I just love a misty sunrise and this morning’s was just about perfect. Wandering down the track at the bottom of the lane I went to my usual vantage point overlooking the valley and gazed across a misty scene lit by an orange hazy sun.
This seems like spring almost at its peak with the dawn chorus intense and rich. I had a great array of birds singing and calling. There were the stalwarts of our gardens including blackbirds, robins, goldinches, great tits, blue tits, long-tailed tits, wrens and a song thrush. Some larger birds joining in including wood pigeons and stock doves, carrion crows and jackdaws. These were then enriched by those of the hedgerow and field, including some summer visitors: skylark, chiffchaff, blackcap and whitethroat. For a time they all merged into one single voice of nature, marking the rising of a new sun and the warm day to come.
Here’s a video which captures just a little of that (slightly spoiled by the odd car on the distant main road).
It’s been a pretty poor spring so far with the weather being cold and often very wet. Today, despite the forecast we decided to head out to Badby Wood near Daventry to see the bluebells. Were weren’t disappointed and the damp weather meant that there possible weren’t as many people around as there would have been in bright sunshine.
Here’s a shot of the cathedral-like little valley in the woods, carpeted with bluebells and roofed by the high beams of mature trees with their bright green leaves emerging.
It’s been quite a few weeks since we last went for a country walk. We had to do a few household tasks yesterday, probably made a little less unwelcome by the weather being pretty unpleasant, particularly in the morning. However, waking this morning on what looked like a beautiful spring day, we headed out for a walk around part of Rutland Water.
Since we moved to Northamptonshire three years ago, Rutland is now less than an hour away. We have been to the wildlife trust nature reserve a couple of times over that time but today we decided to do a five mile circuit around the village of Hambleton and the peninsula on which it sits. The whole walk was under a mix of bright sunshine and fluffy spring clouds. The strength of the sun can now be really felt, being towards the end of March, but as soon as cloud covered it over, even fleetingly, there was still a chill in the air, especially out in the brisk wind.
There were signs of spring all along the walk: in the fields, along the hedgerows, in the woods and along the shoreline. There are new lambs in the fields, hawthorns are now coming out into leaf and the blackthorn into blossom, and there are migrant birds starting to appear and sing.
I would like to pay a little more attention to the wild flowers this spring and there were plenty on the walk. There were delicate primroses in amongst the trees and celandines on the grass verges in addition to the blossom in the hedgerows. There must also be a great display of bluebells in some of the shoreside woodlands as there were big swathes of them bursting up through the leaf litter.
After what was a stunning five-mile walk we headed to the nature reserve. Firstly to look at a possible new purchase; it’s about time I bought a proper wildlife watching telescope and I just wanted another look at one before I take the plunge (possibly). The last visit of the day was to Manton Bay to see the newly arrived ospreys. The established pair have settled in and are already mating regularly, so it might not be long until the first eggs are laid.
This did remind me of one of my old usual spring haunts, at the Glaslyn Wildlife osprey nest protection site near Porthmadog in North Wales. I volunteered there for a number of years, spending quite a few nights but also many days in the old caravan amongst the wet meadows and drystone walk, just a couple of hundred metres from the nest. It was a joyful experience being surrounded by wildlife and helping to protect this beautiful but rare species. I saw this morning that the lucky volunteers no longer have to sit in an old caravan but have a new hide, perched up on stilts to avoid the water from the too often flooding river. The ospreys at the Glaslyn have yet to return this spring but I’ll be keeping an eye out on the webcams over the coming days.
I’ll finish this post with a few images of the lovely spring walk today…
A Saturday and a Sunday morning spent working and putting together flat-pack furniture wasn’t the most inspiring way to end the week. However, after finishing the same set of bookshelves for the second time, we headed out to one of our closest nature reserves at Pitsford Water reservoir.
While putting my tools away at home, I had felt some early March warmth from the sun peeping out between the clouds. As we left the car and walked down to the water, the cloud dispersed and the sun’s strength was a bit of a surprise after such wet and grey weather recently. The warmth could be felt on our dark clothes being heated by the rays and the hide we went into felt like someone had left some (non-existent) radiators on. With no wind to speak of, and the cloud clearing further, this was a first real taste spring weather, despite the temperature still being some way below 10 degrees celsius.
We decided to head for Pitsford to see what might me a last sight of the wintering wildfowl before many of them head off to breed further north in the UK and a long way beyond. Given the relatively mild (if damp) first part of the year, it wasn’t a surprise to see that wildfowl numbers had already dropped significantly from their mid-winter highs. Pitsford is a winter home to thousands of birds with large numbers of widgeon, teal, mallard and tufted duck as well as a range of other waterbirds.
