Blog Archives - Cumbria Naturally

Cumbria Naturally

My Cumbria Naturally blog

I'm a Nature writer, that's not just what I do, it is who I am.
Field-craft is about looking, listening, and interpreting habit and habitat. Nature is full of surprises and there's always more to discover..
Reflecting on the day, editing images, I seek to distil the essence of the experience, to recreate the thrill and immediacy.
Each blog is a journal, on the day and of the day. Complete in itself, each is a
piece in a mosaic, a variation on a theme in the dynamic of Nature.
To explore
SEARCH (top right) enter name of bird, butterfly or plant, topic or location.
ARCHIVE (dates right of page) to locate seasonal highlights. For instance, click on August and September 2025. A sequence from Sizergh tells of painted ladies and humming-bird hawk moth from Africa. Red admiral feast on fermenting damsons.
Blogs are best read on a computer or laptop as phones may change layout

Scout Scar: snow, mist and icicles

31/1/2019

Mist gathering to the right, beyond Kendal Race Course

Setting out in bright sun, I was ready for an icy approach to Scout Scar. Snow on Kendal Race Course and mist hid the fells to the north east. Sheep tugged at haylage in the feeder and pawed the frozen ground where it spilled onto snow. The flock was lost in sunlit mist, then the sun gave up on the day and mist prevailed.
There had been rain, then snow, and we could feel the ice beneath a surface layer of snow. When we reached the escarpment only a colour transition marked the cliff edge where snow met mist.

Slow looking

27/1/2019

Slow-looking is the new thing for 2019. Slow film gave us the Sami and their reindeer herd on migration. Some two hours or more of progress through the frozen landscapes of northern Norway at the pace of a grazing reindeer herd, shown at Christmas.
Now slow-looking is the concept behind a new art exhibition.
So, a photograph for slow-looking. It is for you to contemplate, to lose yourself in a landscape. Be curious. What can you discover?

Scout Scar with freezing fog, rime-ice, refracted light

23/1/2019

Rime-ice on hawthorn

A clear blue sky and a still morning. Beneath the moon, freezing fog had touched down on Scout Scar escarpment and hawthorn were white with rime-ice. Rime-ice so thick the grass was white, the limestone stippled white and last summer's flower-stems rose tall and white, their seed-heads like ice flowers. And mist in the upper reaches of the Lyth Valley was different too. Discrete columns of freezing fog were drifting over the valley. Several years ago I puzzled to see fog advancing until it swirled all about me, my head clear above a sea of freezing fog as temperatures plummeted.

Rime-ice on wood sage and heather

23/1/2019

Heather, Calluna vulgaris, with rime-ice

Rime-ice highlights last summer's flowers, adorning them with ice-jewels that sparkle in the sun. The ice-coating forms to windward and renders flower-stems almost translucent. Heather looks lovely under rime-ice. Seed-heads of wood-sage endure and stand proud above snow so how will they fare in rime-ice? I know the wood-sage habitat so I go in search of the rafts of limestone clitter where I hope to find it.

Snow on the fells

20/1/2019

Snow on the Lake District Fells

The mist was stubborn. But sun gleamed off snow on the distant fells as I crested the Scout Scar escarpment. Mist lingered in the Lyth Valley, volatile mist which gathered and dispersed all morning. The fells were hidden until a sliver of dark summit rose above the mist. After mid-day the sun began to shrug off cloud and the snow-capped fells floated above the mist and clouds hugged the tops. We could not tell cloud from mountain. Cloud, that wondrous fusion of the elements that played before our eyes on this January day. Cloud is mountain, mountain is cloud.

Mary Queen of Scots: a film for 2018

19/1/2019

Bolton Caste, Wensleydale

Mary Queen of Scots , unbowed by age and years of captivity, walks regally toward the block and her execution at Fotheringhay Castle. The camera focuses on the back of her neck! 'In my end is my beginning': the scene frames the tragedy of Mary Stuart at the beginning and end of the film. The queen takes off her outer black to reveal a gown of blood red. ' She wants to be a martyr,' whispers a male voice- in case we miss the symbolism.

Finsthwaite and winter woodland

18/1/2019

Birch trees in January

Finsthwaite and woodlands rising from the south-west shore of Windermere were under the aegis of Furness Abbey, vital to its wealth and economy. With coppicing, pit-steads for charcoal burning, and iron mines, quarrying, corn-mills and granges. And a bark-peeler's hut.
Great Knott Wood is now managed by the Woodland Trust who tell the story of woodland management, history and natural history.

January sunrise

14/1/2019

In the east the sky flushed with the approach of sunrise. Over the course of some half-hour I watched its coming. Rooks flew cawing across my open skylight window as I photographed the dawn. In the distance a plane soared to altitude, its con-trail almost vertical- a question of perspective and the curvature of the earth. The images look angrier than the coming of sunrise which was simply stunning.

Moss Eccles Tarn, Wise Een Tarn and Claife Heights

10/1/2019

Swans and cygnets at Moss Eccles Tarn

Swans and their cygnets at Moss Eccles Tarn. Trees reflected dark in the water, in the stillness. The swans came gliding toward us, elegant and beautiful, until they reached the shore where in gruff snorts they asked to share anything we might be eating.

The Old Man of Coniston and sheepish tails

8/1/2019

Dow Crag, The Old Man of Coniston. Slate spoil heaps centre

Our path follows the course of Torver Beck, up-stream to its headwaters at Goat’s Water. Dow Crag and The Old Man of Coniston rise up above the hidden tarn.
A low winter sun illuminates the landscape in a distinctive way, with a different emphasis. Dow Crag and the Old Man are etched in sunlight and shadow, the architecture of the fells revealed.

Hill Farming in the Lake District: the way of sheep

3/1/2019

Double-deck vehicle off-loads Cheviots

The way of sheep is written into Lake District landscape. In-bye pastures where lambs are nurtured close to the farm, out-gangs- lanes bordered by drystone walls that lead maturing lambs to independence, outlying barns, sheep-folds, then out onto common grazing and the open fell. The thrill of watching a gathering when they're brought home again! The character of hill farming is written by the way of sheep, a heritage landscape.
Today, we are in for a surprise.

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight at New Year's Day

1/1/2019

Scout Scar, New Year's Day 2019

A yelping of distant hounds. But where are they? Somewhere, down in the Lyth Valley, the hounds sing out. They ran amuk about Barrowfield, so rumour tells.
New Year's Day and once again I'm back in the year 1400, immersed in the tale of Sir Gawain and The Green Knight. Sir Gawain destined to meet the green knight at the green chapel and to receive a blow from his axe, always on this day.