Cumbria Naturally
  • Home
  • Blog
  • My Books
    • Cumbrian Contrasts
    • A Lakeland Experience >
      • Introduction
      • Derwent
      • Langdale
      • Ullswater
      • Kentdale
    • About Scout Scar
    • Atlantic Odyssey
  • Other Writing
    • What Larks!
    • Further - Explore Shetland
    • Autumn Migration
    • Rydal and Nab Scar
    • Perspectives
    • The River Kent
    • Wings
  • Gallery
  • Contact

Scout Scar: carpe diem

25/2/2017

0 Comments

 
PictureScout Scar escarpment with snow on the Lake District Fells
Ice-melt puddles on Scout Scar escarpment, floodwater in the Lyth Valley and snow on the fells. Sunlight illuminates escarpment  terrace and buttress of dark yew, colouring winter woods. The morning is warm and still. Raven fly  the cliff-edge.  Hoping for skylark, I hear fieldfare, finding them in a whitebeam of withered berry. Clouds gather and the face of February is grey again.  Heavy rain overnight and a forecast of more to come.



Read More
0 Comments

A Farne Islands Talk

21/2/2017

0 Comments

 
PictureShag with breeding crest and emerald eye
When a talk is going well you feel something convivial in the atmosphere. You ease into it, confident  to explore the more challenging reaches of your subject.  That happened  earlier this month at my first Farne Islands talk.  And afterwards my audience gathered  about me to share their experience of seabirds and to buy my cards and books. And these Farne Islands images are knock-out quality, especially the one I captioned ‘razorbill and sea-pinks, an aesthetic.’ How could anyone snore on contemplating that! Well, the room is hot and some are accustomed to a nap after lunch. I know a way to keep an audience on its toes, uncertain what I’ll do next.


Read More
0 Comments

Northern Leg Ends: Kitchen 2  

15/2/2017

0 Comments

 
Picture
My tale is the leg end of the kitchen chair. Are you sitting comfortably? I'm not, and a trusty carpenter is booked to contemplate leg ends and how he might refashion them. Northern legends, tales from Cumbria.  My cousin, one of my many cousins, asked a child what library book she was reading. 'Northern leg ends Miss.' 
The tale of the chair fuses with last night's Front Row review of Neil Gaiman's The Norse Mythology which I'm about to read.  Like him, I've long loved Kevin Crossley-Holland's The Norse Myths and now Marvel with Chris Hemsworth as Thor and Tom Hiddleston as Loki. Instead of showing a kitchen chair perhaps I should be offering a raven to illustrate, or the wood at Eskrigg where we watched squirrels in November, squirrels too nifty to be photographed. Elusive as Ratatosk, the squirrel of Viking myth.


Read More
0 Comments

Urban encroachment and Ghyll Brow  

14/2/2017

0 Comments

 
PictureSpurge laurel, Daphne laureola at Ghyll Brow
There are signs of spring at Ghyll Brow, and of urban encroachment too.  Roadside trees have been felled, others show paint marks that seem to spell imminent destruction.  Ground prepared for house-building, not a brown field site but pastoral.  The lost trees were roosts for bats, large mature trees that hosted tree creepers and woodpeckers. We locals made sure the biodiversity of the site was known, but the trees have been felled anyway.  Search this blog for more on the magic of Ghyll Brow, and the threat of urban encroachment. This is even more house-building than we had been told to expect.


Read More
0 Comments

If I were a carpenter: Kitchen 1

12/2/2017

0 Comments

 
PictureTo upcycle a chair?
If I were a carpenter-- Bobby Darin's song comes back to me.  Between cleaning chairs I listened on U Tube.  I could say it took me back but  I don't think I'd ever caught the story of the song, beyond that beguiling invitation in the opening lines of the lyric.
If I were a carpenter and you were a lady, would you marry me anyway, would you have my baby.  Like Dylan, the magic is in the gift of the singer, most of the words are lost in the sotto voce, gentle love song. To the kitchen.


Read More
0 Comments

Yellow Brain Fungus in February

5/2/2017

0 Comments

 
PictureYellow brain fungus, Tremella mesentrica on gorse
Some five years ago I found yellow brain fungus on a dead branch at the heart of a gorse bush where linnet nest.  It was January, and a month later I returned to see the jelly fungus deliquescent and dripping down the branch, some lobes translucent white.  Each year I return to see how the fungus fares.  It is confined to a single branch at the heart of the bush and I find it on none of the surrounding gorse. Earlier in the morning, I returned to the ash by the trig point on Scout Scar but the ridge was in shadow so the fungus was hard to see.


Read More
0 Comments

Razorbill at Dunstanburgh

2/2/2017

0 Comments

 
PictureRazorbill at Dunstanburgh
We stood looking down over the cliff-edge, admiring razorbill close on lichened rocks, hearing the sound of the waves and watching the fly-past of fulmar.  In my sequence of images I love the mist of sea-pinks in the foreground and the solid bulk of the razorbill with the lichened cliff behind.  Rain and low cloud engulfed Dunstanburgh Castle and as we walked the circuit of the walls its towers faded and resolved out of the mist.  I had a single lens cloth for my cameras and it became saturated.  The razorbill shifted,  raised its wings, and flew.


Read More
0 Comments
    Picture

    Author

    Jan Wiltshire is a nature writer living in Cumbria. She also explores islands and coast and the wildlife experience. (See Home and My Books.)

    Archives

    January 2021
    December 2020
    November 2020
    October 2020
    September 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    January 2015
    November 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    June 2014
    January 2014
    December 2013
    October 2013
    September 2013
    February 2013
    January 2013
    September 2012
    July 2012
    June 2012
    November 2010
    August 2010
    July 2010
    April 2010
    January 2010
    November 2009
    January 2009
    January 2004

    Categories

    All
    A Local Patch
    Birdlife
    Butterflies And Moths
    Flowers
    Locations
    Views
    Walks
    Weather
    WIldlife

    RSS Feed

Website
Home
Blog
Gallery
Contact



​Cookie Policy
My Books
  • Intro - My books
  • ​Cumbrian Contrasts
  • A Lakeland Experience
  • About Scout Scar
  • Atlantic Odyssey
    ​
Other Writing
  • Intro - Other Writing
  • What Larks!
  • Further - Explore Shetland
  • Autumn Migration
  • Rydal and Nab Scar
  • Perspectives
  • The River Kent
  • Wings
Jan Wiltshire - Cumbria Naturally
© Jan Wiltshire 2019 All rights reserved
Website by Treble3