A pterodactyl over my house

Feb5

Since Chap and I moved to our cottage 22 years ago, we have kept a nature diary. We record what’s going on in the garden, what wildlife we have seen, what the weather is doing, and general impressions of the natural world about us. We have a bird species list, where we note ‘new’ birds when we see them in or over our garden.

Yesterday morning I was chatting to Chap on the phone, looking out of the study window as I always do when I’m on the blower (my desk faces a wall so it’s nice to see the world …!), when I had a wonderful, chance surprise. A heron was flying towards our cottage, not very high at all and coming right at us. It is the first time I have ever seen a heron here (though there are some on the nearby streams and rivers and lakes). I squealed down the phone at Chap and near-deafened him, I think.

Grey heron (Ardea cinerea). Photo by Kclama.

It flew right over me and I had a great view of its belly as it passed. Beautiful.

Herons (Ardea cinerea) are such wonderful birds. We sometimes see them standing stock still in the local shallow chalk streams, poised and ready to strike, or walking with that slow, high-stepping tread through the water. They are a beautiful cloudy-sky grey. But it is when they are flying that they intrigue me most, and remind me of nothing more than the illustrations of flying pterodactyls in my dinosaur books from my childhood. Watching a heron fly you can quite easily believe that birds are feathery dinosaurs … Their heads are pulled back, their legs trail behind them and they beat their enormous wings with slow, steady flaps.

Grey heron in flight. Photo by Paweł Kuźniar.

Grey heron in flight. Photo by Mediamenta.

Their wingspan is among the largest of British birds, at between 155 and 195 cm for an adult bird.

(I know their proper title is Grey heron, but they are just ‘herons’ here as we don’t have any other type here in the UK—and they are, after all, the original bird to be called a heron).

Not a grey heron. Drawing by Matthew P. Martyniuk.

Not a heron. Drawing by Matthew P. Martyniuk.

Such an exciting day. But I think of all our heron sightings, the top one still has to be the day we saw a buzzard (Buteo buteo) and a heron having an aerial dogfight. We used to live in the Woodford Valley north of Salisbury, and were driving close to Lake House when we saw a tussle going on in the sky, just above the trees by the road. The two birds were circling round and round each other and occasionally clashing, and as they are both large birds it was quite a spectacle. We couldn’t quite make out what was going on, but we wondered if the buzzard was harrying the heron to make it regurgitate its catch.

PS. Our lone fieldfare is still with us, 36 days+ and counting. We had some snow the other day—not deep, but enough to remind him of home.

UPDATE Saturday 6 May 2017: This morning we had only our second ever sighting of a heron from our house in the near-twenty five years that we have lived here. And what a close encounter it was: it flew its slow flapping flight very low over our neighbours’ garden, and to our amazement landed in a very ungainly fashion on an overhead line just above the garden. It stayed perched there for about a minute or so before flying off. I hurried to look at our garden to see if it was heading for our pond, but sadly no – although I should be grateful that the tadpoles and newts and frogs live to see another day. Seeing such a massive bird perched on a wire was quite a thing.

RSPB Big Garden Birdwatch

Jan28

Every year since 1979, the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB) has asked people across the UK to spend an hour recording the birds they see in their garden: the Big Garden Birdwatch. The results are used to provide a snapshot of the bird life in our country, and to work out which species are in trouble and in need of help. The census is billed as the world’s largest annual wildlife survey, and last year nearly half a million people took part (not bad in a country of 64 million people), counting 7,274,159 birds. This year’s event took place over the weekend of 24—25 January, and we spent an hour on Sunday morning doing our bit.

Chap and I take part every year, and I love the enforced stillness that an hour spent at the window watching and counting birds brings (Chap covers the front of the house and I look out of the back). An extended period of observation allows you to see things you might not otherwise have noticed, such as the several times I saw a blue tit (Cyanistes caeruleus) and a great tit (Parus major) flying, perching and then flying on together, very much a twosome;

Blue tit (left) and great tit (right). Photo by Tatiana Gerus.

or the male blackcap (Sylvia atricapilla) feeding on the windfall apples—I have never seen this behaviour before (in fact, I have never seen a blackcap on the ground before), and always assumed they were insectivores rather than being fruit eaters as well. I saw two male blackcaps hanging around together, and wondered if they were perhaps part of a sibling or family group, or if simply male blackcaps aren’t very territorial (in contrast, the robins in our garden are forever chasing each other off), and later I saw a lone female. I hope they meet up and there’ll be lots of baby blackcaps this summer!

