A Forest For The People

In the autumn I went to Hatfield Forest
I came home with these images:

Reflections on the water
Drifts of dead wood anchored on lake edges, giving the scene an otherworldly look
Amazing fungus
Beetles, some common others never seen before.
Dragonflies and insects
Trees of all sizes, shades and shapes
Clean air
Gentle cows and soft-eyed, fluffy-coated calves
Ducks and geese, swimming, flying, walking or just resting by the lakes.
Black swans with red beaks and ruffled black back
Coots and moorhens
Endless clouds of thistledown floating past loosened by flocks of goldfinches sitting atop drifts of those seedheads.
Endless variety of birdsong.
Thrushes, magpies, blackbirds, jays, robins, warblers, and chaffinches were but a few of our sightings.
Yellow meadow ants.
Pastures rich in anthills, food for green woodpeckers.
More green woodpeckers than I have ever seen before in any one area.
The combination of water, meadow and ancient forest makes this a very special place for nature.
The magical trunks of some trees, vast and ageless with gnarled and twisted limbs reaching forth.
Giant redwoods, or were they pines? – telegraph pole tall and leaning drunkenly toward each other.
In the groves, sloes, elderberries, blackberries.
Hum of insects, buzz of bees and always the song of birds.

Calm and stillness that creeps up on you, filling your soul with peace and tranquility, and giving one such a sense of well-being.

These were the memories and thoughts that followed me home and I asked myself, what will happen to this wonderful place of water, grass and trees? This remarkable medieval forest – the oldest and only one surviving in Britain, when even more planes roar overhead and pollution slowly kills the life therein – where will the people go then? I woke in the night and thought I heard the distant trees calling to me, “Save us please”.
Who will help them?
Will you?

PS… and I haven’t even mentioned the myriad wild flowers, wonderful grasses, butterflies or moths.

Pheasants in the Sun

Even pheasants scurry across the open fields with the sun on their plumage, echoing the color of the trees autumn coats.

Those trees that are not waving scary bony fingers and bare arms at me are beautiful, reds, yellows, orange and brown, with a smattering of green left on some.

We saw a flurry of scurrying pheasants hurrying across an open field of old beige cornstalks, the sun lit their plumage and reflected the rich autumn shades we could see in the nearby trees.

SparrowHawk

Sparrowhawk orange breast and full of zest
Knows what his chicks like best
Watching hungering, tireless
Plucking from the air, morsels helpless
Against mighty claws defenseless
Fluttering feathers: yellow and blue
While in a hole orphaned gapes lessen
Slowly droop, lackluster eyes close
And quietly, another motherless brood dies

Squirrel Play

Today I saw another first – so many firsts in this garden. How often have we said, “There can be no more firsts left”, and yet we were yet again proved wrong, because the behavior of a grey squirrel is different to any I have previously seen. Often we have seen squirrels running after each other, jumping , chasing, dodging, and I have wondered is this territorial, part of a mating ritual, or are they just playing? When the squirrels are young I can accept that it is learning to survive through what appears to be play, however, when a fully grown adult and very well nourished squirrel (all the squirrels here are fed on demand, and so don’t have the worry of finding food), picks up a piece of wood longer than the length of his head and body together and half as wide, and starts tossing it about, catching it, leaping on to it, rolling around with it and continues on for several minutes, only to drop it between logs in the log pile, and despite several attempts to fetch it, looking down the gap, then I have to concede that squirrels do play.

Woodpecker Digs a Hole

Today I chanced to choose an appropriate time to inhale my nebulized antibiotics. Glancing out of the kitchen window I saw a female green woodpecker in her usual place on the lawn busily working. Moss and grass tufts flew several inches in all directions as she dug, at first a fairly small hole and then deepening it. She gradually enlarged it, always from the edge she had previously dug and deepening each section as she worked before widening the hole again. She stayed for just under an hour and by this time the hole was seven inches wide, five inches long, and four inches deep. A grey squirrel happened by and then became very interested, obviously thinking the green woodpecker was after a cache of peanuts stored for a hungry day. The squirrel tried to muscle in on the act. He approached cautiously with pauses and many tail flicks and lashings. At first the green woodpecker seemed unfazed, but as the squirrel was six feet away he stood upright and threw all his feathers outward until he looked more like an owl than a woodpecker. The, by now, hesitant squirrel moved alternately closer and further away, and then with a quick move he was there beside the hole, and the puffed up woodpecker backed off, but only 8 to 12 inches and still stood upright and puffed up. He waited and watched while the squirrel checked out the hole. Finding it disappointingly empty, he ran off. Immediately, the green woodpecker returned and continued digging. She was joined briefly by a male green woodpecker, but mainly, the other interested spectators were other birds: blackbirds, robins, and house sparrows, who observed as if they were human and watching a football match, heads following every thrown tussock and blade, standing only two or three inches away from her. The robin, at one point, darted forward, picked up something and was gone. After almost an hour she moved to other sites around the lawn, where she poked her beak down and held still for a few seconds before moving to a new site.

