Blog

Scout Scar: redstart and redpoll

20/4/2021

Male redstart displaying his tail feathers

In shimmer and display, the male redstart fans out his flame-coloured tail feathers to impress a female. On spring migration, redstart always arrive here late April and often display from whitebeam, still in bud and rising above the escarpment cliff. He wants to be seen. And heard. The energy he puts into his song shows in his stance, his wide gape. He turns his head to broadcast his song. He flits from his display perch, tries another in the territory he hopes to secure, and back again.
Once I've found a redstart I stay some time, looking and listening. It's an immersive experience, redstart song and lambs bleating.

Adder on Scout Scar

19/4/2021

Buzzard in a holly tree

Lambs feed at their mother’s teats, tails waggling. Crossing Kendal Race Course, with a lively escort of lambs, I meet Angela and Chris, friends and former neighbours who have always supported my work as a nature writer. We miss them. Chris has a tale to tell and he’s been waiting eighteen months to share it with me. Alone and heading off Scout Scar, he heard a grunting coming from over the out-take wall and saw a large rabbit in the grip of a mustelid. Stoat or weasel he was unsure but a small mustelid had sunk its teeth into the back of the much larger rabbit’s neck, paralysing its hind legs. What a drama!

Warriner's Wood: toothwort, Lathraea squamaria

16/4/2021

Toothwort, Lathraea squamaria

The last time I saw toothwort was 9th April 2014, in Howe Ridding Wood, And the flower was found by our guide Joe Murphy of Cumbria Wildlife Trust.
Today, we discover toothwort for ourselves, which is even better. So, an interlude of looking closely to consider this parasitic plant's habit and habitat. What we see emerging from a thick and deep cushion of mosses strewn with dead twigs is merely the plant's flowering. New flowers appear close to the trunk of the host tree, disguised in mosses.

Warton Crag: ravens and brimstone butterflies

15/4/2021

Jenny Brown's Point from Warton Crag

Strong sunlight illuminates the quarry face. Jackdaw are vocal in the tree tops nearby. And bass notes of raven sound as birds fly above and about the quarry cliff. Overhangs create shadows across the rock-face, clumps of gorse and vegetation grow on sheer rock, jagged with shadowy crevices and niches. When I find the raven's nest the surrounding rock throws shadows rather like the black raven itself.

Kentmere Pastoral

13/4/2021

Rough Fell ewe and her lamb

Sunrise gilds the Kentmere tops and down in the dale the puddled track is iced over. To be in Kentmere once more feels like a home-coming.
It is lambing time and the rhythms of pastoral feel remote from the world beyond the dale. By Kentmere Hall, a farmer drives his quadbike through the pasture to deliver feed to heavily pregnant ewes.

Scout Scar: linnet and the desecration at Ghyll Brow

10/4/2021

Male linnet singing

I heard the lovely song of linnet, just where I always find them. He sang high in an ash, by thick gorse and juniper. He was in full sunlight and through my binoculars I could see the crimson on his breast. My camera does not pick up the strong colour I saw, it's a question of how the light falls. A tiny bill and forked tail distinguish linnet, and his song.
Willow warbler are returned and I've heard them the last couple of days. Chiff chaff have been singing a while.

Identifying Downy Birch

7/4/2021

Male catkins and opening leaf buds, Downy Birch

On a cold and bright April morning the male
catkins of Downy birch are almost open. Leaf
buds are opening too.
On Helsington Barrows, there's a stand of Downy birch, trees of different ages. Young trees have glossy bark of purple red which slowly matures to white with papery layers. Horizontal lines show on the bark of young and mature trees.
Dark branch scars show on the white trunk of a mature Downy birch, with the younger branch showing purple red. The strong morning sunlight shows these features clearly.

Whitbarrow with larch flowers, wheatear and marsh tit

3/4/2021

Flowers of Larix decidua, European larch

On a sunny Easter Saturday here;s a European Larch, Larix decidua, with an abundance of flowers. A leaf bud bursts to reveal fresh green needles, behind it a crimson female flower. To the left of the twig, the smaller, greenish male flower. The larch is thick with pine cones from last summer, and possibly from two summers past. The light is perfect so I show the detail of larch flowers, and their distribution in the tree.

Blue Moor Grass on Helsington Barrows

31/3/2021

Tussocks of Blue Moor Grass have steel=blue flowers that give pollen at Easter Tide. It's a plant of limestone grassland, rare nationally, abundant on Scout Scar. With days of warm spring weather its blue flowers open to pollinators. It's an early flowering grass, with blue flowers on anthills, little tussocks in a weave of vegetation. Later in summer its stems will grow tall.
Temperatures are so high this week I'm looking out for butterflies, although there are few flowers to offer them nectar. Blackthorn begins to flower. Yew tree flowers have pollen too. Synchronicity is key: the coincidence of flowers with insects to pollinate them.