Male blackcap – well-named! Photo by Katie Fuller.

Female blackcap. Photo by Chris Romeiks (Vogelartinfo on Wikimedia Commons).

I was also really pleased to be able to add fieldfare (Turdus pilaris) to the list for the first time, as our Scandinavian guest is still with us. We first noticed him on 29 December last year, though he may well have been around before that, and since then he has been assiduously guarding the windfalls from his perch on the apple tree above them, or from one of the surrounding higher beech trees.

Fieldfare. Photo by Noel Reynolds.

Of the more unusual birds we see, no siskins (Spinus spinus) or bullfinches (Pyrrhula pyrrhula) or bramblings (Fringilla montifringilla) this year, which was a shame.

Last year for the first time we were asked about other wildlife in our gardens too, so we were able to enter information about the frogs, badgers and hedgehogs that we have seen, as well as other animals.

RSPB website.

Fetch, girl!

Jan6

Hecate spectacularly failing to secure our supper …

Photographed in January 2010. The cock pheasant hung around the gardens near us for over a year. There are shoots nearby, so I don’t know if he eventually succumbed to a gun, or a predator, or old age (what is a pheasant’s life span?) or simply wandered off elsewhere. We certainly missed him and his clattering call and beautiful colours.

Round and round the apple tree

Dec29

By coincidence, my last couple of posts have been about Scandinavia, snow and ice, and ovicaprids. I’m not going to manage to shake free of all of those in this post either …

Fieldfare (Turdus pilaris). Photo by Arnstein Rønning.

We woke this morning to a terrific hard frost. The countryside is white; the trees are white; it is gorgeous. It’s not quite so gorgeous inside our bedroom, where there was ice on the inside of the windows—one of the joys of living in a 300 year old cottage with all its draughts and dampness and ill-fitting doors and windows.

We call one of the gardens next to ours ‘the secret garden’. Not so much because it is hidden, but because no-one uses it. The cottage to which it belongs is rented, and none of the tenants in the last few years has shown any interest in it. Contract gardeners come and cut the grass about four times a year, and that’s it. We can see into the garden from our bedroom dormer window. There is an alder tree which has grown from a small sapling when we arrived in 1992 to a large, two-trunked tree; there is an old ruined cottage or barn or outbuilding, the stone walls of which survive to about a metre or so high and are gradually being covered by brambles; and there is a venerable old apple tree. The apple tree always fruits prodigiously, and because no-one uses the garden, the apples stay where they fall. They provide welcome food for wildlife in the winter months.

This morning the apples were providing a frosty feast for about nine or ten blackbirds (Turdus merula), a grey squirrel (Sciurus carolinensis), and a single fieldfare (Turdus pilaris). Fieldfare are a palaearctic species, living in more northerly latitudes in the summer and heading south in the winter—our fieldfare come from Scandinavia. Normally they travel in flocks, so it is always surprising to see a lone one. This one was vigorously defending its food, spending more time chasing all the blackbirds away than it was eating. Watching them, I could almost hear the Benny Hill Show theme tune in my head as the fieldfare scooted round and round the apple tree in hot pursuit of a blackbird.

Play nicely, children. Photo by Dave Jackson.

Play nicely, children. (This is a small fieldfare as an adult fieldfare is quite a bit larger than an adult blackbird). Photo by Dave Jackson.

I would love to have seen this many!

