Two days ago I heard my first willow warbler. Now they're calling everywhere. I hear redpoll and I think I catch a single note of linnet which returns from overwintering on the coast to breed here in spring.
Soon the Scout Scar scrub will be white with blackthorn flowers. There's a tallish shrub which always flowers first so I seek it out to find it rich in fat creamy flower buds opening with a flourish of pollen tipped anthers. The day is warm and bright so pollinators will be on the wing. The reddish branches are patterned with pale lichens so it's a fine study.
Two days ago I heard my first willow warbler. Now they're calling everywhere. I hear redpoll and I think I catch a single note of linnet which returns from overwintering on the coast to breed here in spring.
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Watch David Attenborough's Wild Isles in awe and ask can we find such creatures for ourselves and are we giving Nature a chance? The hare’s top-speed might be 45 mph but on this still and bright morning he grazed at leisure. The hare jizz was fresh in my mind and I see them here at this season. A sole hare loped across the scrub, alert and upright when he heard a dog bark. Wild Isles showed a hare-hotspot but I was pleased to see one in Easter Week, to know they're still here in this place. Long-tailed tits call to each other as they flit through the trees. A woodpecker drums on a hollow trunk. All through the wood chiff chaff proclaim territories and seek mates. Sunlight pours down to the herb layer lush with new growth after days of rain. The wood resounds with flowing water, waterfall, beck and adventitious water-tracks here today and gone tomorrow. Not tomorrow, more rain is forecast. So we seize the day, a day all the more wonderful because March has been wet and dreary. Hurrah for snow. There's nothing to compare with fresh snowfall on a bright day somewhere between winter and spring. Last night, there was a blustery wind and we awoke to snowfall. Up on Scout Scar I could see how the wind had scoured the snow, rippling over it and creating shallow drifts. These days, it's rare to see snow on Scout Scar escarpment. Two days ago there was a trace of snow on the very tops of distant fells and the woods below the escarpment showed in warm and muted colour. Twice-spooked, the flock of Black-tailed godwit rose into the air and came down closer and closer to the sea-hide. But now cloud had masked the sun and colour drained away. The wood to the north is a dark reflection in the water with birds flood-lit and the sun highlighting the brick-red head and chest of those in breeding plumage. A shimmer of upside-down reflections surrounds the birds. The musical call of redshank, sentinel of the marshes, rings out. They scurry through shallow water in search of food. A pair mates in a flurry of wings close to the hide. A blue sky and white cumulus is mirrored in the water and the distant wood is a pool of darkness. A dense flock of Black-tailed godwit roosts in a shadowy surround. Beyond, a scatter of Black-headed gull gleams white. All seems tranquil and still but the light changes with the interplay of sunlight and cloud and there's a choreography amongst the birds, both subtle and dynamic. The days grow longer and tomorrow is the first day of spring. Birds are resplendent in breeding plumage. Males show in bold, bright colour with females less colourful but with intricate plumage pattern. When courting birds swim together and roost close to each other that's an opportunity to identify females. There are rafts of tufted ducks, predominantly males with black and white plumage and a panache, a long crest of dark feathers present in the breeding season. The female has a blue bill and a hint of a crest, her plumage is dark brown. Snowdrops and aconites are splendid in Sizergh gardens. Along our way are mossy banks and snowdrops with delicate green markings within the bell-shaped flower. Snowdrops cluster beneath the trees in the orchard where fieldfare ate windfalls in mid-December. A mossy stone wall has niche and crevice, as if inhabited by mice and vole, a thoroughfare for stoat. Here were dragonflies in summer. On a frosty February morning the trees are bare and sunlight pours down to the woodland floor where mosses grow bright and snowdrops appear. Snowdrops, Glanathus nivalis, the milk-white flower of the snow. Coming at Candlemass, 2nd February, they're known as Candlemass bells. In early November autumn fruits were the seasonal highlight by the lake at Sizergh. An exotic rowan (Sorbus Vilmorinii) bore a mass of pink berries. Now light penetrates through winter trees and the herb layer responds with a flourish. ‘What is that?' A weird call coming from the crown of a tall tree puzzles him and he follows our gaze. A raven in liquid two-tone note is duetting with a gravelly bass in courtship display. ‘It’s fluffing up its feathers when it does that. I’ve never heard that before and there are thousands of them round here. We noticed in lock-down.