in Cornwall recently, hoopoes, those charismatic European birds were popping up all over the place.
Camouflaged men and women with longer and longer lenses dashed about and swapped intelligence, clicked and whirred and punched the air in triumph, then moved on to hunt the elusive blue headed wagtail and the booted eagle!
Last autumn we got to know the lonely spoonbill that hung around feeding in the Hayle estuary and associated pools.
How pleased we are to find that this spring he has a friend.
What is this? A dodgy duck on the boating lake in Newquay. A rare long tailed duck, a lonely female. When the weather gets better she’ll head out to sea to find a mate.
We saw this male in Norfolk — Holme Dunes, near Thornham, last year.
At Slimbridge, in Gloucestershire, we saw white fronted geese, a Ross’s goose and lots of barnacle geese.
Thanks to Bill for the pictures of the spoonbills, hoopoe and female sea duck. This is my best duck!
Garganey, isn’t he beautiful, but I cheated — he wasn’t exactly in the wild!
Above is a male red-breasted merganser, also seen at Slimbridge. Most of the swans have gone now, the Bewicks and the whoopers, gone back up to the Arctic to breed.
Whooper swans
Bewick Swans
Mute swans — for balance!
The little gull is a rare Bonaparte’s gull, seen in Hayle with a black headed gull for scale and balance.
I’ve been showing my bird photos to my grandchildren.
‘Elitist! Surely not!’
‘But where are the pigeons and gulls, Granny?’
Yes! Move over turnstones, give a gull a chance!
They are cheeky these herring gulls but less inclined to mug you than they were, since the council in Cornwall have banned us feeding them. But there is still a certain amount of private enterprise:
Herring gulls staking out the fish market at Newlyn harbour.
Herring gull protection racket in the Lizard car park
H. Gull, tour guide, Lizard point, Cornwall.
When it comes to pigeons Emily might have a point — I haven’t photographed many.
But if you really want a pigeon? How about this one!
Biggest pigeon in the world and this one lives in Cornwall
It’s all happening in our ponds. Frogs are gathering, crossing the fields and coming through the woods, all heading to the pond.
We, like this one, are attracted to the area by the strange sound — the singing of the males as they bob about in the water of the pond. The surface, when we arrive, seems to be boiling.
Swirling with aquatic activity; those are not bubbles you see, but great mounds of frogspawn. Couples, already paired are busy laying their eggs, the males piggy-back, holding on for dear life to be sure to fertilize their chosen females eggs as she lays. Single males are calling and squabbling, scrambling to catch a gravid female.
Exhausting! And at the edge of the pond we find a, body — a casualty of all this effort and others resting, presumably until dusk when they will leave the pond and start their dangerous journey back to the soggy hideaways that are their homes.
Still it goes on, below, these may be waiting to leave but I suspect the two on the left are awaiting late arriving females — there is an aura of expectation in their body language.
Fortunately this pond has no fish in it so the breeding success is probably quite high, and getting better every year by the look of it. Although many of the tadpoles will succumb to predation by newts and dragonfly larvae that also thrive here.
The mottled grey is particularly distinctive in life as it is uniquely glossy.
Last of all the real hero is this rather war-worn specimen of the mottled umber moth. It flies in the middle of winter (Oct-Jan), mating with the flightless females who wait patiently on the tree trunks and have by now laid their eggs which will be laying dormant until the food plants start to sprout — it likes most of the trees that grow in our woodland — not being picky is a great advantage and may explain part of its success — it is common and widespread. This one must have survived two major storms tucked away behind our machinery shed.
We are always looking for ways to avoid the ravages of time:
Harmony must be the secret… Consonance between all one’s failing powers, coasting home together.
It’s the same with physical fitness – as long as your organs and limbs potter along together at about the same rate of decline, you’ll be in balance, grinding to a gradual halt – but slowly, gracefully. But if one organ gives up, throws in the towel — your heart, or your kidneys, or your liver, your brain or even just your left big toe, on its own –you could be in trouble. As you get older even a dodgy knee or a twisted ankle can let the team down, can slow you down and throw everything out of equilibrium. So use a stick when it’s icy,
or take your spouse’s arm, and be especially careful climbing trees! Because as soon as you can no-longer exercise, everything will clog up and go wrong. If you sit in a chair all day, your legs will swell and to get rid of the oedema you’ll need to pee all night, you won’t sleep properly and you’ll do what I did, and nod off on the loo and fall into a puzzled and indignant heap on the bathroom floor – I didn’t break my hip — but I could have.. Senses dwindle as badly as memory but that has advantages.
Believe me, no-one is immune – my old friends all agree. Dementia seems to be an invention of young people. Ask any old person and, if they are honest, they will tell you it’s just a question of degree and living long enough! So as my friends and I go up and down the stairs looking for our glasses, (woops! They are on my head) — all that exercise helps flush out the clots. Medical science has just worked out that clever old biddies and brainy old codgers (as measured by higher education) can cover up their forgetfulness for years, using the plasticity of their brains — they train themselves to think things in different ways — teaching their brains with games and puzzles and practice. When as time goes on, as it always does, they cannot compensate any more they deteriorate rapidly and everyone says, “How tragic, so sudden and they were so clever.”
We’ve also notice that the bloody-minded amongst us seem to live the longest — control-freaks and unpleasant dictators — that doesn’t bode well.
