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Ennerdale, Crummock Water, Loweswater

30/3/2019

Ennerdale Water

Through fields clamorous with lambs. Trees in winter skeletons respond to longer daylight hours with flowers and swelling leaf buds.
Larks ascend in song flight about Oswen Fell, joyously. All around us.
Blake Fell in the distance (in clearing cloud) the highest fell of the day - a lunch spot within a summit-shelter welcome in a chill wind. Through fleeting cloud we glimpse the higher fells. These grassy fells are little walked and we meet only a few walkers all day.

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St Bees Head to Whitehaven

28/3/2019

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Sandstone cliffs, St Bees Head

Birker Fell, surrounded by lark song. Beyond tussocks of golden grasses Harknott Pass, a fort on the Roman Road between the fort of Ravenglass and Hadrian’s Wall. Ravenglass ( Giannoventa) provisioning the north west.
St Bees Head and its seabird cliffs is today’s objective. Gorse flowering along the cliff path, flowers of scurvy grass and birdsong. Although I cannot hear the yellowhammer I remember from my first visit. Eroded and weathered sandstone cliffs, deep red through a coating of iron oxide.

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High Cup Nick

27/3/2019

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Swaledales heading for Dufton

A bough of new leaves with last summer’s cherries against a sandstone wall. A flock of Swaledales trots into Dufton as we head east for the Pennine Way and High Cup Nick. Through limestone country, an area of shakeholes and limekilns. Time to consider how geology determines hydrology and what lichens appear on rock. Strands Beck, the only beck named on the OS map, surface water pouring down from Hannah's Well where there’s a shift in geology.
Anticipation is high. The grand reveal will come slowly as we climb.

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Hawes and the River Ure

19/3/2019

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River Ure near Hawes

Rain all day Saturday. Three days later and flood plains beside the River Ure were underwater. An atmospheric day below Abbotside Common, at High Clint and Low Pike. All around us the call of curlew and of lapwing, the song of skylark. A glimmer of sunlight through low cloud.
At Hawes, the Wensleydale Creamery was doing a brisk trade in its range of local cheeses.

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Back in Shetland

18/3/2019

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Arctic skua, Shetland

Through Atlantic fronts, through a week of wind and rain, I immerse myself in the Shetland experience. A reprise of three weeks spent exploring the Shetland Isles in June and July 2011. An interval of nine years brings change and that's a telling perspective- a history of natural history.
I focus on a selection of locations and themes, not including the coming of North Sea Oil to Shetland- its influence on the infrastructure, its impact on wildlife.
Then I heard Shetland naturalist Bobby Tulloch, a recording from 1974 and I was in deep.

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Sparrowhawk

8/3/2019

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Sparrowhawk

The hawk must have killed moments before. Clinging to the feeder, balanced by its long tail, poise and white splotches on a grey-brown mantle said sparrrowhawk. That long first claw skewered a bloody collop to the top-stone. Impossible to say what the sparrowhawk had for breakfast. The raptor had quickly plucked its prey, ripped it open. No trace of feathers on the patio, but heavy rain might have washed them away. Small birds feel sheltered by trees and shrubs but the sparrowhawk is swift, an agile hunter is confined spaces.

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Ennerdale, Crummock Water, Loweswater

St Bees Head to Whitehaven

High Cup Nick

Hawes and the River Ure

Back in Shetland

Sparrowhawk

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