December: the Somerset Levels

I have been dipping into Wild Hares and Humming Birds for more than a year now,  a city flat-dweller marking the beginning of each month with a glimpse of life in the countryside. My images of the  county now are mostly memories of our holiday journeys, as the M5 traffic crawled across the Somerset Levels, and the thoughts the landscape evoked of fugitives after Monmouth's disastrous defeat at Sedgemoor in 1685.
So Stephen Moss's monthly record of the seasons in one village have been both thought-provoking and reassuring.

"A couple of miles beyond the River Brue,  the southern boundary of the parish, another winter dawn  breaks over Catcott Lows.  As the mist rises from the the cold ground, revealing the silhouette of Glastonbury Tor, I begin to lose any sense of feeling in my fingertips.  All around me a shrill chorus of whistles pierces the chill air.  It is the unmistakable sound of hundreds of wigeon, the most striking and handsome of all our dabbling ducks.  ….."

Photo © Peter Moore

"Of all the birds here before me, the wigeon have travelled the furthest.  Although a few hundred pairs breed in northern Britain, their numbers are massively swelled each autumn, when close to half a million birds arrive here from their breeding grounds in Iceland, Scandinavia and northern Russia.  Because these areas freeze up during the winter, the wigeon must travel southwards and westwards, seeking out the more benevolent, maritime climate of Britain and Ireland.

Here on the Somerset Levels we have our fair share of these engaging ducks, but another winter visitor from Siberia, Bewick's swan, has all but disappeared. Named after the nineteenth-century engraver, publisher and political radical, Thomas Bewick, small flocks of these wild swans have always spent the winter here, filling the air with their yelping cries,  But in the past decade numbers have fallen away, and nowadays only a handful overwinter on the levels.  Most are well to the south, in the vast waterlogged fields around the villages of Muchelney, Stoke St Gregory and Curry Rivel, whose very names reflect the long and fascinating history of this landscape.

Even without Bewick's swans though, the sight and sound of more than a thousand dabbling ducks lifts the spirits. My encounter with them reinforces the continuity of this place and its wildlife over time, much in the same way as the distant backdrop of Glastonbury Tor reminds me of our human presence here across the centuries. "

Wild Hares and Hummingbirds  Stephen Moss

A boy birdnesting - tailpiece in The History of Birds Vol.II 1804  Thomas Bewick

October: autumn's changes

October: Twelve Months of Flowers  Jacob van Huysum, early 18th century

©  Fitzwilliam Museum

"I mow the lawn for what I hope will be the last time this autumn; though in some years another cut is required in November, or even December.  Instead of  the grass-moths of spring and summer, long-legged craneflies leap from beneath the mower's blades, bouncing away in search of an uncut patch of sward where they can hide from predators.

Despite the warmth, signs of autumn are more and more visible; not least in the absence of those pink and purple flowers that lined the rhynes and hedgerows during the past few months.  Purple loosestrife, which only a few weeks ago was still flowering in any damp corner, has gone to seed, while only a few sad, drooping fronds of willow-herb remain.  Clouds of midges still hang in the air in more sheltered areas; but within a week or so I shall hear the high-pitched call of returning redwings in the night sky; and soon afterwards feel the crunch of early-morning frosts beneath my boots."

Wild Hares and Hummingbirds  Stephen Moss

September: "Then nightly sings the staring owl, Tu-whoo!"*

Marazion Marsh   Harold C. Harvey, 

© Penlee House Museum & Gallery

"Now that September is here, the nights are gradually drawing in.  By 8 p.m. the sun has set, and the sky is almost dark.  Outside the Old Vicarage, a hundred yards or so east of the village shop, a bird is perched on the telegraph wires: those same wires where, a few months ago, the first swallow of the summer was sitting.

