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Gorse die-back in the UK 2021

12/6/2021

Linnet in flowering gorse 20 May 2020

Gorse is important habitat on Scout Scar and Helsington Barrows. Linnet and redpoll depend on its shelter in the breeding season and its seeds are a food source. So are the insects caught hovering over its flowers in a sequence of images I took In May 2020.
So when I noticed gorse die-back in late May 2021 and realised how extensive it was across this area I reported my findings to Natural England. I wanted to know if the problem was widespread and if the cause were known

Lark ascending, Cunswick Fell

12/6/2021

Skylark poised for flight and display-song

A glorious June morning. Sunlit white cloud-patterns the blue and a refreshing breeze trembles and shimmers drifts of cow parsley, buttercups and seeding grasses. Lark song fills the air yet the lark ascending always surprises in its sudden break from secrecy into song and display. Impossible to gauge just when and where that song-flight might commence. Sunlight illuminates and colours the almost translucent bird. Surprise song, then seconds to try for the photograph before it's high in spiralling ascent.

Redstart and linnet, with milkwort

6/6/2021

Male redstart in full song

A day or two ago, we found a redstart nest with the female flying in furtively, delivering insects to her brood. Today, a male sings loudly from display perches below Scout Scar escarpment. Perhaps he's hoping for a second brood. The canopy is now in full leaf so he was hard to see, despite his loud song. In this image his beak is wide, his bright gape visible.

Roe Deer, Helsington Barrows

4/6/2021

Roe deer with bright reddish summer coat

Roe deer browse amongst the hawthorn scrub and in the shadows beneath sunlit yew trees. The warm reddish-brown of their summer coats and their large ears are striking. They/ve seen us but they linger under the trees. A peaceful scene until something startles them. Their barking would have been puzzling if we'd heard it unawares.

Stonechat and fresh flowers on Scout Scar

2/6/2021

Bird's foot trefoil on limestone clitter

A south-east wind keeps the day fresh and wind-shear shows in high cloud. At this season fresh flowers appear overnight. Brid's-foot trefoil is bright yellow. There's white bedstraw and everywhere the white May of hawthorn in bloom. Yellow hawkweeds show. The ground looks dry, patterned with fine cracks. Hard to remember how cold and wet it was for most of May

Globe Flowers on the banks of the River Kent

31/5/2021

Globeflowers, Trollius Europaeus

After weeks of rain the last week in May is hot and sunny. Sunlight through yellow flowers, a meadow of buttercups and dandelion flowers and seed-heads. Oak catkins are almost hidden in clusters of new leaves. Purple catkins on alder show best in winter when the trees are thick with catkins and bare of foliage. By the time alder catkins flower the tree is in leaf.

Hoary Rockrose, Helianthemum canum

30/5/2021

Hoary Rockrose, Helianthemum canum

During the unusually cold and wet weather of May there was no sign of the buds and flowers of Hoary Rockrose. Then the rain stopped, the sun shone and the temperature rose. Helianthemum canum, named for Helios the sun god. Hoary Rockrose responds to the sun, opens up its delicate lemon flowers. Closes them if the sun does not shine.
The flower is a speciality of the cliff-face of Scout Scar escarpment, limestone rock facing south and south-west. Hoary Rockrose cannot tolerate competition, so it thrives on rock where other plants cannot.

Cloudscapes in a rainy May

19/5/2021

Mostly dry and fine, with the risk of isolated showers. That's the Radio Cumbria weather forecast today.
Cloudscapes are sunlit and spectacular. During the morning, dark and louring cloud gathers but there's an elusive cuckoo who is calling- now above Scout Scar escarpment, now in the trees of Helsington Barrows. He calls through a pelting of hail and a rumble of thunder as I head home. He's somewhere in one of my images.

Bluebells after rain

19/5/2021

Sunlight filters through down through a tracery of branches, shimmering through leaf-green, illuminating mosses and bluebells lush after rain. A cathedral of the woods. A rainy May, awash with bluebells .
We meander country roads, windows open to birdsong and the pungent smell of wild garlic. A heron stands statuesque on a plinth, a dead tree anchored in rocks. Bluebells and wild garlic are enchanting, so we forget our destination and to take to the woods,

Weardale and Smearsett Scar where mountain pansy and wild pansy meet

12/5/2021

Pansies beside the River Wear

In Upper Teesdale in April, I forgot to look for the rare Teesdale violet.

We did find some lovely pansies on the grassy banks of the River Wear. Given their variable colours and propensity to hybridse, they are likely to be mountain pansy (viola lutea) hybrisided with heartsease, wild pansy ( viola tricolor.)

Upper Teesdale with Spring gentian

25/4/2021

Confluence of River Tees and Harwood Beck

Spring comes late at altitude, and in the North Pennines. Season and weather interact so the template is familiar but each spring is unique. It’s a time of transition, of departures and arrivals. Each morning, we hear fieldfare heading north to their summer breeding grounds in Scandinavia. Only now, this last week in April, come reports from south-west England of a steady passage of sand martin, swallow and house martin, most heading north east. We see our first swallow at Orton on 22nd April, hear our first cuckoo on Hadrian’s Wall four days later.