Update 4 January 2015: A week on and the fieldfare is still with us. He sits in one of the higher beech trees that surrounds the secret garden, and swoops down to chase off larger interlopers who are getting too close to his precious stash of slowly-rotting apples. He tolerates the smaller birds such as chaffinches (Fringilla coelebs) and dunnocks (Prunella modularis) and blackcaps (Sylvia atricapilla), but is aggressive in his pursuit of the blackbirds. Even larger birds like jackdaws (Corvus monedula) get the ‘get orf moi laaaand’ treatment from him (or should that be written in a Scandinavian rather than a West Country accent?)

Update 29 November 2016: The fieldfare stayed for about a month, leaving the day our neighbours on the other side of the secret garden started having some very noisy chainsaw work done on their trees. We didn’t see him in winter 2015, but this morning we woke to a hard frost and a lone fieldfare guarding the apple tree in the secret garden. Is it the same bird? I’d like to think so ….

Straw goats and arson: the Gävle Goat

Dec22

Every now and then I find a quirky little article on Wikipedia that captures my imagination or fires me up or makes me go ‘Whaaat?’ or just makes me smile. I love quirky stuff. And the Gävle Goat (Gävlebocken in its native Swedish) is certainly that.

The Gävle Goat in snow, 18 December 2014. Photo from the Gävle Goat Twitter account.

The Gävle Goat as pictured on the webcam, 11.49 am Swedish time on 22 December 2014. Still here!

Every year, a giant version of the traditional Yule Goat is erected in the Swedish city of Gävle, in time for Advent. And every year, people try to burn the goat down.

The Gävle Goat is made of straw, is 13 m tall, 7 m long and weighs 3.6 tonnes. The first Goat was built on 1 December 1966, and was burned down on New Year’s Eve that year, starting a tradition of festive caprine arson. Since then the Goat has been protected by a fence, been given security guards and in 1996 a webcam was installed. But despite all this, the arson and other attacks on the Goat continue.

It has been hit by a car, kicked to pieces (several times—that’s some dedicated kicking), hit by fireworks, attacked by Santa Claus and the Gingerbread Man, scaled by drunks, collapsed due to sabotage, and of course burned, a total of 27 times. One year in particularly cold weather the guards popped into a nearby restaurant to warm up, and almost inevitably they weren’t the only thing that warmed up—the arsonists struck in their absence.

The Gävle Goat of 2009. Photo by Apeshaft.

There have been Goat Wars between the two rival goat-building groups, international attacks on the Goat (a Norwegian was arrested and an American jailed for attacking the Goat), and bribery attempts on the guards, who were asked to turn a blind eye to a planned theft by helicopter (Yes. Seriously).

One that didn't make it ... the 1998 Photo by Adent.

One that didn’t make it … the 1998 Gävle Goat. Photo by Adent.

You can watch the Goat on its dedicated webcam, at least until it is burned down or if it survives, is dismantled some time after Christmas. And this being the age of social media, of course the Goat has a blog and a Twitter account …

Update 29 December 2014: The Goat is being dismantled as I type: apparently it is off to China, where the Year of the Goat starts on 19 February. Sad to see it go, but at least it survived this year! Hurrah!

Song thrushes

Nov19

The song thrush (Turdus philomelos) is one of my favourite songbirds. The song of the male is so beautiful. Song thrushes live in the UK year-round, and one of the special seasonal markers for us is that first day in early spring when the male starts singing from the top of one of the tall trees near our cottage. He is always the first to start the dawn chorus each morning—the blackbirds follow, but for a time his is the only voice in the pre-dawn gloom. It’s a lovely way to wake up.

Song thrush. Photo by Tony Wills.

The males stop singing later in the summer—maybe it’s to do with having established their territory and bred successfully. I miss their song when it stops, and so it’s always such a delight when, in the cold grey days of November, for some reason they start up again. A male has been singing his heart out around us for the last fortnight or so. His favourite perch is an ash tree in next door’s garden. It’s wonderful to hear. His song isn’t as full as in the spring, but it is still a thing of beauty.

I love the way thrushes repeat phrases as they sing. The ones around us seem to prefer three repetitions per phrase: I wonder if this is a regional thing? Elsewhere I have read of twice-repetitions being the norm.