The bird is a tawny owl.  It sits on the topmost wire, unnoticed by drivers passing beneath on their journey home from work.  Occasionally it twists its head slowly from side to side; though even when a medium-sized bat passes closely by it takes no notice.  After a few minutes, it drops off the wire on soft, silent wings, disappearing into the dense foliage of a sycamore.  In an hour or so, when the remaining glimmer of light has finally been enveloped by darkness, it will go hunting, listening for the rustling of hidden rodents below."
Wild Hares & Humming Birds  Stephen Moss

When I was young, we would look for solitary owls sitting on telegraph poles in the dusk along country lanes, almost indistinguishable from the ceramic insulators.  Just like this little owl in Dobrogea, Romania,  featured in the Daily Mail newspaper.

* "Tu-whit, tu-whoo!" Love's Labour's Lost, Winter song,  W. Shakespeare

April swallows*

"As we head back home, the children trailing their bikes behind them, the sunlight catches a small bird as it flies over the grassy field by Perry Road. It is a shape at once familiar, yet strangely unfamiliar, for I haven't seen it for almost half a year.  It is a returning swallow: my first of the spring…..

Years ago I stood on the volcanic island of Surtsey, off the south coast of Iceland, an island so new that it didn't even exist when I was born.  As I tried to come to terms with this disconcerting notion, I saw a swallow hawking for insects under sunny blue skies.  It was a true pioneer -- swallows do not even nest in Iceland -- pushing the boundaries of its range to seek out new places to live and breed.

Surtsey Island

Over the years I have watched swallows crossing the Sahara Desert in Morocco, and the Negev Desert in Israel; alongside big game in the Masai Mara and Okavango Delta; at Cape May in New Jersey, and Punta Tombo in Patagonia.  In all these far-flung places I have experienced the same sense of wonder.  How can this tiny bird, weighing barely half an ounce, cross the world's continents with such ease?

 That same wonder grips me today, long after the swallow has flown out of sight; and I await with delicious anticipation the return of 'our' swallows, currently somewhere to the south.  One day, during the next week or two, I shall hear that familiar twitter, as they swoop down to land on the telegraph wires beside our home.

Later that day, as I collect the Sunday papers from the village stores, I mention my swallow; and am told that Mrs Puddy has beaten me to it, having seen her first swallow here on the first day of the month."

Wild Hares and Hummingbirds   Simon Moss

[*Browning's lines run: "And after April, when May follows, and the whitethroat builds, and all the swallows!"]

February in Somerset: Woeful and Joyful

"This is still, essentially, a landscape dominated by water in all its forms, eloquently described by local poet William Diaper, writing soon after the Great Storm of 1703:

'Eternal mists their dropping curse distill

And drizzly vapours all the ditches fill:

The swamp land's a bog, the fields are seas

And too much moisture is the grand disease.'

……..

Further along the rhyne I notice two smaller birds, diving down into the murky water, then bobbing up again like animated corks.  Even tinier than a moorhen or teal, these are our smallest waterbird, the little grebe or dabchick.

Dabchicks, as their name suggests, look rather like the offspring of a duck or moorhen; so tiny you cannot believe they are indeed full-grown. At this time of year they are greyish-brown with a fluffy white rear-end. But in a month or so they will moult into their handsome breeding garb: richer and darker, with a deep chestnut-brown neck, and the tiniest lime-green spot behind their bill, as if someone has daubed on a dash of luminous paint.  This is a colour rarely seen in nature, and all the more striking for that. 

……..

Being in one place is also the best way to understand the passing of the seasons: not the great shifts between winter and spring, summer and autumn, which we all notice; but the tiny, subtle changes that occur almost imperceptibly, from week to week, and day to day, throughout the year."

Wild Hares and Hummingbirds   Stephen Moss

New Year Greetings

January  - a head start.

"January sees the early starters in the breeding race begin to sing.  In my garden, robins lead the way: sometimes uttering their sweet deliberate and tuneful song on New Year's Day itself.  During mild winters, robins are joined by a chorus of other garden birds, each determined to get a head start on their rivals.  So great tits sing their brash 'tea-cher, tea-cher' from the bare branches of the apple trees, while goldfinches twitter in the hawthorn hedge.

