip to Norfolk and visited many of the nature reserves in our area and further east.
That first trip, in May, was to Northumberland, staying for a week in Bamburgh. The highlights of that holiday were trips to the Farne Islands and out to the Isle of May, continuing our ‘quest’ to visit the islands around the UK.
With the summer came a trip to Sweden, which is also now getting back into an annual routine. We spent that week travelling what are now well known wildlife spots, canoeing and grilling sausages on open fires.
Unfortunately, one routine was broken this year as I had to cancel my late-August trip to RSPB Ramsey Island. However, this did enable me to do a first bit of formal volunteering locally with two days working with the Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire & Northamptonshire Wildlife Trust.
Then, in November we had the biggest trip of the year with a two-week exploration of the Andes and Amazonian Rainforest of Ecuador. I’ve put some blog posts about this trip already but there will be more to come.
The trip to South America helped to make this a record-breaking year for me wildlife-wise. I have seen seen 475 species of bird and 54 species of mammal in the calendar year. The former breaks my bird record by 175!
I added one new bird to my life list in the UK (waxwing) and I saw 316 new birds for my life list in Ecuador. I am now much closer to my current target of 1,000 birds with the trip to Ecuador taking my current total to 821.
Back to the weather; the first part of the year was extremely wet being part of the wettest 12 months and 18 months on record. The poor weather continued into June but we then had a surprisingly good summer. This good weather dried out the land and enabled me to do a lot of off-road cycling around my home in rural Northamptonshire which I loved immensely. The weather then got back to its old pattern with some very heavy rain and in late November we were almost cut off in our village by flooded roads.
Signing off for 2024, it’s been a great year with many brilliant memories. It does make me reflect just how grateful I am to live in a rural area with easy access to the countryside and a great range of nature sites. It also reminds me just how fortunate I am to be able to travel around the UK and much further to see the best of the wild. That gratitude comes with a continuing recognition that so much of that nature and wildness is threatened and more action is needed to protect and revive it.
I should just say thanks to the small group of followers who read my Daft Mumblings (your numbers actually jumped up a bit on 2024!)
I’ll finish with a few photo highlights of the year…
We’re spending six nights in north-west Devon to mark the end of the year and the start of a new one. I’ve not been in the Hartland area before but it really is lovely. We’re staying in former farm buildings just back from the coast, which we can see from the lounge window. This location means we can walk the coast path almost directly. Below are just a few shots of the landscape around Hartland Point…
After completing our food prep for tomorrow, we went for a Christmas Eve wander around one of the nearby reservoirs. It has been a very gloomy day and the cloud was starting to form into a think mist above the trees and fields as we set off for an our walk.
At we made our way around the very muddy path, we stopped at some of the fishing platforms, which made for some very nice, atmospheric photos across the flat calm lake.
There were two wildlife sitings of note as we wandered. First, were an adult and juvenile white-fronted geese, our first siting of this species this year. Second was quite an odd view of a Daubenton’s bat flying low over the water. I haven’t seen one of these bats for a long time and to see one on Christmas Eve must be quite unusual – but given it was 10c, not as surprising as it seems.
We went for a walk to a local high point this afternoon to watch the sun set on the winter solstice. It has been a windy day and we felt it as we walked out from the shelter of the trees and onto the ridge above the rolling Northamptonshire countryside.
We weren’t the only ones enjoying the view in the gusty breeze. We watched five red kites playing in the air, hanging on their wings and swooping down to the ploughed fields. As we walked to a good vantage point they flew back and forth across the scene which was starting to be lit by the dipping sun. We stood and watched them quartering the sky and the sun behind become surrounded in an orange haze. A bank of cloud momentarily blocked the view but the sun shone from behind, seemingly unusually large despite being at its furthest from us.
As the sun finally dipped behind the horizon, the kites drifted off to their night-time roost and we wandered back to the car in the increasing darkness.
I had to scrape ice off the car windscreen as I left for work this morning. Despite having a mild winter, mornings of late have been chilly.
The 15-minute drive to the station, once the light has started to return, is lovely. I drive cross-country to a village station on the line between Northampton and Rugby. The route is all rural with an occasional village and passes through nicely rolling countryside. On a frosty morning like today, the valleys can be cloaked in mist giving some stunning views as I pass through them.
When I get to the station, standing on the platform there are views across the fields to the far off Borough Hill, near Daventry. The scene at the station this morning was quite spectacular with a colourful sunrise above the frosty and misty fields. On mornings like this, despite the cold clawing at my nose and fingers, there’s something joyous about being out and about at this time of day.
Daft Mumblings 