deer – Garden Gate Flowers

Winter Safari

I love my cycle commute to school. It provides a light workout as well as giving me time to de-tox from the rigours of taming teenagers. And I have more time to observe the world around me.

As I cycled through Lower Hadspen last week, I saw two large birds rising from the road in front of me. I immediately recognised one as a buzzard and was pleased to see the other was a red kite. These angular birds of prey are still relatively new to Somerset, having spread their territory down from Wales and the Midlands. I remember the first time I saw one in the county; it was circling over a schools’ athletics meeting at Yeovil and I hoped the presence of this carrion-eating raptor did not reflect poorly on the prognosis for the exhausted teenagers competing on the track.

This kite rose with ease from what I discovered was a dead hare. I was sad to see a hare as roadkill, but I supposed its presence, albeit dead, was more evidence to show that hares seem to be on the increase in our area. We saw hares nearer our home last summer. An adult hare deliberately ran at our labrador, before veering off to lead her away from what I assumed were her young in another part of the field. Needless to say, Ella took the bait but returned – exhausted – soon after without any prey.

Beyond the dead hare, I cycled slowly past cider orchards, alive with hundreds of chuffling fieldfares and looping redwings and later at home, as I walked with the dogs, I listened to robins singing and blackbirds calling in the gathering gloom. We traversed fields as flocks of starlings skimmed across the treetops on their way to reedbed roosts on the Levels.

The sun was setting, its heat dissipating across the horizon in the frosty air and I caught a glimpse of something else red russet in the distance. A large fox was trotting distractedly away from me across the field. He looked unconcerned but stopped to look at me as I did likewise. Lithe and healthy, he seemed to hinge at the hips as he gazed at me before moving along. Some song lines came to mind:

“I was lookin’ back to see if you were lookin’ back at me
To see me lookin’ back at you”.

The title – “Safe from Harm” – seemed apt as neither dog had the remotest clue of the fox nearby. He was in no danger and the air of calm deepened still as my gaze followed him and I noticed two roe deer, also looking back at me. They moved lightly across the field below us. I laughed ironically and asked them if they were all paid up members of my cycling and walking safari.

I put my two natural born killers on their leads and wandered up the lane for a cup of tea.

Rewild at Heart

Simon Barnes was speaking on Radio 6 the other Sunday morning, promoting about his book “Rewild Yourself: 23 spellbinding ways to make nature more visible”. He has ideas to get everyone to be more in touch with the natural world around us. One suggestion – to learn the songs of some common birds which – is exactly what Mrs B and I have been doing recently too. We reckon we have learnt the great tit, song thrush, robin, blackbird and chaffinch so morning strolls are now very much a multi-sensory affair as we listen out for birdsong.

And bird song is not the only sound that attracts the attention at the moment as the countryside reverberates to the drumming of greater spotted woodpeckers on hollow branches, and the overhead thrum of closely packed wings as a flock of starlings arrives at a nearby tree. Whenever I see starlings I recall one sixth former from a private girls school asking the question “starling….is that anything to do with that bloke in Russia?” The subsequent incredulity of staff and students said it all: thirteen years of school fees for this? Some serious rewilding needed there.

Mrs B and I were very much at one with our natural environment on the morning dog walk this week. We listened to the song thrush which regularly sings at the top of the same tree each morning; we watched flocking starlings and spectated as two deer fled the attentions of our hopelessly out-paced labrador. Potentially a pet dog might have a negative impact on the local ecology, but those deer will be fitter and healthier for the hundred workout sprint they put in before the dog threw in the towel. Ella proceeded to flush out a couple of pheasants and then a rabbit but she was no nearer catching them than she was the deer. She might have had a chance with a grey squirrel – but she did not spot that – and fortunately failed to see the badger bumbling which was oblivious to our presence just fifteen yards away. We put the dog on the lead: this was one piece of wildlife she would probably do well to avoid.

Back home the (flocking) starlings were trying to get back into their nest sites under the tiles of the house. I’ve put wire over some of the holes to stop this so now, as I sit at my desk, all I can hear is them scratching away at the bars trying to get in – like an avian Andy Dufresne in reverse. I would not mind them being there, but we decided to evict them when they started removing loft insulation and depositing large tufts around the garden.

So no more artificial domesticity for them – I am encouraging them to do their own bit of rewilding.

A Walk with a View #3

Last night we spent an evening imbibing at the house of Love (Juliet and Tony) which included less dancing than usual but concluded with the consumption on my part of an interesting blend of vintage port and non-vintage sloe gin. So this morning the knees were in a better condition than expected, but the head was in need of some clearing.

So Mrs B decided on a plan to get out for a walk in the village. We went along paths that she herself had only discovered recently, which considering she spent much of her teen years walking dogs or exercising horses around the byeways of Galhampton, was quite a find. It certainly did the trick for me and along the way we saw the usual squirrels and other vermin as well as a deer, which our trained attack dogs failed to spot.

Lunch was taken at the Orchard Inn (formerly the Old Pub and even further back, The Harvester). So a properly restful lazy Sunday. When was the last time we had one of those?

A Walk with a View #2

After the yellow weather warnings last night and the subsequent torrential rain this morning it seemed timely to post another photo album from one of our neighbourhood walks. This morning as I set out at 8.30 with the dogs I looked west and where normally we can have views across to Glastonbury Tor and the levels, there was simply a grey curtain of doom. Within fifteen minutes we were all getting drenched. I was not too happy with it, but not half as pissed off as Fudge who slowed her progress to the point where it was difficult of ascertain if she was actually alive, with her tail buttoned down tight as if to keep her waterproof. Only Ella – thick in the fur and thick in the head – was oblivious to the wet, romping through the wet grass.

Contrast this with Thursday when I was out at the same time enjoying a proper jamspangler of a day. In my previous post I captioned a picture “this is why we garden”. I guess this album should be tagged “this is why we live here”. In such warm – perhaps I would venture to say hot – weather I am always reminded of one of my favourite passages from John Steinbeck (The Grapes of Wrath) as he describes a “land turtle” getting up and over a road:

“The sun lay on the grass and warmed it, and in the shade under the grass the insects moved, ants and ant lions to set traps for them, grasshoppers to jump into the air and flick their yellow wings for a second, sow bugs like little armadillos, plodding restlessly on many tender feet. And over the grass at the roadside a land turtle crawled, turning aside for nothing, dragging his high-domed shell over the grass: His hard legs and yellow-nailed feet threshed slowly through the grass, not really walking, but boosting and dragging his shell along. The barley beards slid off his shell, and the clover burrs fell on him and rolled to the ground. His horny beak was partly open, and his fierce, humorous eyes, under brows like fingernails, stared straight ahead”