April Elsewhere

As I write, it's the first of May and there is no may to be seen up the field, or out over the farmland. The wet cold weather this spring means the whitethorns are several weeks late blossoming. And when I say wet, it has been wet. 

Never mind, all the heady exhilaration of hawthorn is still to come, and if the display is anything like the (also late) blackthorn we've had this last month, it will have been worth waiting for. 

It's been like watching colossal, slow-moving waves of white blossom roll their way around the field edges, from the sunnier hedgerows to the more northerly ones.

Flowers are starting to pop their heads up above the parapet now too. The white violets in the Small Dark Wood of the Mind and the purple ones I spotted in the middle of the Field of the Hollowing Oak for the first time were past their best before April had much advanced, but the celandines and ground ivy are still going strong, and have been joined by silverweed, buttercups, herb Robert, cowslips, bugle, forget-me-nots, and the most spectacular display of dandelions. Grasses are starting to flower now too, and some of the anthills in the field have covered themselves in speedwell and bittercress. 

A fragile pleated inkcap appeared briefly in the field ... 

... and some insects have stayed still long enough for me to photograph them too. 

a Common Carder bumble bee, a green dock beetle, first ladybird of the year and something that looks superficially like a ladybird but isn't and I don't know what it is

Meanwhile, the rookery is full of Sturm und Drang. There have been ravens and buzzards, but none of them have stayed around to be photographed. I did find this beautiful starling feather in the field, which is a bit strange as I don't think I've ever seen starlings up there. Maybe it was flying over.

Most exciting of all, the roe deer are back - I've seen hoofprints out on the farmland and in the field, though no sighting of them in person just yet.

And all the time, the hollowing oak has been getting on with the process of leafing, and for the first time in three years, it's also covered in blossom. Expect an excellent mast year.

1st April 

6th April 

7th April

19th April

20th April 

26th April

29th April 

There was despair early in the month when the footpath along the embankment was closed and a digger turned up in the skylarks' field, solidifying our vague feeling of dread into resignation that the building of the access road had finally started. 

Then a sign was attached to the fencing explaining that the digging constituted temporary archaeological works. I was a bit sceptical about the instruments these archaeologists were using, till the Northerner reminded me that there's a digger on site in Detectorists, when they're excavating the crashed WWII bomber (series 2).

And then they'd gone and taken their digger with them. Presumably they found no long lost Roman city or plaguey burial pit. There will be no scraping of trowel on mosaic to hold off the building of houses here, but with luck, we might get another summer walking the footpath.

The other progress has been of the sun along the line of hills to the west, on evenings when the cloud hasn't been too thick to see it. 

1st April

4th April

7th April

20th April 

The sun lodged in the hollow between Mynydd Maen and Twmbarlwm on 20th April

29th April 

Words for the Wild and a poem about a young, headstrong starling

Well, let's hope the the starling that flew into our patio doors was headstrong; it did fly off once it had recovered. 

Here's a link to my poem about it, now up on the wonderful Words for the Wild website.

The Berrow Tradition

Whenever the weather is brilliantly sunny on Boxing Day, we go to Berrow Beach. It's become something of a tradition. 

Except that until today, we'd only done it once. The semi-hallowed feeling comes from the astounding brilliance of that first visit, and the fact that I was lucky enough to come home with a poem in my pocket.

It can be hard to summon up the courage to repeat dazzling days. It was 12 years before I could bring myself to revisit Kelmscott Manor, William Morris's dream manor on the banks of the Thames in Oxfordshire, because, of course, subsequent visits can never live up to memory of those huge, juicy, black cherries in our picnic basket and that surreptitious and forbidden brush against my hero's coat, hanging on the back of the north hall door. 

As a matter of fact, today's visit to Berrow was not in such glorious technicolour. In fact, looking along the coast towards Burnham it was positively monochrome. 

Ted didn't mind, however. 

Unusually for this part of the coast, there was a very loud roary sound coming from the sea which suggested that it was quite stormy. Not so unusually, the tide was so far out we could barely see it. 

I also had trouble deciphering the flock of smallish, whitish birds running over the mud flats as if blown by the wind. Sanderpiper-y types, I suspect. (I'm rubbish at birds; even worse at remembering to bring binoculars on jaunts.)  I did spot a few oystercatchers, however, and the water-wobble call of  a curlew was easily recognisable. 

What was different about this visit (and something always is) was that the wreck of the SS Nornen was much easier to access than usual. Normally it lies exactly on the mudline, pointing towards the shore, so that you can reach the prow of it but go no further. This time sand had piled up around it so it was easier to have a really close look at it, and even walk into what would once have been its hold. 

The non canines amongst us had to be careful, however, as what looked like sand seemed on occasion to be doubling as mud. 

By now the tide had come in so far that it was just about visible on the horizon. It was time to head for home. 

Back at the Church someone had tied a piece of red fabric to one of the trees (just visible above the wall) which looked quite festive ... 

... and a flock of starlings were carousing in a thicket. Blessings of this season.