The great tits have been excitedly in and out of, and all over, their nesting box, and the long-tailed tits have been feeding ravenously from the lawn as have the blue tits who ignore peanuts and sunflower seeds in favor of sodden bread which they carry off to the nearby bushes in lumps as large or larger than their own bodies.

We are very glad to see song thrushes in the garden. Though, each year, their numbers seem to deplete and yet we are still lucky enough to have them here. The mistle thrush pair are still here, which makes me glad. Chaffinch and greenfinch are not as plentiful as in other years, but at least some of each are still around as are the pretty red-faced goldfinches. House sparrow and starling numbers are again building, which is good, but as always blackbirds, robins and wrens are so dominant it is impossible to look outside without seeing them all.

Collared doves, pigeons, pheasants, great and little spotted woodpeckers, and moorhens are our other guests, they will all be joined by nesting mallards in the spring, and just once earlier this winter, we were delighted to watch a woodcock in the garden.

Red-legged partridges have been absent this winter, although we do still have little and tawny owls and crows. Many cormorants fly overhead and for the first time ever we have had flocks of gulls feeding here.

Preadult Mayfly

Today I saw a strange insect resting on the kitchen window. It was colored in different shades of brown. Its wings were held straight out at the back and together, and it had amazingly long front legs. There browny blotches on its wings. I looked it up and discovered it was from the family Ephemeroptera, that is, it was a mayfly. On reading further I discovered it was a male and, from its appearance, had recently emerged from a nymphal case, and had not yet reached the final stage of its metamorphosis known as the sub-imago – it is a winged preadult life stage unique to the mayfly among all insect species. It usually rests among vegetation waiting for the final moulting stage to occur revealing the fully clothed mayfly or spinner as they are also known. Sadly, their life is very short: they will mate and if female lay eggs and in a just a few hours they will probably be dead.

Scorpion Fly

Today while working in the garden near the paddock I saw a scorpion fly – he was entirely fascinating. I knew instantly what he was because of his upturned scorpion-like tail, also his head looked different from a normal fly. I watched him for a while, then he went about his business, and I went about mine.

It is sad to relate there are not as many butterflies about again this year, actually even less than last year, and if one prettily appears it is often seized upon and eaten, often as not by a robin.

May Flowers and Wildlife

It seems such a long time since I last wrote for my nature diary. It is the last day of May and the garden is looking absolutely wonderful – probably the best we have ever seen. It is lush and verdant, and so full of flowers. I thought spring was best, but this far outweighs it. There are flowers, of all types, in profusion everywhere I look. A few days ago I tried to count the various clematis which are rambling and scrambling all over. As far as I can tell there are forty-two, but there may be more unopened and therefore missed.

Mike has cut the lawn and it sets the borders off beautifully. The wildlife, as always, is abundant: a pair of collared doves, blackbirds, a chaffinch, robins and various tits. There is a magpie that has spent the last three days pecking against an ant colony to feed on the fat grubs inside. We have an injured pigeon, (feral not domesticated). His wing is damaged. At first he could not fly at all and spent his days on the lawn and nights in the borders. I was fearful as night fell each evening that he would make a tasty meal for our fox, who is also badly damaged and now on three legs. Some days have passed though and not only is the pigeon still with us, he is now able to fly short distances. I am still hopeful he will grow strong again, but his wing is so badly distorted and dropped that I fear it will never fully heal. I know that he is physically much better, but I also now know he is definitely make because this evening I have witnessed him bowing to and chasing after a female, and daring to make attempts to mate, yet he has not yet been successful.

We still have three squirrels: last year’s youngster and a pair. Sadly one of our pair died last year, but was very soon replaced and quickly grew as tame as the others. At the moment the female is heavily pregnant. When she moves across the lawn feeding her swollen belly scrapes the grass and when she is sitting up her nipples are thrust forward and out of her fur like mini torpedoes.

The pheasants have all but deserted us although I know they will be back in the autumn. We do, however, have one regular who still comes to feed each night and morning.

Ducks are, as always, ever faithful and a great pleasure even though they have fouled up the big pond, may be beyond redemption, but the constant pair plus the pair with the white female, and the pair with the dark female that frequently visit give us so much pleasure that we would always welcome them.

Creating a Nature Reserve

If you can watch from the window and see:

a beautiful white duck,
two eye-catching jays,
a dressed for dinner magpie,
four starlings with their iridescent sheen,
a pink puffed pigeon,
a pair of blackbirds,
a pretty chaffinch, looking like a miniature jay,
three robins,
and a fast squirrel,

then I think I can safely feel : yes, I have created a kind of nature reserve – especially when the fox, in broad daylight, strolls round the apple tree and looks for his dinner, while two mallards are having their after lunch nap.