(Even though we have two native thrush species, the song thrush and the mistle thrush (Turdus viscivorus) here in the UK, the song thrush is just the ‘thrush’ to me and many others, as mistle thrushes are so rarely seen. I have seen one once in the 22 years I have been living in our village.)

When Chap and I were on holiday in New Zealand we were fascinated to learn that many British birds had been introduced to the country in the Victorian period—the settlers were homesick, I guess. Even though thrushes are now struggling in the UK and are a Red List endangered species here, they are thriving in New Zealand. We were delighted at several camp sites to find the thrushes so tame that they would hop around our feet and feed on the chopped dried fruit (apricots and mangoes) we put down for them. We were also saddened to hear at one vineyard that the thrushes are such a threat to the grape harvest that the vineyard owner shot them as pests.

Mmmm, comfy: Part 3

Oct30

This was taken about ten years ago, when Hecate (aka The Humbug, Wabsy, The Piglet, Heckington Schmeckworth, The Wabulizer, Heckers, Tubsy, and any number of other nicknames) was fairly young and keen on finding herself comfy, already-warmed nesting spots …

She only did this a couple of times, but luckily I was on hand to record it. I don’t know whose dignity comes off worse—Hecate’s, or Chap’s. I mean, look at those slippers …

Hecate in her pant hammock. Mmmm, comfy.

Butterfly enamel jewellery: fluttery butterfly loveliness

Oct21

I am still in my insect jewellery phase, and one of the types of which I have a few in my Etsy shop is enamel butterfly jewellery.

Art Deco enamel and silver butterfly ring. For sale in my Etsy shop (click photo for details).

Art Deco enamel and sterling silver butterfly ring. 1930s, British. For sale in my Etsy shop (click photo for details). (NOW SOLD).

Art Deco enamel and sterling silver butterfly bar brooch. 1930s, British. For sale in my Etsy shop (click photo for details).

Art Deco enamel and brass butterfly brooch. 1930s, British. For sale in my Etsy shop (click photo for details). (NOW SOLD).

Hroar Prydz enamel and sterling silver, 1950s, Norway.

Hroar Prydz enamel, sterling silver and vermeil brooch. 1950s, Norway. For sale in my Etsy shop (click photo for details). (NOW SOLD).

In addition I have had two pairs of butterfly earrings in my shop, both of which have sold:

Hroar Prydz enamel and silver with vermeil butterfly earrings. (NOW SOLD).

Hroar Prydz enamel, sterling silver with vermeil butterfly earrings. 1950s, Norway. (NOW SOLD).

Volme Bahner enamel and silver butterfly earrings, Denmark. (NOW SOLD).

Volmer Bahner enamel and sterling silver butterfly earrings. 1960s, Denmark. (NOW SOLD).

Volmer Bahner enamel clip on earrings. Click on photo for details.

Volmer Bahner enamel and sterling silver butterfly clip on earrings. 1960s, Denmark. (NOW SOLD).

I have been trying to find out more of the history of this type of jewellery. From what I can make out, the trend for enamel and silver brooches and pendants of this type started in England in the early part of the 20th century, with jewellers such as Charles Horner, John Atkins and Sons, and EAP & Co making lovely examples in silver and enamel. Charles Horner is well known for his Art Nouveau enamelled pieces, and also his thistle and ribbon silver knotted brooches and hatpins, but he also produced beautiful butterfly brooches:

Charles Horner enamel and sterling silver butterfly brooch, hallmarked Chester, 1918. For sale at Tadema Gallery.

while John Atkins and Sons is perhaps the most famous maker of butterfly jewellery from this date:

John Atkins and Sons enamel and sterling silver butterfly brooch, hallmarked Birmingham 1916. For sale at The Antiques Centre, York.

Other companies continued the trend, through the 1920s and 1930s (when some of the butterflies are placed on distinctively Art Deco three bar mounts).

Art Deco butterfly brooch. For sale on eBay.

Art Deco butterfly brooch. For sale on eBay.

