Blog Archives

Grasmere and Rydal: Nature Notes

26/3/2017

Roe doe

Snow on the tops, sunny and bright. After days of rain the becks flow high and fast. Water pours off the fells. Buzzards mewing. Sunlight pours down through slender trees in Redbank Wood, down to the woodland floor where fallen trees and stone walls are cushioned with mosses. The herb layer responds, reaching up to absorb the light. Photosythesis made visible. Dog’s mercury budding, its leaves translucent. Seedlings rise from mosses, amidst fallen winter leaves.
Daffodils on Loughrigg Terrace: the delicate wild daffodil, the bolder cultivar. Spring comes late to the fells. I remember the year I lived on Loughrigg Fell, amongst its tarns, to catch the first fresh flowers of bog bean.

Stonechat on Scout Scar

25/3/2017

Female stonechat

Stonechat prepare to breed on Scout Scar. The habitat is perfect. Early this millennium you might hear some half a dozen on a morning. But in the last few years they’ve fallen silent, impossible to find, absent. Then last spring and summer I found a breeding pair. And they’re back. Yesterday the male was singing, not the alarm call like two stones struck together that give the bird its name, but his song. I know a glacial erratic scooped smooth as a recliner and I lay in the sun, apricating, soaking up sunlight like an apricot on a south-facing wall. In my stillness and silence the stonechat sang.

Weather Watching on Scout Scar

21/3/2017

Looking south toward Morecambe Bay

Turbulent weather on Scout Scar. Pellets of hail bounced off waterproofs and whitened the earth. From the Lake District Fells in the west, soft veils crept slowly toward me. When they strike there's nothing soft about them. Strong gusts of wind batter and the sting of hail hurts. Hail in the eyes is painful. Taking photos in wild weather is chancy because you can't see what you're doing. But I like the drama of sunlight and hail.

Singing in the Rain

16/3/2017

Coltsfoot, Tussilago farfara

Waking before dawn on a mid-March morning, I'm torn between favourite things. The Shipping Forecast and the Dawn Chorus which coincide at this season. Soon, dawn will come earlier and I can listen to both. If I'm alert and attentive I can hear blackbirds singing through the storm force winds of The Shipping Forecast. This morning, they're singing in the rain. Undaunted.
Yesterday, I headed for Scout Scar where skylark were singing, and curlew. A hazy morning, the sun didn't break forth until later. I found the first coltsfoot, not the beauty pictured here two years ago, but the same site- so I'll be back.

Nature notes: rue-leaved saxifrage and chiff-chaff

14/3/2017

My first chiff-chaff of spring sings somewhere beyond a blackthorn. Up on Scout Scar it will be some while before blackthorn flowers.
Some years ago, as I was writing About Scout Scar, I was photographing blackthorn flowers hugging close to a fragment of limestone pavement when I noticed tiny white flowers on a rosy succulent in a mossy depression in the rock. Rue-leaved saxifrage, Saxifraga tridactylites. In her Illustrated Flora, Marjorie Blamey describes it as 'stickily hairy annual, often reddish.' Let's see what the pictures show.

Shelling out for a new kitchen

10/3/2017

Shell of a kitchen being prepared for refurbishment

Strip out the old and take the kitchen back to its shell. Show what makes a kitchen work, all those features behind the façade. And prepare to refurbish.
Outside in the garden a pair of long-tailed tits was busy building an intricate nest, somewhere in dense shrubs. Daffodils bloomed, and lungwort, as I sat outside in the sun- a kitchen consultant ready to listen to advice. What a peaceful afternoon! I wondered for a moment if Nigel the builder was there in his domain, once the kitchen of the house, now a shell of a kitchen.

Allegory of Good Government: Palazzo Pubblico, Siena

2/3/2017

Good Government: raising roof timbers

In the Palazzo Pubblico, frescos show Good Government: town and countryside cherished and well looked after, men up on roofs fixing tiles, building, workmen taking pride in their craft. And Good Government reaches out into the countryside where orchard trees are pruned, fruit harvested, crops sown and harvested and borne into the city to feed its people. Today, on a sunny and blustery morning, that’s my vision of Kendal. Today, it’s all about civic harmony.
.

Skylark and snow on Shrove Tuesday: 28th February

1/3/2017

Light snow on Scout Scar and vapour in the valley below

Snow on roof-tops and plumes of smoke rising through still air to mingle with mist lit by sunrise. Vapour defines the course of the River Kent flowing through Kendal. The castle shows ghostly, then vanishes. Off to Scout Scar, eager for skylark. There’s a thin scatter of snow and I think I can hear them- tentative and exploratory notes as they settle in to their spring and summer quarters. Then a short burst of song-flight. Late February, they arrive on cue.