Feather hunting on Purdown

This summer I've done a lot of walking on Purdown, a hill in the north of Bristol. It's somewhere I've known all my life, with lots of open space, and views over to Bath and the northern outliers of the Mendips.

Mostly, though, we've walked in its woods, to escape either the humidity or the rain. These I know reasonably well, though occasionally I still get lost for a moment or two, until I work out where the motorway is and re-orient myself. 

There are many relics of Stoke Park estate and the family who lived there to be found in the woods, or glimpsed from them, but the best things, I think, are the trees and the wildlife they attract. 

Here's just a few particularly magnificent specimens.

There's little in the way of flowers to be seen this late in the year ... TOP:  1. Fleabane  2. Enchanter's nightshade  3. Cuckoo pint  4.  Red bartsia   BOTTOM:  5. Guelder rose  6. Tree bumble bee on thistle  7. Musk-mallow  8. Cinnabar moth caterpillars on ragwort ... 

... but each visit brings more fungi. 

So many interesting mossy hollows in the trunks of trees. Each time I pass, I can't help wondering who lives in a house like this. 

TOP:  1. Dead shrew  2. Badger sett  3. A fallen mossy nest; maybe a blue tit's?  4. A crocodile    BOTTOM:  5. Fox den in the roots of a tree?  6. A muntjac jaw  7. Possibly a rabbit warren?

Having been encouraged at a young age to pick up shells on the beach, which my mother would fill with polyfilla to make little tortoises and mice to sell on her handicraft stalls - it was a simpler time - I fell into the habit of walking around with my head underground early on. And as this blog attests, I'm a habitual collector of what I spot. Finds this summer include some hoggin ...

... and, best of all, lots of feathers. I love finding feathers! When I was small, long before bird flu was a thing, my mother - her again - used to tell me off for rubbing them against my cheek. I still do that, given half a chance. 

Though 'finding' feathers is a bit of a misnomer. You have to hunt for them. Each photo below represents two and a half to three hours' feather hunting, and that's not counting the trips home, empty-handed - there's been a fair few of them. Though I have to say, Purdown has been a good hunting ground this summer. 

Tawny owl feathers

A jay tail feather and a magpie feather

CLOCKWISE from left:  two buzzard feathers, two great spotted woodpecker feathers, two more buzzard feathers, two magpie feathers, two jay feathers, a tawny owl feather

From left: buzzard feather, jay covert, great spotted woodpecker feather, three magpie feathers

From left: a jay feather, a magpie feather, a tawny owl feather, a buzzard feather

From left: a sparrowhawk feather, two magpie feathers, a blue tit tail feather, a great spotted woodpecker tail feather, two buzzard feathers, plus the nest

a jay feather and a tawny owl feather

two buzzard feathers

CLOCKWISE from left:  green woodpecker feather, two jay tail feathers, two jay coverts, mallard feather, tawny owl feather

buzzard feather

Jay predation site

The finding of the first jay covert was a big moment, as I'd spent years scouring the ground, squinting at every bit of turquoise plastic, paper, string, etc and being disappointed. (It was still a great feeling when I found my first secondary at Wightwick Manor, four years ago, but a covert still eluded me.) This time the flash of blue was right under my foot as I climbed a steep slope and I was sure it was just a few loose fibres of synthetic string, but as I smoothed it under my fingers, it became clear what it was. 

The fact I found two more - pristine coverts, each at the base of a tree - a couple of weeks later was just weird after waiting so long. And the feathers from the predation site (by a fox) are bittersweet. Most of the feathers were too battered and chewed to save, but I did keep four coverts - that were barely noticeable in the dirt - and a wing feather. They'll look better after they've been steamed and gently reshaped. 

But it goes to show, it's always worth picking up feathers (even if you think they're just woodpigeon ones, which they are 99% of the time), turning them over and brushing off the dirt. Each of the three jay tail feathers were face-down and only revealed themselves as I was cleaning them up.

Any feathers I pick up but don't want to keep, I usually tuck into a crevice in the bark or under a strand of ivy, as an appeasement to the feather gods: I am grateful for your gift, value it and am offering it back to the universe. The hope is that they'll send me something more interesting and sometimes they do. 

The fact that these feathers also act as waymarks on return visits is handy. Several times I've found myself in part of one of the four woods for the first time, only to find a feather signalling that I have actually been there before, having approached from a different direction. It really helps with orientation. 

The summer's over, and probably the best of the season of falling feathers too, but with luck there will still be some to find while I'm out and about with the dog; I hope so. 

