A winter walk as the sun goes down

 (Photo taken on a different day)

I am lucky to live not far from the West Lancashire Moors, recently given SSI status by the powers that be. A very good thing which should, hopefully, protect it from fracking should it come our way, which I fear it will if the government's energy policy continues unabated and local authorities are overruled.  Beneath the Moor lies the small town where I live and my avenue is built upon the gradual hillside which signals the end of the Lancashire/Cheshire plane and starts the upward ascent to the moors. Behind the neighbouring avenue is a small clough, known locally as Nellies' Clough, home to Hawthorn, various spruce, the odd sliver birch and a culverted stream which finds its way into the River Douglas and beyond. This is where I like to walk when I have been couped up at home too long.

Not just Sunday but New Year's Day;  today the paths were very quiet, a handful of  people walking or exercising their dogs. The sun sends a golden glow across the land, as I walk up the hill, up the wooden steps out on to the narrow path. Turning around I see below me quite a steep ravine, to the spot where the culvert crosses the path and the fields open out. I imagine this is an old place, an old path, a way where medieval carts came down from places like Belmont on their way to West Lancashire.When I reach a certain point, now bracketed on one side by 1970s houses and a wooden fence, I feel the expanse of the plane opening up before me.


It looks as though there are  some changes to the broken down old barn, where I wish for, but never see, the owls that are rumoured to roost there. The ivy has been removed from the windows and the wall rebuilt. It is no longer possible to push through the low bramble to the old iron gate that faces towards Bolton.  This is as far as I will go. As I walk back down the sun is softly blinding.

Now alone in my tiny office, the sky has turned a transparent yellow rising into an almost sapphire blue as evening takes hold.

(photo taken 1.1.17)

Tuppence a bag

This morning I spotted three rather than the usual two dunnocks. A new male wanting in on the act? Dunnock's are notoriously promiscuous, if such a description can be applied to the natural world, and a male dunnock will follow a female around to ward off other interested parties for weeks.

Two new blackbirds, male and female, have been shown the door by our usual pair, who are now into their second year in our back garden - a fine looking male and a female with a sideways on crest of speckled white beneath her chin. The goldfinches flock in increasingly large numbers and two greenfinches spent time on the new stainless steel feeder this afternoon.

According to the RSPB, our five feeders (peanuts, two black sunflower seed, nyger seed and yellow sunflower hearts, plus occasional fat balls) represent a 'feeding station', which sounds very efficient and useful and makes me feel like I'm in Eritrea rather than Lancashire.

The birds of the air and a spot of real life

Visits from siskins and bullfinches put a smile on my face and my mind off the state of the nation. Went back to work on Thursday but it was quiet and empty, maybe not a bad way to get back into the routine, which kicks in properly tomorrow.

During last week I visited 'Ship of Fools', where I learned that the main boards editor Erin Etheredge had suddenly passed away. The response has been quite overwhelming. My nephew was rushed into hospital with what turned out to be a blocked bowel and I've been helping keep him occupied with a Harry Potter text quiz. Today I caught up with a ex-colleague's blog in which she gives a candid and unindulgent account of living with lung cancer. Earlier in the week we had a book group meeting, where I had a chance to have a good chat with the organiser who also has cancer and is coping well. All of which puts stuff into perspective somewhat.

November

November started wet and got sunnier and colder and featured perfect, endless winter skies. Skies to die for: big, fat, massive, huge, magnificent skies in pale winter blue splashed with orange, red, pink and turquoise and puddles of gold for the sky gods to bathe in. Skies to keep one sane on the way to work in the morning. Hyperbolistic.

October

I'd forgotten just how lovely October can be with its gentle mists and soft yet cool, clear sunshine. When I walk down Heartbreak Hill in the mornings, robins and finches skitter in the hawthorn and, despite the slight troubles I have encountered lately, this fills me with gladness.

The leaves are turning and orange and brown predominate(I read somewhere that the glorious crimsons and purples of last year will not feature heavily this Autumn). Later berries and flowers still brighten up gardens but the petals on the Japanese Anenomies in our front garden are starting to fall. Winter is not far way but I do not dread it, despite the gradual reduction of light, which can bring on bouts of tired melancholy.

I have always been aware of the turning of the seasons throughout the years of my life, familiar markers on the journey and I am suddenly aware that today is a beautiful day to enjoy the gifts God has given me.

Back for Autumn

The Great tits and the Coal tits are back. Last seen in the Elder in early May, they disappeared for four months but now they are back, snacking on sunflower hearts and black sunflower seeds. The feeders are twirling.

Elderberries

The shiny purple bunches of elderberries hang on the tree and sparkle in the August sunshine. The birds just love them. Starlings, blue tits, collared doves and sparrows enjoy the natural feast. The goldfinches aren't interested at all. Maybe their beaks are too thin for this type of berry/seed or maybe they just don't like them, preferring to fight over sunflower hearts and nyger seeds.