Winter robin  Charles Tunnicliffe

Finches  Charles Tunnicliffe

Later in the year, as spring finally takes hold, these early birds will be joined by new arrivals: the migrants currently spending our winter thousands of miles away in Africa.  And day by day, week by week and month by month, other creatures will emerge: insects and mammals, reptiles and amphibians, and the panoply of wild flowers that will grace the parish fields and byways all summer long."

Wild Hares and Hummingbirds  Stephen Moss

[and see the Charles Tunnicliffe Society]

December - "a chord of starlings"

The coming of winter. From Wild Hares and Hummingbirds,  Simon Moss.

"The next morning Jack Frost has returned with a vengeance, and now the scenery really has turned whiter-than-white; white trees, white hedgerows, white grass, white roofs and white sky. This is landscape in crystal form, only punctuated by the staccato notes of black birds as they dash across the sky or gather in the fields: chords of starlings, followed by the occasional crow, jackdaw or rook.  And one brief splash of colour: a flock of goldfinches, whose crimsons and golds illuminate the landscape like a coloured frame added to an old black-and-white film.

Gwyngyed Mountain, Winter   Ogwyn Davies

©  University of Aberystwyth

Later, as the sun sets over Brent Knoll, a low ridge of colour hangs over the Mendips, while a darker, more menacing wave arrives from the west.  A strong, full moon begins to rise, gradually illuminating the flat, white landscape.  A lone buzzard perches on top of a hawthorn hedge, surveying his misty kingdom.  Apart from a distant dog barking, and the hum of the milking parlour at Perry Farm, all is quiet; when it is as cold as this, no bird will waste energy in song.  In the rhyne by the farm a lone heron stands rigid on the ice, as if fixed permanently to the spot.  On catching sight of me he has just enough energy to flap those huge rounded wings and fly away.  I hope he finds some water, somewhere in this frozen land.

Soft, ghostlike, the mist surges westwards from the darkness, creating a blanket of vapour over the layer of snow beneath, like a counterpane laid carefully over a duvet.  As it finally covers the land, the tops of trees and hedgerows poke out as if grasping towards the last few minutes of daylight, before they too are swathed in the mist."

Winter series  Wilhelmina Barns-Graham

© the Barns-Graham Charitable Trust

November in Somerset - Alfred's cakes and shamanic mushrooms

As I dipped into my monthly chapter of Stephen Moss's natural  history of a Somerset village,  I chanced upon his evocative description of woodland mushrooming and English fungi lore.  It also happily links my last two blogs.

"We are going on a fungal foray: to learn how to forage for free food, ideally without wending up in the local casualty department.
…We are walking through a dense woodland: little stands of oak and beech surrounded by great swathes of Norwegian spruce: the fast-growing, economically profitable 'Christmas tree' we know so well. Wildlife is thin on on the ground and hard to see among the dense, inky foliage. The only evidence that anything is here at all is the occasional snatch of sound: the trill of a wren, the peeping of gold crests and coal tits, or the harsh screech of a distant jay.  Closed, claustrophobic, this is not a place in which I feel at ease.

…We spread out through the woods like a police forensic team, carefuly scanning every inch of the ground in front of us.

Landscape of the Brown Fungus  Paul Nash, 1943
National Galleries of Scotland

Walking through the wood at such a slow, deliberate pace, changes the way you appreciate the landscape.  I begin to notice the patterns of the fallen beech leaves arranged in a random collage, ranging from chocolate-brown, through chestnuts, to buffs, yellows and the occasional tinge of lime-green, the summer shade retained even at this late stage of the year. The veins of the leaves overlap each other to make abstract patterns, intermingling with the greens of the surrounding brambles, ferns and moss.

Many fungi are picked, but few are chosen; and as Adrian [Boots] inspects our baskets he discards most of what we have found.  The temptingly named honey fungus is, he tells us, often sold in markets as an edible variety.  If you do eat it, you may get a nasty stomach upset, though it won't actually kill you.  Coral fungus does indeed resemble bright orange corals -- you wouldn't want to eat it, even if you could.

