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James Rebanks English Pastoral, an inheritance: from Scout Scar

29/11/2020

Agricultural landscape: the Lyth Valley

‘Most people are now largely illiterate when it comes to agriculture and ecology.’ So writes James Rebanks, English Pastoral, an inheritance. Life on a Lake District hill farm through three generations, a picture of a farming community and its strong bonds. English Pastoral, an inheritance. not an idyll, although there is beauty and wonder. An inheritance, something to nurture for future generations. It’s an important book- set in Cumbria with far wider resonance.
So, are we literate. can we read agricultural landscape and ecology?

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Scout Scar - thanks giving

25/11/2020

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Fells to the east, their tops breaking through mist

A day of breath-taking beauty, calm and still, White mist lingers in valleys and, to the east, toward the Howgills, the tops peep through- like slivers of dark cloud. How welcome the sun after such a wet October and gloomy November days. The second lockdown of 2020 and I can walk only here, but here is marvellous. We may only meet outdoors but it's so warm and bright we relax into companionability, as we did in spring. So, at Thanks Giving, I celebrate the beauty of the natural world, and friendship.

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Rainbows: Covid Diaries in November and lockdown 2

22/11/2020

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Rainbow over Scout Scar

The rainbow is an emblem of hope and optimism. Always has been. Non sine sole reads the motto of Elizabeth 1st in her rainbow portrait.
Non sine sole where there's a rainbow you'll find the sun.
The rainbow has become an emblem of the Covid 19 pandemic. Yes, let's be hopeful. Hope underpinned with good sense and compliance. All of us, all the time.
Out on Scout Scar I find three rainbows. And I overhear conversations on Covid non-compliance and the anger it causes.

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A Hawthorn Hedge

12/11/2020

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Hawthorn hedge on an embankment above an old track

Above Torver Beck we followed a track below an embankment topped with a hedge of hawthorn. A sheltering hedge, old trees gone to wild, sculpted by age, by wind and weather. Men walked this way to quarry the green and black slate about Coniston back in the 13th century. A hedge is liminal, the boundary where we venture forth from the safety of farm and pastoral for the open fell and the unknown.

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Cunswick Fell in Lockdown 2, 10 November 2020

10/11/2020

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Fieldfare and redwing in an ash tree

Hearing fieldfare and redwing, we found them in the top of a leafless tree , amongst ash keys. On a cloudy November day winter thrush appear darkly. No sun to illumine them but look closely and you can make out the grey head, the light grey rump and dark tail, the disposition of the wings when the bird is at rest.
On Cunswick Fell there are plentiful haws on hawthorn, with red arils on yew and holly berries.
The last hazel leaves fall to leave branches thick with green catkins, dormant and ready for winter.

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Fieldfare

7/11/2020

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Fieldfare 7 November 2020

Frost and a dawn of soft, warm colour.
I know where to find berried shrubs on Scout Scar and I'm always alert for winter thrush. The whitebeam crop has failed this year, so hawthorn will be the attraction. A bird's white belly gleamed in the sun. A lone fieldfare. Its throat and breast cloaked in warm pattern, a flush of pure gold then radiant white. You might think plumage would absorb light but this luminous heart of white shone forth The head grey, the under-side of the tail shows dark.
A sole fieldfare on a hawthorn, no more all morning. The sun was warm and the day rather misty

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Blackbirds

6/11/2020

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Male blackbird

If numbers of blackbirds appear in gardens this autumn they may well be migrants from Norway, Sweden and Finland. Come to compete for food with native blackbirds here throughout the year. .
A bright eye-ring and black plumage distinguish the male blackbird. Follow this sequence of images and you'll see some with characteristic bright yellow bill, others- like this male, have a darker bill. I think this is a first-winter male.
This blackbird has squashed the berry he's about to eat. Others appear to swallow them whole.
Lockdown is an opportunity to discover more about a bird we think we know.

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Scout Scar escarpment 4th November: frost, fog and flood-waters

4/11/2020

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Scout Scar escarpment and the Lyth Valley

Change is in the air. Overnight frost, and fog, says the weather forecast. After the wettest October on record.
Welcome the sun after so much rain and gloom. The low November sun highlights limestone on the escarpment edge. Below, the woods are rich in autumn colour. A jay calls unseen. Raven in weird and witchy call. Sounds of a pheasant-shoot rise from the woods, all week they echo over Scout Scar. Mist lingers in the Lyth Valley, over woods, over flood-waters and the mosses. It is beautiful and strange.

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Solway in November

1/11/2020

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Barnacle Geese, Caerlaverock, November 2016

November 2016: shock news, Trump elected President. Dismay and disbelief on my companion’s face over breakfast at Dumfries.
On Tuesday 3rd November 2020 anything could happen. Will there be a clear result to the US election?
4th November 2020, England goes into lockdown, again. Stay home, Stay Safe, Protect the NHS, again.
There has to be an anti-dote to our times and, for me, it is often history and natural history.

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James Rebanks English Pastoral, an inheritance: from Scout Scar

Scout Scar - thanks giving

Rainbows: Covid Diaries in November and lockdown 2

A Hawthorn Hedge

Cunswick Fell in Lockdown 2, 10 November 2020

Fieldfare

Blackbirds

Scout Scar escarpment 4th November: frost, fog and flood-waters

Solway in November

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