Wild Daffodils at Brigsteer Wood

30/3/2021

Wild daffodils, Brigsteer Wood

After Sunday’s incessant rain and Mondays rain showers there were floodwaters in the Lyth Valley. Low cloud over floodwaters, with pools of glimmering light over The Howe and Row, toward Whitbarrow. The sun slowly dispelled cloud and the morning grew warm. Tuesday 30th March, the hottest day of the year, so far.
We're on the cusp of spring, another wierd pandemic spring. of hope and foreboding.

Foulshaw Moss in March

24/3/2021

Witches' broom on birch (left). Willow catkins ( right).

Foulshaw Moss is a lowland raised mire, coastal, close to Morecambe Bay. Late last century, this landscape would have looked very different, a plantation including Scots Pine. Osprey nest in Scots Pine, amongst dead trees that spike the mire, telling of that time. There’s a zone of birch carr, skeletal and decaying, succumbing to fungal rot. Like trees shattered by war: a landscape in a Paul Nash painting. Then the sun gleams and glistens on the watery mire which burgeons with life.

Foulshaw Moss: siskin, redpoll, tree sparrow

24/3/2021

Siskin at Foulshaw Moss

A morning with a chill wind and blue skies. Birds are in breeding plumage and looking smart and brightly coloured, like this siskin.
Redpoll were lively and vocal in the tree- tops. I could hear them in the shelter of tall trees behind the feeders, but few came down to feed. Tree sparrow, green finch and gold finch showed.

Fieldfare with starling

22/3/2021

First winter fieldfare ( left) adult (right)

Larksong fills the air.
Pink-footed geese, fly North, out of the sun and above me.
Distant pee-wit call of lapwing, and curlew.
A flock of starling in full voice, they’re noisy neighbours. Their dark forms show in the bare branches of an ash.

Hare, skylark, fieldfare and lapwing

19/3/2021

The Langdale Pikes in silhouette

As a naturalist, when I invite a friend to accompany me I hope for wildlife sightings. Will skylark sing this morning, can I conjure the hare I've seen recently, and the elusive lapwing? If not, will the sun shine to make magic of the fells. And there comes an eyelet of blue and the Langdale Pikes are silhouetted against a glow of warm colour and gleaming snow.

Out of control dogs on Scout Scar

16/3/2021

Welsh Black cattle grazing on Scout Scar near the cliff-edge

A sunlit morning on Scout Scar yesterday. Welsh Black cattle grazed close to the escarpment cliff, the snow-clad fells beyond. These cattle are docile, even when under threat, as I was about to witness. I was photographing the peaceful scene when a family with three dogs approached. The dogs went for the cow, harassing her, then two of them ran slavering and barking at me. I asked them to control their dogs. The man asserted, 'they are in control.' I was taking photographs, here's the evidence.

Weather-watching on Scout Scar

13/3/2021

Looking north, from Scout Scar escarpment

Fresh overnight snow gleamed off the Kentmere Fells, to the north.
' I'm surprised to see snow, It's all around when you reach the top. It's like a gift.'
I like her way of seeing, and warm to her.
Looking north, sunlight gleamed off snow. Floodwaters down in the Lyth Valley, after days of rain. Pools of water on the escarpment too, unusual for fast-draining limestone.

Triplets at Bradleyfield

8/3/2021

Triplets at Bradleyfield. A lamb nuzzles its mother's teat and waggles its tail as it feeds. Triplets born before Atlantic lows and the severe gales forecast for later in the week.
In the further pasture, deep crimson and yellow markings on the ewes' rumps tell the farmer the dates they were tupped and when he may expect they'll give birth.

Pink-footed Geese Flying North on Migration

5/3/2021

A laughing call from a fringe of trees beyond Kendal Race Course. A green woodpecker is clamorous, his call accompanying us for some while, fainter and fainter.
I’ve walked all the last week, still days when sound carries. Today, chevrons of geese were flying North, high above Scout Scar escarpment and the Lyth Valley.

Frost and a temperature inversion: Scout Scar

3/3/2021

Cloud to the cliff top, Scout Scar

Spectacular weather this last week. High pressure brings a sharp overnight frost, followed by sun. By late morning it’s been warm enough to sit and contemplate cloudscapes and the beguiling mist that has hovered about the Lyth Valley, sometimes rising and pouring over Scout Scar escarpment and enveloping me in veils of silence, silence because I find myself alone when fog surrounds me. Firm frozen ground thaws into mud during the morning.

Scout Scar: mist and cloudscapes

1/3/2021

Burnbarrow Scar, left. Morecambe Bay in the distance

A hard overnight frost lingered in frost-pockets during the early morning. Skylark sang and when I reached Scout Scar escarpment I saw billowing mist down in the Lyth Valley. Clouds of drifting mist, rising from the floodwaters, wreathed into the woods and elusive, dispersing and thickening once again. Fascinating to watch, whether it makes interesting photographs is for you to consider.