Monthly Archives: January 2017

Natural History, Nature Reserves, Wildlife

Nature Red in Tooth and Claw

Pigeon killed and partly eaten by a Sparrowhawk

Many of the photos on this website show nature at its prettiest. Well, not today, but still surely of interest. Nature is in Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s phrase “red in tooth and claw”—or in this case in beak and claw: a Wood Pigeon killed, plucked and partly eaten by a Sparrowhawk. There were many plucked feathers all about, mainly to the right and bottom of the image, an instantly recognisable scene of predation and carnage. The Sparrowhawks nest at the other end of the reserve, and they kill a pigeon somewhere that we notice most weeks. Netty disturbed this one on her walk round this morning, and given the cold damp weather she was surely the first person into the reserve today. The sparrowhawk, definitely not very large and brownish, was either a male or a juvenile.

Conservation, Nature Reserves

Icy Wind from Europe – time for a good fire

Burning brash

I nearly stayed home today, with the thermometer on -1 Celsius and a chilly wind off a frozen continent for the windchill factor, but I wrapped up warm with 2 fleeces and a bodywarmer under my jacket, and turned up at the hut. No other volunteers arrived, so Netty and I were the team. She said let’s make a fire: she had come equipped with potatoes to roast in case everybody felt like making a celebration out of it. We left them in the hut. I had a biscuit and a cup of tea and we bravely stepped outside.

I cut up a large Christmas tree with loppers: it was clearly an excellent specimen, as it still had all its leaves a month after Christmas, and smelt pleasantly resiny. It caught fire splendidly, and soon we had a fine blaze. It ate up quantities of brambles. The Holm Oaks that I’d cut also burnt well, if anything even better than the conifer; it seems to contain a lot of resin too.

I didn’t think about being cold at all while I worked, so the fire must indeed have been hot. I went home reeking of smoke.

 

Conservation, Love of Nature, Nature Reserves

Bramble root worthy of the Wurzels

Just dug up a giant bramble root!

The Wurzels once sang about a giant marrow, to the immortal words “Oh what a beauty / I never saw one as big as that before”. I can’t imagine what they were referring to. Anyway, today in beautiful winter sunshine after days of rain, it was perfect weather for digging brambles out of the South-facing butterfly bank above the old railway track (which I’m standing on in the photo). The ground, too, was ideally soft and well-watered, so the roots came out with hardly any digging. Just before it was time to stop, my fork struck a large lump of wood, right under a small tuft of bramble stalks. I removed the loose earth above it, and made out to my pleasure half-a-dozen stalks that had been clipped off at ground level in earlier years as too difficult to dig out. Well, today was the day, and after really not very much wriggling with the fork, pulling and leaning on the fork handle, I triumphantly wrenched this grandfather-of-all-brambles from the ground, including to my surprise the yard-long taproot below my right hand. In short, a monster, if not a marrow.

The bank, by the way, is the reserve’s best place for Gatekeeper butterflies – we saw 35 there at once, on a stretch of the bank which was well weeded and grassy at the time. Now we have a far longer stretch all de-brambled at once, so perhaps we’ll have a bumper butterfly year, let’s hope so. And there are quite a few young Buddleias (“butterfly bushes”) self-seeded on the bank, a pleasantly “railway” feature, so the signs are good.

Love of Nature, Natural Patterns, Nature Reserves

Warm Wet Winter Day at Wraysbury Lakes

Wet Blackened Rose Hips

The day was exceptionally warm after the chilly winter weather. The hedgerow plants dripped gently. I liked the colours and light on these blackened rose-hips, still somehow looking invitingly fruity.

The path too was covered in blackened leaves, wet and slippery. On the lake, half-a-dozen Goldeneye, a couple of Pochard, a few Teal, some Tufted Duck, a few Mallard. Apart from the ducks, a couple of Cormorants, two young and very white Great Crested Grebes. On the meadows, a Green Woodpecker, flocks of Goldfinches, scattered Redwing and Fieldfare, a flock of Carrion Crows.

Rutted grassy track