‘ The raven postures and preens before his mate, ruffling his feathers and giving voice in a resonant gurgle answered with a gruff bark. Water-levels were high after January rains, the lower hide inaccessible, the track to causeway hide might overtop our walking boots, so the warden advised us. He wore wellingtons. With the coming of cold floodwater had turned to ice, spectacular and challenging. The Sky Tower was closed, being a hazard. Sunlight on frozen pools and on reedbeds was beautiful and the soundscape of thaw and melting ice was all about us. Alder and willow carr were ice-bound, with beautiful pattern created as ice locked onto water-logged trees and grew, trapping air-bubbles. Snow on sunlit fells, a layer of mist lies over the waters of Windermere, rising and dispersing as we watch. There's a frosty pallor over icy floodwaters in the Lyth Valley. The morning has a wonderful clarity. In January, the position of the sun in the sky gives the light a distinct quality and frost has come suddenly after a month of rain. By the time we return to Helsington Church cumulous cloud has bubbled up and clarity is gone. Fieldfare are calling in the crowns of trees and the sun shows their colours. 'It's rained the last thirty days,' she said. Weather-man Darren Betts confirms January 2023 has been mild and exceptionally wet. On Sunday 15th the sun shone and we all headed to Scout Scar, rejoicing to be outdoors at last. There was flooding down in the Lyth Valley with snow on the Lake District fells and on the Howgills. Few would have ventured onto Scout Scar on days so dark and wet. But how has resident wildlife fared? It's the hungry-gap when food is scarce and relentless rain makes foraging and hunting harder. A bright winter's day amidst days of rain. Everywhere there's the sound of water flowing off the fells. The becks are lively and water-tracks appear, and vanish in fair weather. The low winter sun highlights a pattern of field-walls and outlying barns. Above Kentmere Hall becks are fringed with alder and birch and there's a scatter of boulders. The sky is peerless blue, winter bracken glows and the woods are warm and muted colours. Sunrise comes with a low, gleaming light that colours the trees where ravens call to each other in bass notes. The morning is still and rain holds off- wind and rain will see out the year. Daylight hours are short and the light changes dramatically through the morning. Sunlight plays over the Langdale Pikes, contesting with shadowing cloud. The call of ducks reaches up to us from Cunswick Tarn. To the north, Red Screes appears clad in snow. To the east, the Howgills. 'Look at all those birds! ' The low winter sun casts a raking light and long shadows. A hedge and trees thick with ivy give shelter and a roost when darkness falls, and night comes early on a winter's day. Yesterday the temperature never rose above zero. Today it's 1 degree and bitterly cold out of the sun. Our shadows peep above the stone wall as we peer amongst orchard trees leafless and bare of fruit. Rosy windfalls lie in a sprinkling of snow and birds feast on them. What are all those birds amongst the fallen apples? Clear, cold nights with temperatures well below freezing are conditions for hoar frost to form. A pale moon lingers in a morning bright and still and the Lyth Valley lies before us, a beautiful winter scene. Frost highlights the patchwork of field and hedgerow and in the distance the Coniston fells look wintry. And so to SIzergh where reeds beside a lake flagged at the approach of winter and today they glitter with hoar frost. Beyond the reed bed there's an alder, its crown thick with catkins of deep purple. Sunlight sets the frozen lake ablaze at SIzergh. Spikes and tufts of frosted water-plants stipple the ice and birds' footprints are etched into it. The crown of a willow glows rosy. The morning is still and bitterly cold. A clear blue sky tells of winter weather from the North, an intense blue fading to pallor all mirrored in the icy lake. Hoar frost casts a spell on the landscape with wondrous patterns on shrubs and seed-heads, wherever frost crystals take hold. Now for the berried trees and shrubs I have photographed through the autumn. Snow highlights the pattern of field walls down in the Lyth Valley. And from Scout Scar escarpment you could see how snow cloud had come from the north, held back over the Langdale Pikes, then shed snow on Crinkle Crags and the Coniston Fells. Up on the ridge all the ant hills had a crest of white, the north-facing side white with snow, the south side green. It was warm in the sun, freezing out of it. The snow had fallen a couple of days ago so there had been thaw and refreeze. On a bright winter's morning the sun beams down into The Ghyll and lights the mature hornbeam that grow beside the underground water-course. The trees have shed their leaves but last summer's seed-heads remain. Each papery fruit resembles a lantern and hangs from a fine wiggly stem. I find pattern and design compelling This is the tree in its winter aspect but there are signs of spring. Dark buds cling tight to stems, catkin buds and leaf buds fully formed to overwinter in the harshest weather. There's an echo of our own lives in this capturing of time past, time present and time to come. We might think we live in the moment but our minds flit back and forth over time. |
AuthorJan Wiltshire is a nature writer living in Cumbria. She also explores islands and coast and the wildlife experience. (See Home and My Books) Archives
April 2024
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