The Dog Days of Elsewhere

These are the dog days up the Field of the Hollowing Oak and in the Small Dark Wood of the Mind and on the Path by the Embankment and out on the Farmland that is soon to be the New Bristol Suburb of Brabazon, partly because it's that hallucinatory time of year when everything's dry and crackly under foot and stilled in the heat, but also because it's almost two years now since our dog Ted died, and we think of him even more than usual and miss him so much. 

Not that there isn't another, smaller and rather more biddable collie keeping us company, of course. But Ted comes with us too, and sometimes I even hear myself say 'Let's take the dogs for a walk', which I kind of like. 

And of course it's been hot this summer, and a lot drier than usual. The deserted farmland is tinder dry, although a few flowers are regenerating after the mowing it received early last month. 

Meanwhile in the field of the hollowing oak, big cracks have appeared in the path that goes around the perimeter ...

... though the most marked indication of drought is on the the golf course, by the small pond. It's possible, with a little art, to take photos that make it look as it quite normal, as we make occasional illicit trips past it at twilight when all the golfers have left for home ... 

... but actually, it's level is low enough to reveal all sorts of horrors under the surface, to go alongside detritus left by the (also illicit) evening fishermen.

The larger, shallower pond is no more than damp at present, but that's nothing unusual. It's full of loosestrife, common mint, ragwort, fleabane, thistle, and reedmace. 

It's also the season for feather shedding, though for some reason this summer, I've found only corvid feathers. (Not that I'm complaining because they're beautiful.) I did decide at one point not to pick any more up, as I've enough to reconstruct several murders, but I can't seem to help myself. Here's some of the latest batch. 

My favourite is the last one. I think it's the tail feather of a magpie, and it's very notched and battered, having been on so many adventures. 

As usual, the untended parts of Elsewhere are more diverse than the tended areas, although even up the field and on the path by the embankment there are fewer flowers and insects now. Nevertheless, there's still something new and interesting to see every time we go there. 

Gradually over the month all this has set or started to set seed ... thistles, vetch, bindweed, agrimony, yarrow, hemp agrimony, melilot, greater burnet saxifrage, fleabane and common mint, tansy, betony, and great or hairy willowherb, with outliers and the woody nightshade still going strong.

The thistledown is still omnipresent, but it's startlingly thick every year. It lines the narrow badger path near the bottom of the field and makes it even harder to see the tunnels and scrapes undermining it. 

Still ebullient are my favourite wild carrots, which line long sections of the footpath. 

They look like they've been designed by someone with a spirograph and fade from perfect parasols to snowflakes to mad hats.

Referencing their other name of Queen Anne's Lace, I've never seen one with such a pronounced blood spot as this before.

As for insects, there are rather more bees than butterflies around now, and definitely no more red soldier beetles.

There's a mix here of buff-tailed bumbles, Common Carders, a honey bee, gatekeepers, a speckled wood, and a skipper on a very busy yarrow also accommodating a house fly and something I can't identify that's in the process of landing.

At the bottom of the field, the Small Dark Wood of the Mind is still quite dark, and appears to have some sort of a portal thing going on. The Grove of the Silver Chair and Ruby Crown remain largely unchanged. 

an owl pellet: its rather pointed ends suggest it might be from a tawny owl

Meanwhile, down on the path by the railway embankment, the profusion of vegetation that made us forget this will soon be a building site has started to die back, so that you can now just see the nasty plastic fence that was put up in March, while the now ghostly rosebay willowherb stands by the fence and choruses a warning.

Out on the farmland there have been strange patterns in the sky ... 

... and the areas that did escape the scythe earlier now remind me of my Auntie Betty's carpet in the 1970s. 

It's definitely beginning to look autumnal out there ... 

... with a not-too-distant harvest of blackberries and sloes (guarded by stingers), apples, damsons and elderberries.

The rookery is largely silent now, though we did see rabbits on the soon-to-be pitch and putt again, and out on the fields, we had a couple of encounters with a family of three roe deer. I'd seen one earlier this summer in the hedgerow where the damsons and apples are, but one night when we were down there, we saw them emerge and bound across the field, pursued in a thankfully half-hearted fashion by a curious rather than murderous Cwtch. (Ted probably would have been murderous, though he'd never have caught them either.)

Just a week later a chopsy Jack Russell drove them out of the same hedge before being put firmly back on the lead. Cwtch just contented herself with a little growl (once everyone was out of earshot).  

Finally,  sunsets - occasionally out on the farmland ... 

... but more usually up the field, with its oak and its view of Avonmouth and the hills of Wales. Always a good end to even the hottest day, although its progress along the tops towards the estuary shows how we're heading towards winter.

The sun in competition with the windows of the Mall at Cribbs Causeway