Blog Archives - Cumbria Naturally

Skylark on Scout Scar

30/3/2018

25 March on Scout Scar

I stood on Scout Scar watching the drama of light and darkness playing over the fells to the west. Behind me, to the east, I heard bursts of song as skylark launched into song- flight. They're back, at last.
What is the collective name for skylark? There a murmuration of starling, a charm of goldfinch, a chime of wrens, and unkindness of ravens. An ecstasy of skylark, theirs and mine.

Kentmere: natural sculptures

26/3/2018

Boulder with Rainsborrow Crag beyond

Natural sculptures, made by the elements and alive to them. Throughout the dale there are frost-riven boulders like this one cleft into four with light piercing through splits in the rock.
East of the river, Rainsborrow Crag rises above adits tunnelled into the fell, above scree slopes. A peregrine calls from high above the crag and a brief shower makes the air cooler.
Scree slopes or spoil from quarrying, it's hard to tell.

Kentmere Trees: how life takes hold

25/3/2018

Flying rowan 24 March

'I was born in the tube miss, I was a miracle baby.' He showed me the newspaper article of his mother's ectopic pregnancy. A precarious way for life to take hold.
The Kentmere flying rowan looked bewitching: a silhouette against a backdrop of sunlit cloud. Cloud: signifying earth and heaven. Orographic cloud: where the realm of air meets mountain top. A flogron, a flying rowan is most powerful magic. This Kentmere rowan is as remarkable as the boy's miraculous birth: born in the tube.

The Howgills: Bram Rigg, The Calf, Arant Haw

21/3/2018

Swaledales in the Howgills

The Howgills are undulating, grassy fells. Long ascents and descents through remnants of snow. Great vistas on a day of clarity. The Swaledale face seems as if the ewe has spectacles, the fleeces of this flock marked electric blue. The contours of the fells are the most striking feature on the OS map, and the frequency of sheep folds, an historic feature. Snow pattern and a sheep fold below Brant Fell took hold.

Bullfinch

18/3/2018

Sunday 18 March 2018

Bullfinch in breeding plumage. They're so handsome and they invariably come to feed together: his breast like the budding cherry blossom and the terracotta pots where they forage for fallen sunflower seeds. Her plumage is more muted, complementing his in pattern.
Once again the yard is swept clean of snow, an abrasive scouring by the east wind. A newscaster's voice tells of the plight of wildlife exposed to sub-zero temperatures and wind-chill as winter and spring slog it out.

Sub-zero on Scout Scar

18/3/2018

Looking south to Morecambe Bay

The penultimate day of winter. Temperatures sub-zero and significant wind-chill. If Scout Scar landscapes look bleak and forbidding, that's how the morning felt. In an exhilarating way. Looked beautiful, felt brutal.
On the escarpment, the full force of the wind struck. The few hardy runners are masked, as I am. We feel a certain bravado for venturing into the teeth of the wind.

Goldcrest at breakfast

9/3/2018

Yesterday a Herdwick ate my lunch. This morning I ate breakfast without taking my eyes off the bird feeder. I'd glimpsed a pale breast and this visitor was special. The tiny bird peeped around the feeder and as the sun lit its gold crest my heart leapt.
Before Christmas, I watched a goldcrest nimble and light in a tall and slender birch. I saw only the silhouette and that light and acrobatic movement but I knew for sure.
My only goldcrest image is from Dumfries and Galloway, November 2016. I doubt I'll leave home until I have my visitor's picture.

Herdwick Pastoral

9/3/2018

Herdwick: a sheep pasture

'Why that photograph?' my friend Monica asked.
'Pastoral,' I replied. 'Herdwicks in wood pasture. Did you know that herdwick also means sheep pasture?' Approaching Loughrigg Tarn I looked for an ash pollard featured in the film Miss Potter- Beatrix Potter bred herdwicks. The ancient ash was gone. Only a rotten branch and tree roots beside the stile. We chose to have lunch in the herdwick, the sheep pasture with vistas of the Langdale Pikes. Rossett Gill was packed with snow and shone in the sunlight. A sheepish chorus grew louder: we had visitors. They'd heard about my home-made bread.

Tarn Hows, Tom Heights, Black Crag

8/3/2018

Ice on Tarn Hows and the high fells 6 March

Snow on the high fells and frozen waterfalls. Ice on Tarn Hows. Last week's weather from Siberia is over. Although Alston, the highest village in England at 1000 feet, is still cut off by snow drifts with supplies flown in by Chinook from Carlisle. No longer that biting wind from the east. Once again we are under the influence of Atlantic weather systems. There is low cloud, volatile cloud that sweeps across the fells in surges, mingling with moment of transcendence.

From Tarn House to Tom Heights, Black Crag and the bark peelers' hut

7/3/2018

Bark peelers' hut, near Black Crag

On a knoll to the west of Black Crag there's a pile of stones - the shell of a bark peeler's hut. A hearth at the centre of the stones. John Edmondson told us it was used in summer by bark peelers who produced tannin from the bark of oak trees. This is one of six similar sites in the Lake District. It's not marked on the OS map and I wanted to learn more, to discover how this bark peelers' hut was once a part of the woodland economy in the Coniston area.