Standing his ground for 500 years
On the bright side, failing eyesight takes care of wrinkles and facial hair. So I warn you that you will need counselling if you are considering a cataract operation — for the first time you look in the mirror – maybe replace the bulb in the bathroom for one of lower wattage so that you cannot see the ravages so clearly but don’t fall over the scales or you might break another hip. Failure of hearing protects one from the increasing idiocy of others and one’s increasingly short temper. Most of the nightmares on the Six O’Clock News are subsumed in my inability to concentrate on more than one thing at a time, as I plan our next meal or attempt a crossword (that’s a word puzzle not a verbal missile aimed at my partner – who would only look puzzled because his head is also elsewhere). It’s not that we don’t hear, it’s that we can’t listen anymore, unless our attention is grabbed, but then that helps us understand our grandchildren… For an instant. We find we quite like YouTube! It suits our attention span.
Loss of proprioception (knowing what one’s joints are doing) shields one from reality – I pride myself on my flexibility as I splash about with the other pensioners at my aquarobics class – high kicking, supported by the water. Then, next day, I think I’ll just climb over this fence, catch my foot on the top wire (barbed), lose my balance (also impaired) and fall headfirst into the moist leaf-litter of the woodland on the other side, ripping my trousers. Here I lie, one foot still suspended in the air in the next field, nose in the mud, musing on the muted fragrance that surrounds me, unable, as I am, to truly appreciate the full horror of the rotting fox pooh into which I have just touched down.
That’s how to vault a fence.
It’s all a question of balance – the spirit of adventure versus the weakness of bones – Bill explains as he tries to hoist me out, the way I came – not possible! So, he frees my foot, and rather than attempt a return vault, I head off, trousers flapping, down the hill, to walk the long way home. Ducking, as I go, beneath the low hanging branches which get lower and lower, the more I stoop – it’s weird – like a fairy tale, as I trudge through the bewitched and shape-shifting trees of the dense twilight woodland.
That’s what we are told and I do believe it, but it hasn’t always felt like it in Wales; we had snow before Christmas and again several times since.
Here are some of this winter’s chilly images from our woodland.
Below is a strange phenomenon spotted on the surface of the frozen pond — a winter corn circle! I guess a spot of something organic has polluted the centre of the surface of each, diffusing outwards, lowering the freezing point (like salt on the road) and creating the perfect circles of melting frost.
Is that why it thaws around the margins and island or is that just the temperature differential between the ground and the water? Food for thought.
Most of us elderly folk are suspicious of the internet with its scams and plots to defraud us feckless incompetents.
Z Smagala (@Walls by Squidge) The Yard, Kettering
But that is not always the case!
Last week-end my friend lost his wallet in Llanidloes, in Mid-Wales — his real wallet, not a digital one. We rushed about the town telling everyone but in our panic not leaving any address. He cancelled his bank cards and the following day we drove to his home in Kettering, East Midlands.
On arrival his son from Stevenage phoned to say his wallet had been found in Llanidloes Co-Op.
“But?..” My friend hadn’t told his family. What was going on?
Sophie, the kind and conscientious lady at Llanidloes Co-Op, had received the wallet from an eagle-eyed shopper with a well developed sense of right and wrong, and then set about tracing him, from his driving license, on Social Media, which he doesn’t use. But in true Llani tradition (pop 2000), which was odd in Kettering (pop 70,000), his son’s mother-in-law’s friend spotted the Co-Op lady’s post on a Kettering community website. The rest, as they say, is history.
But it’s not — the following day — yes, the very next day, the postman rang the door bell. He proffered a parcel from the Co-Op, “I very much suspect that this parcel contains your wallet!” said the postie with consummate glee — seems he keeps his eye on the local website too.
“The posties know everything that goes on in this town!” say the Kettering ladies at my aqua-robics class.
Community is not dead — it is now electronically enhanced!
We had a blowy night and next morning Cwm Cudyn was blocked in 2 places, first with an Oak Tree which put our new electric chainsaw in it’s place — even with Roger helping! It lies right across the carriageway — no carriages will pass this way for quite a while.
Further up where the banks are steep and the soil thin, 5 tall pine trees lost their grip and had a go at skiing, skidding elegantly down the sloping bedrock leaving it glistening in the rain. Continuing the metaphor they all fell over in a tangled heap in the bottom of the cwm.
See how tenuous was their hold.
Still they managed to block the road.
At the bottom, where the lane is high above the river, you can see the lanky oak that normally stands on the edge of the stream with its roots in the water. It had a rough night, resisting the 90 mph gusts, and is now having a lie down. I bet that made the neighbors house shake.
Next day the levels have fallen here.
We worried about the impact of all this water further down stream but there was a news black-out — no power, no internet, no mobile coverage and the land-line was knocked out by the fallen larch on the hill.
We kept warm by cutting and moving the smaller fallen trees that were in the way and by unbunging the culvert by the house to release the Olympic swimming-pool of muddy water that had gathered on the road to stop the cars — not that there were many!
Once power was restored, Assad had fallen in Syria so there was nothing much to hear about trees or floods!
Its chilly here and the ground is covered and crunchy.
Food is thin on the ground and creatures need more calories to keep warm.
This is bringing birds that are usually wary of humans closer to the house.
This fine jay has been spotted foraging under the bird feeder and is battling for custody of the windfall apples with the local carrion crow, who sits in the tree posturing aggressively.
By and large jay defers to crow but sneaks back later.
Both hear the Raven up above, getting closer but still never coming to ground.
One regular is undeterred.
The Buzzards sit on the telegraph poles having removed the dead mouse from the patio, which I caught for him in my kitchen! Times are especially hard for him, and the fox as all the little mammals have gone to ground. We see the foxes prints prowling the edges of the fields but no rabbit tracks.
The one lonely fieldfare is not scared of the jay — there are plenty of fallen apples still.
But the little birds must beware!
The sparrowhawk visits daily and sits on the bird feeder — we know he’s there by the sudden eerie absence of everything else.
dianaashworth 