Greenfinches

Yesterday, Baz said there had been an feature on BBC Breakfast about the drop in greenfinch numbers but he'd had to leave for work before the detail came on. An article in yesterday's Telegraph gives the cause as trichomonosis, a disease which normally affects pigeons but has been affecting greenfinches and chaffinches for five or so years now. The British Trust for Ornithology, who carried out the research with help from the general public, are very concerned. On their web site they recommend, regular sterilization of feeders and, if sign of disease are noted, to stop feeding birds for a period of around 2 weeks then re-introduce food gradually, keeping an eye on the situation.

I have not noticed any sick birds but there's a clearly been an absence of greenfinches. The population is declining by 1 in 3.

Nature Notes

When out walking, it’s so noticeable how Himalayan balsam is colonising our open spaces, not just the edges of paths but across uncultivated fields and partly dried up streams. Pretty enough, there’s just too much of it. It is far more prolific than rosebay willowherb and may be driving out more familiar plants, affecting diversity. It’s creeping up Nelly’s Clough like a nasty rash. (I’d better explain: Nelly’s Clough is a path that weaves past the golf course and farm land near the end of my road and not an elderly woman with a sexual health problem!)

Despite this intrusion, Nelly is looking good at the moment with hawthorn, elder, blackberry brambles full of fruit and nettles, dock, rosebay willowherb, vetch and ragwort lining the edges of the path. On the slope down to the stream there are crab apple trees and a couple of splendid fuchsias that must have seeded years ago from a nearby garden.

I saw a heron at Wallsuches alongside coots, Canada geese and mallards.There are more butterflies about than last year. I saw peacocks, spotted woods, small coppers and small tortoiseshells along the way. At Wallsuches five peacocks lay sunning themselves on the path till I disturbed them. I also came across some exotic breeds. Two brown and patchy long horn goats (I think they were goats!) grazed in a field near Brinks Row, while a couple of Lamas relaxed in the sun at the top of Green Lane.

In the garden we have seen plenty of goldfinches and sparrows, though not too many sightings of greenfinches at the moment. Earlier I peered in the sunken blue bowl and saw the frog peeping up from the murky rain water. I then made the mistake of saying ‘hello’. The frog jumped. I jumped. It jumped some more and then hid out for a while behind the flower pots. If it’s the same frog that was in there last year it sure has grown.

A victory for trees, little birds, moths and people and a bit about Brian Eno

The council took on board the fact that people actually care about old trees. Of course, the council did not refer at all to the impact the facebook campaign and Bolton News letters' page correspondence had on their decision Still, it was an excellent result and a beautiful avenue of old limes has been saved.

The facebook page not only allowed people to air their views but to present historical and environmental information about the trees and the area. I'd never heard of the lime moth for example - though I knew trees provided important habitats for insects, or that some of the trees could be at least a 130 years old, or realised the trees had been planted as a magisterial avenue through which the dead could make their final journey to the cemetery at the end of the road.


There was an excellent documentary on BBC4 last week about the musician, philosopher and music producer Brain Eno. Ever a fan, since my teenage obsession with Roxy Music, what really struck me about the man was his amazing ability to appreciate different ways of thinking and being. I don't think there are many people who could share a stage with Richard Dawkins and happily explain how his approach to music reflected evolutionary processes and yet spend years gathering thousands of gospel tracks, describing it as his favourite kind of music because of how it so perfectly embodied the human desire to transcend. I got the impression from watching him that he calmly embodies a range of seemingly contradictory impulses in a way that's impossible for lots of linear thinkers. An enlightened man? Maybe. Whatever. I do think his grasp of ideas, willingness to experiment with so many varied forms and his contribution to music make him a genius.

Save the Trees

My local council is thinking of chopping down these trees in a residential area of the town for no other reason than a) they have scratched some cars and b) blocked some people's Sky TV reception. Can't they just pollard and/or trim the trees? It makes me wonder where the council's heads are at. For the first time in my life, I wrote a letter to the local paper. Unfortunately the paper boy didn't come last night due to the snow and so I haven't seen me in print yet! Seriously though, just look at how lovely the trees look. But it's not just about looks: these trees provide environments and habitats for local birds and insects. If they chop them down so people can watch wild life programmes on Sky, the world really is turning upside down.

Midsummer dreams on a cold and snowy day

So much snow...Ho, ho, ho! Around 20 centimeters. The buses were off and they have officially closed the college, so I've stayed home all day cutting into A Midsummer Night's Dream and realising, not for the first time, that Shakespeare's comic plotting is so divine he could have scripted for Frasier.

What fun to inhabit an Elizabethan fantasy hybrid of Athens and Fairy Land (or should that be Faery Land?) and immerse myself in ill-met lovers, encounter home-spun hempen mechanicals and dance before dawn with Peasblossom, while simultaneously inhabiting a veritable winter wonderland.

The back garden is full of birds: greenfinches, lots of goldfinches - Baz counted twenty, blackbirds, tits, a dunnock, starlings and sparrows. All the usual but it's particularly pleasing to see them feeding on a such a very cold winter's day. The feeders have been constantly busy. I mixed up left over turkey fat with wholemeal bread crumbs and he put it out with the special seed for the ground feeding birds.