Cowshill Circuit, Weardale: with lapwing, curlew and viola tricolor

24/4/2021

Viola tricolor, wild pansy, heartsease

As a nature writer, I like to study an OS map for the natural history embedded in place names and landscape features. A history of natural history.
Looking back on the day, I match our findings with what the map tells of habitat and species. Bents Sike is a burn flowing through boggy pastures of rush, sedge and rough grass. *Bents Head is the last intake bordering Moss Moor. Lapwing call all around us, in display flight descending with an audible clapping of wings. Snipe rise from sedges in zig-zag flight. Curlew are calling and a pair perches on a ruined sheepfold outlined against the sky. When they fly, a meadow pipit takes the stand. Songs of spring surround us.

North Pennines: long-tailed tits and fieldfare

23/4/2021

Long-tailed tit on the handle of the kitchen door

Sunrise at Ghyll Burn Cottage 22nd -29th April 2021

Ghyll Burn is a tributary of the River South Tyne and the cottage is a peaceful and secluded spot. It was an old stone barn, a lofty space with thick walls. deep embrasured windows and wooden beams. A flight of stone steps leads to the entrance and the kitchen on the first floor. The cottage sits within the shelter of the ghyll, with hawthorn rich in lichens and taller trees beyond; ash still in winter guise, sycamore close to leafing, birch and sitka spruce.

Scout Scar: redstart and redpoll

20/4/2021

Male redstart displaying his tail feathers

In shimmer and display, the male redstart fans out his flame-coloured tail feathers to impress a female. On spring migration, redstart always arrive here late April and often display from whitebeam, still in bud and rising above the escarpment cliff. He wants to be seen. And heard. The energy he puts into his song shows in his stance, his wide gape. He turns his head to broadcast his song. He flits from his display perch, tries another in the territory he hopes to secure, and back again.
Once I've found a redstart I stay some time, looking and listening. It's an immersive experience, redstart song and lambs bleating.

Adder on Scout Scar

19/4/2021

Buzzard in a holly tree

Lambs feed at their mother’s teats, tails waggling. Crossing Kendal Race Course, with a lively escort of lambs, I meet Angela and Chris, friends and former neighbours who have always supported my work as a nature writer. We miss them. Chris has a tale to tell and he’s been waiting eighteen months to share it with me. Alone and heading off Scout Scar, he heard a grunting coming from over the out-take wall and saw a large rabbit in the grip of a mustelid. Stoat or weasel he was unsure but a small mustelid had sunk its teeth into the back of the much larger rabbit’s neck, paralysing its hind legs. What a drama!

Warriner's Wood: toothwort, Lathraea squamaria

16/4/2021

Toothwort, Lathraea squamaria

The last time I saw toothwort was 9th April 2014, in Howe Ridding Wood, And the flower was found by our guide Joe Murphy of Cumbria Wildlife Trust.
Today, we discover toothwort for ourselves, which is even better. So, an interlude of looking closely to consider this parasitic plant's habit and habitat. What we see emerging from a thick and deep cushion of mosses strewn with dead twigs is merely the plant's flowering. New flowers appear close to the trunk of the host tree, disguised in mosses.

Warton Crag: ravens and brimstone butterflies

15/4/2021

Jenny Brown's Point from Warton Crag

Strong sunlight illuminates the quarry face. Jackdaw are vocal in the tree tops nearby. And bass notes of raven sound as birds fly above and about the quarry cliff. Overhangs create shadows across the rock-face, clumps of gorse and vegetation grow on sheer rock, jagged with shadowy crevices and niches. When I find the raven's nest the surrounding rock throws shadows rather like the black raven itself.

Kentmere Pastoral

13/4/2021

Rough Fell ewe and her lamb

Sunrise gilds the Kentmere tops and down in the dale the puddled track is iced over. To be in Kentmere once more feels like a home-coming.
It is lambing time and the rhythms of pastoral feel remote from the world beyond the dale. By Kentmere Hall, a farmer drives his quadbike through the pasture to deliver feed to heavily pregnant ewes.

Scout Scar: linnet and the desecration at Ghyll Brow

10/4/2021

Male linnet singing

I heard the lovely song of linnet, just where I always find them. He sang high in an ash, by thick gorse and juniper. He was in full sunlight and through my binoculars I could see the crimson on his breast. My camera does not pick up the strong colour I saw, it's a question of how the light falls. A tiny bill and forked tail distinguish linnet, and his song.
Willow warbler are returned and I've heard them the last couple of days. Chiff chaff have been singing a while.

Identifying Downy Birch

7/4/2021

Male catkins and opening leaf buds, Downy Birch

On a cold and bright April morning the male
catkins of Downy birch are almost open. Leaf
buds are opening too.
On Helsington Barrows, there's a stand of Downy birch, trees of different ages. Young trees have glossy bark of purple red which slowly matures to white with papery layers. Horizontal lines show on the bark of young and mature trees.
Dark branch scars show on the white trunk of a mature Downy birch, with the younger branch showing purple red. The strong morning sunlight shows these features clearly.