Blog Archives

High Borrowdale Upland Hay Meadows, a Triptych

31/5/2024

Barn and Upland Hay Meadow, High Borrowdale

The Upland Hay Meadows of High Borrowdale were our objective. They'd be at their best late June, early July, but weather and Climate Change affect timing and I wanted to do a recce.
My companion told me of friends who grew up on farms hereabouts and conservation includes farmsteads, like High Borrowdale, the network of barns and dry stone walls that are the character of this landscape. As a child on family holidays, we'd have driven this way over Shap and I wish I could revisit the landscape as it was at that time.

Spiders nests at High Borrowdale, a Triptych

31/5/2024

Erosion on the banks of Borrow Beck

Footpath closed due to erosion, reads the notice. It's on the north-side of Borrow Beck and we'll walk the south-side. Two summer's since there were sand martins nesting in the bank of the beck but we find none today. Below Borrowdale Edge there's landslip and erosion and there's tree-planting to help stabilise the fell-side. During the morning, we meet a man who is monitoring the young trees. There are deer-fences and he tells of red deer and the damage they'll do to young trees. No sand martins but the day is memorable.

Stoat Kit, High Borrowdale

31/5/2024

High Borrowdale of the close-encounter with a Stoat

High-pitched squeals and chirps pepper tussocks of grass low on the fell-side, close to our track. Hard to pin down the sounds, to tell how many creatures are here. In a shadowy hollow amongst tussocks I spy a slight movement and a young creature looks out at us, curious. I doubt it's ever seen people before. There's squealing from higher up the bank. I keep my camera focused on the kit as its mother darts down and grabs it by the neck and whisks it away to safety, back into her family. 'Weasel', he called. But he saw a black-tipped tail which confirms it's a Stoat.

Foulshaw Moss

29/5/2024

Hare's-tail cotton grass in Foulshaw Moss

Foulshaw Moss is looking green and an exceptionally wet winter and spring has made vegetation grow luxuriant. Ospreys are nesting and two eggs have hatched, a third is awaited. From the hide, we look out toward the osprey nest over bog myrtle to a mass of cotton grass. Foulshaw is a raised mire and I love its flora. Bog myrtle has early catkins, in April, and now they're shrivelled and brown before they become seed-heads. Downy birch has green catkins yet to open.

Butterflies, damsels and demoiselles in Kentmere

25/5/2024

Female Azure Damsel eating an insect

Willow seeds float from the trees and seeds break free from dandelion clocks and drift over a sea of bracken lush and green after rain. Water trickles along the path and becks resound. Stitchwort flowers are fresh and white, bluebells fade amongst bracken, foxgloves and thistles are budding. Guelder rose and rowan have creamy-white flowers and apple blossom fades. The wood is all sunlight and shadow and everywhere is verdant. Pale seeds and white butterflies wing through the air, whites and orange-tips. Dark insects are on the wing, damsels and demoiselles.

May on Scout Scar, Helsington Barrows and Kendal Fell

18/5/2024

Deer on Scout Scar

On 1st May, a cuckoo called from the territory where I found him in mid-May last year. He was screened by conifers and I could not see him but I followed his 'wondering voice' for some half-an-hour. Some things are de rigeur, a compulsion, and finding the cuckoo is like that. On my sixth audio experience I found myself being watched. Perhaps by the cuckoo I have yet to see but certainly by a deer, a lovely slender creature. So what might one discover at this season whilst not seeing that elusive cuckoo?

Bogbean and Bluebells on Loughrigg Fell

9/5/2024

Bogbean flowering in Lily Tarn

Bogbean flowers are fresh and abundant on Lily Tarn. It's a lovely flower with deep pink buds that burst into white flowers with ragged-edged petals. The sun casts reflections in the water so the golden bracken of the fell colours the tarn and the flowers make a pattern with their long stems and stems of three leaves.
I used to find cuckoo and yellow hammer here, so I'm eager for a reprise. Redstart and willow warbler are singing. A wheatear perches on a rock and a mallard swims in Lily Tarn.

May Day on Scout Scar and Helsington Barrows

1/5/2024

Budding whitebeam on Scout Scar

'He was but as the cuckoo is in June, heard, not regarded.' So Shakespeare's Henry Bolingbroke speaks dismissively of King Richard II.
If only that were still true. If only hearing a cuckoo in June was so ordinary that no-one took note of it. These days it's hot news. We tell friends and neighbours when and where we've heard a cuckoo. And some of us go in quest and keep on searching until we find one. Hearing a cuckoo in spring is our inheritance, not to be lost.