Skeggles Water A day of fleeting floodlight, the low winter sun creating highlights of the season.
Skeggles Water is a slow reveal, hidden amongst low fells, screened by last summer’s tall sedges in rough-and-tumble tussocks. Hydro sere, where becks flow into the tarn and reeds take hold in shallow water. Hydro sere, where water and vegetation merge and intermingle. Skeggles Water has hidden depths who knows where? Terra firma is not the nature of hydrosere. Tarns appear and disappear, ephemeral. In summer, a weave of aquatic plants hides the tarn in a shimmer of green..
Skeggles Water is a slow reveal, hidden amongst low fells, screened by last summer’s tall sedges in rough-and-tumble tussocks. Hydro sere, where becks flow into the tarn and reeds take hold in shallow water. Hydro sere, where water and vegetation merge and intermingle. Skeggles Water has hidden depths who knows where? Terra firma is not the nature of hydrosere. Tarns appear and disappear, ephemeral. In summer, a weave of aquatic plants hides the tarn in a shimmer of green..
Bright sun in a clear blue sky shimmers the tarn, reflecting a golden fell that flows to and fro upon the water in constantly changing light. It is enchanting. Pattern of flagging winter reeds and soft-rippling water in depths of colour. Far out in the tarn there are water birds- goosander pairing and resplendent in breeding plumage. Ravens are glossy and primed for early breeding in February. Saint Valentine’s Day marks the start of the breeding season, according to the poet Chaucer. Fair weather cumulus bubbles up, reflecting in the tarn. A rocky knoll is dark with heather and winter sunlight discovers warm tones of dark chocolate, purple and atrorubens, highlighting last summer’s seed-heads of bog asphodel and cross-leaved heath. When the sun is lost the temperature drops and a chill wind ruffles the waters of the tarn.
The glory of this winter’s day is gift of a sun which comes and goes Floodlights sweep the fells as we return, glowing the fleeces of ewes as a farmer and his lad come to tend their flock.
Coincidence is all. Lucky to chance upon goosander when the sun worked magic on Skeggles Water.
And almost at the last moment there comes another lovely interlude. A stonechat calls and as we stop to find it we are drawn into the pulsing life of the scene. It's a sheltered spot. A beck flows off Staveley Head Fell, hidden in a gully fringed with the dense cover or gorse or juniper- too far off to be sure. A flock of starling glints in flight and alights in a tree top. They sweep about the rough pasture and settle in a tall larch back-lit by an evocative light. Rain is in the air, the finest rain. And a rainbow arcs over the scene, faint at first, then brighter. Iris, non sine sole. I hear fieldfare, glimpse them, hope to find them amongst the starling but they feed in the hawthorn and take flight as we drive home along the track.
Coincidence is all. Lucky to chance upon goosander when the sun worked magic on Skeggles Water.
And almost at the last moment there comes another lovely interlude. A stonechat calls and as we stop to find it we are drawn into the pulsing life of the scene. It's a sheltered spot. A beck flows off Staveley Head Fell, hidden in a gully fringed with the dense cover or gorse or juniper- too far off to be sure. A flock of starling glints in flight and alights in a tree top. They sweep about the rough pasture and settle in a tall larch back-lit by an evocative light. Rain is in the air, the finest rain. And a rainbow arcs over the scene, faint at first, then brighter. Iris, non sine sole. I hear fieldfare, glimpse them, hope to find them amongst the starling but they feed in the hawthorn and take flight as we drive home along the track.
In his poem, The Rainbow, Wordsworth hopes that his childhood sense of wonder and ‘natural piety’ will be with him always. Yes, me too.
I’ve known his poem for as long as I can remember but it reads differently in the context of our times. with greater poignancy. He hopes never to lose his own sense of wonder. We must hope not to lose the source of wonder that is the natural world, an abundance our ancestors might take for granted.
New Year 2020 and The Australian Bush burns. Headlines focus on loss of human life, and property. Not quite exclusively. Ecologists tell of destruction of habitat, of niche species irrecoverably lost. Of lost creatures great and small and their interdependence. Of vast numbers of creatures destroyed or maimed by fire, their habitat gone.
Click on images to see fully and to read captions
I’ve known his poem for as long as I can remember but it reads differently in the context of our times. with greater poignancy. He hopes never to lose his own sense of wonder. We must hope not to lose the source of wonder that is the natural world, an abundance our ancestors might take for granted.
New Year 2020 and The Australian Bush burns. Headlines focus on loss of human life, and property. Not quite exclusively. Ecologists tell of destruction of habitat, of niche species irrecoverably lost. Of lost creatures great and small and their interdependence. Of vast numbers of creatures destroyed or maimed by fire, their habitat gone.
Click on images to see fully and to read captions
This female goosander has eleven ducklings. Goosander nest high in a tree hole and the female broods her clutch of eggs alone. She may lay her eggs over some days but they must all hatch close in time because she must lead them quickly to the greater safety of the river. Before they can fly, when they are a couple of days old, she calls from the base of the tree to encourage her jumplings to leap. Then to the water.
The male goodsander plays no part in rearing his offspring. Males depart for Scandinavia, to moult. Returning in September-October.
For a different selection of images of this day at Skeggles Water, see the Gallery
The male goodsander plays no part in rearing his offspring. Males depart for Scandinavia, to moult. Returning in September-October.
For a different selection of images of this day at Skeggles Water, see the Gallery
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