The edible varieties bear out Adrian's warning that appearance cannot be used as a guide to safe eating, as they could hardly be more different from one another. … We find wood blewits and a beautiful orangey-yellow chanterelle, which when gently squeezed emits a delicate scent of ripe apricots.

….Another fungus rich in folklore, though not edible, is King Alfred's cakes -- so called because when you cut open these hard little lumps they look as if they are burnt inside, a feature which would have reminded our ancestors of the famous royal cake-burning incident that took place a few miles south of here.

Daldinia Concentrica, Alfred's cakes, or coal fungus - cross section
© see Woodlands.co.uk

Just before lunchtime, we come across what looks like a cluster of bright red apples strewn across the forest floor,  these are fly agaric, whose name comes from its traditional use as an insecticide.  However, its main claim to fame is that indigenous people across Siberia have historically used it for its hallucinogenic properties, as part of their shamanic traditions.

We decide against trying to recreate this ancient practice.  Instead, Adrian heats up his Primus stove, chops up the few edible fungi we have managed to gather together, and sautes them in a mixture of butter and oil….

As we eat,  Adrian tells us about the complex relationship between trees and fungi.  Tree roots are not very good at obtaining nutrition, so they use the networks of underground fungi to do it for them.  What we see on the surface -- the fruiting bodies we call mushrooms and toadstools --are but a tiny fraction of what lies out of sight, beneath the soil.  The time and effort it has taken us to collect this meagre offering is a salutary reminder of just how tough life was for our hunter-gatherer ancestors; and how good they must have been at knowing where to look and what to pick...

By late afternoon the light has turned soft and even as it percolates through the trees, and the smell of woodland begins to intensify: a not unpleasant blend of dampness and decay.  As we return to the warmth of the Swan Inn [at Rowberrow] for a welcome pint, a solitary raven croaks unseen overhead; reminding us of the wilderness we have shared with nature for the past few hours."

November Moon   Paul Nash, 1942

Fitzwilliam Museum © Estate of Paul Nash

October in Somerset

"Outside in the parks and playgrounds around the parish, it's the local children's favourite time of year. The leaves of the horse-chestnut trees are turning an orangey-brown, and beneath every one is a treasure trove of spiky green balls, each beginning to split open to reveal the dark shiny fruit within.  Is there any natural object as instantly alluring as the conker?  Nothing else has quite the same appeal, and even now, more than forty years after I picked one up as a small child, I still get the same thrill each year when I find the first polished conker of the season."

Wild Hares and Hummingbirds  Stephen Moss

[Like seashells fresh from the beach, the shiny conkers fade when brought home, but the tree summer blossoms are still celebrated on Chestnut Sunday in May, with processions along the Chestnut Avenue in Bushy Park, across from Hampton Court Palace.]

September in Somerset

A robin calls loudly from a hawthorn hedge; and above it on the topmost sprig, perches a plump buffish-orange bird, a wheatear.  This is unfamiliar territory: the closest place where wheatears breed is Exmoor or Salisbury Plain, though this bird could have come from as far afield as Scandinavia.

2 Northern Wheatears   Henrik Gronvald c. 1907-09

The wheatear may be the robins' cousin, but there is little love lost between them,  Having established his autumn territory along this hedgerow, the robin is not prepared to tolerate any intruder, however far it might have travelled.  So when the wheatear flies down onto the stony track the robin follows, uttering a peevish warning call, in an attempt to see off the newcomer.  But the wheatear takes no notice, running in short bursts along the track on long, rangy legs, and occasionally stopping to pick up a morsel of insect food, before flying up to another perch.

As I get closer, the bird's fresh plumage and confiding nature suggest that this is a juvenile, probably only three or four months old. I appreciate the subtle pale, yellowish-buff of its belly shading darker on the upper breast, the jet-black tail, and as it flies  a few yards along the path, the snow-white rump which gives the bird its name.  For 'wheatear' has absolutely nothing to do with ears of wheat, but derives instead from an Anglo-Saxon word meaning 'white arse'."

Wild Hares and Hummingbirds  Stephen Moss