One of my favourite winter visitors to the reservoir is the splendidly feathered goldeneye – well, at least the male is, with the female being much more drab. They have already started displaying and pairing up, with the males in their finery performing a slightly odd manoeuvre, stretching their necks out and throwing their heads back, with a cartoon-like duck call. A (not very good) video of them doing this is below.
While the weekend is already sadly drawing to a close, our short walk did give me a little pick-me-up before settling in for Sunday dinner (maybe after a run in the last of the sunshine).
It seems a bit late to be starting a lockdown diary but, oddly, I don’t really seem to have had the time over the first three weeks. Life has already settled into a pattern where weekdays are filled with work, albeit with longer lunches, and the evenings provide time for a daily walk or run, some cooking and eating, and then a bit of relaxation before bed. Having spent whole days in front of a computer screen writing or on video calls, spending more time at a screen writing a blog doesn’t feature high on my list of things to do in the evenings. However, despite all the terrible things happening right now, I still find time to look at nature and, feeling generally a bit helpless about the situation in general (I’m not a key worker), I thought at very least I could make some effort to write a few blog posts.
I arrived at my girlfriend’s flat in Kew the day we both came out of self-isolation and the government called the lockdown that evening. As I travelled down from my home in Cheshire, I knew that lockdown was very likely to happen and that I could have to stay in London for the duration. The decision was really a non-contest between my own home comforts and being with Sarah.
I can’t say there aren’t things I’m missing; the flat’s balcony is a great space to lift the prospect of cabin fever but I miss my back garden, I should have brought a few more clothes with me and I would have loved to have one of my bikes down here – Sarah’s may have to be brought out as a stand in.
Anyone who reads my blogs will know I love the countryside and outdoors and the prospect of being locked down, and locked down in a city in particular, goes against my basic nature (as I’m sure it does for most). Despite having loved being a student in Birmingham for four years and subsequently having worked in Manchester for over 20 years, cities are not my natural habitat and I like to spend as little time in them as possible. However, Kew is not central London and I have found that, whilst it’s not exactly rural, we are surrounded by wildlife and a lot of green space.
Kew is in the centre of a large loop of the Thames, which is a short walk to the north and to the east of us. We are just across the road from the famous botanic gardens, we can look over the wall from the second floor flat, but now it is closed to the public it blocks the route to the Thames to the west. Kew Green is also just down the road, on one of the routes to the river, and it brings openness to the area with its large park surrounded by lovely old houses with wisteria growing up the outside of many.
However, being Kew, it’s not just big garden across the road that has plenty of attention paid to it; so many of the residential gardens are lovely too. In fact the whole area is lovely and looking particularly so now. The roads are lined with more big old houses and terraces, and the occupants clearly all (or nearly all) have green fingers with the gardens seemly competing with each other to be mini versions of their famous, larger counterpart. The streets themselves are also almost gardens themselves; I don’t think I’ve ever noticed so many street trees and at present hundreds are out in blossom.
The past three weeks, whilst being the start of lockdown, have also seemingly seen the real start of spring. After many months of miserable weather (it almost seems to have been horrible since I left my three-month stint on Ramsey Island at the end of July), the sun and warmth have finally broken through. This week particularly has been very warm with temperatures up in the mid-20s at times and the sun has been out so much of the time. This appears to have kickstarted the trees with their leaves really bursting out all across the area.
The warm weather has enabled us to have the windows and balcony door open much of the time and that has let the natural sounds into the flat. The man-made sounds are less than usual with the roads much quieter and the planes going overhead on the flight path to Heathrow almost come as a surprise as they are so few and irregular now. The bird calls now float into the flat and I have to stop to listen every so often as the call of a green woodpecker or the song of a blackcap comes through into the rooms.
As I’m not a key worker and all I have had to do is shift to working from home, which is what I do at least a day a week anyway, I can hardly complain about the situation I find myself in. We have plenty of food and drink, we can get outside of the flat and can go for a walk or run each day. The traffic and planes are much quieter and spring is growing to its peak. There are so many people in much worse positions than us and under so much more pressure and anxiety. However, its not all plain sailing and I know just what a terrible situation the country is in at present, the stress of the collective situation we find ourselves in hasn’t completely passed me by but letting nature in is surely one of the best ways to cope with it all.
Daft Mumblings 