In the 1950s the very talented Scandinavian enamel jewellers picked up on the trend, the Norwegians in particular, and makers such as David-Andersen, Marius Hammer, Kristian M Hestenes, O F Hjortdahl, Aksel Holmsen, Ivar T Holth, Finn Jensen, Bernard Meldahl, Einar Modahl, Hans Myrhe, Arne Nordlie, OPRO, Hroar Prydz, and J Tostrup all produced enamelled butterfly jewellery. I featured some of the David-Andersen butterfly pieces in my earlier blog post on Norwegian enamel jewellery.

These pieces are highly collectable, and understandably so—the beautiful colours and designs, and the skill of the makers make these lovely pieces to own, with their jewel-like bright colours. A sign of how collectable they are is provided by the number of digital collections on Pinterest. Search for ‘John Atkins butterfly’ on Pinterest and you get this fabulous array of jewellery: totally droolworthy and I could lose hours looking at them all.

Favourite websites: OCEARCH.org Global Shark Tracker

Oct20

Ever wondered where great white sharks get to when they’re not peering in at cage divers or dining on hapless seals? Well, the answer is on the OCEARCH website: for several years now, great whites and other apex predator sharks have been tagged and their locations recorded every time they surface and send a ‘ping’ to the satellite tracking system.

Great white shark (Carcharodon carcharias). Photo by Terry Goss.

It’s a fascinating glimpse into the lives of these magnificent creatures: there are tagged populations off the East Coast of the United States, the West Coast of South America, and the South African coast. The researchers have named all the sharks, and my favourite is Lydia, a great white shark.

Lydian being tagged on 2 March 2013, off the coast at Jacksonville, Florida, United States.

Lydia being tagged on 2 March 2013, off the coast at Jacksonville, Florida, United States. At the time of tagging she was 4.40 m (14 ft 6 in) long and weighed approximately 900 kg (approx. 2,000 lbs).

Lydia is a very well-travelled shark: earlier this year she headed east from the eastern seaboard of the US to the middle of the Atlantic. To the very middle, in fact: for several weeks in March and April she swam down the line of the Mid Atlantic Ridge.

Lydia’s track on OCEARCH.org.

It’s fascinating to see where the sharks go, and how far and how quickly they travel.

OCEARCH is a wonderful organisation, undertaking research vital for the conservation of these beautiful creatures. Here’s a little about them, from their website:

‘OCEARCH enables the brightest scientists in the world by giving them approximately 15 minutes of access to live, mature great white sharks (and other species) to conduct up to 12 studies including tagging and sampling. OCEARCH captures mature sharks that can range between 2,000 and 5,000 pounds on average, maneuvers them onto a 75,000 lb. custom lift, then releases the shark after researchers have completed their 15 minutes of work. The shark is guided by hand in the water on and off the lift. OCEARCH is a leader in collaborative open source research, sharing scientific data and dynamic education content in near-real time for free to the public through the Global Shark Tracker, enabling students and the public to learn alongside PhDs.’

Hurrah for OCEARCH, and hurrah for open source research: it’s not just the scientists who benefit.

Malmesbury Abbey, and the sad tale of Hannah Twynnoy

Oct15

A couple of Sundays ago Chap and I headed north, and visited Malmesbury Abbey and Cherhill in north Wiltshire. I wrote about Cherhill in a previous post, and now it’s Malmesbury Abbey’s turn, and also the sad tale of one of the inhabitants of the Abbey’s graveyard.

South front of the nave of Malmesbury Abbey. Photo by Adrian Pingstone.

‘Malmesbury Abbey from the North-West’ by Joseph Mallord William Turner, 1791. Watercolour on paper. One of a series of sketches Turner painted of the Abbey. Tate Britain.

But first, a little about the Abbey itself. It is a wonderful building: its slightly unprepossessing exterior when viewed from the south doesn’t really prepare you for the interior, I feel. As you approach the south door you get the first hint that something exceptional is here: the Norman arch over the entrance porch is simply stunning. Its 850-year-old carvings tell the stories of the creation, the journey of the patriarch and kings, and the life of Jesus.

The Norman porch at Malmesbury Abbey.

Inside the porch: six of the Apostles

Inside the porch: the other six.

Inside the porch, over the inner door: Christ and attending angels.

The present Abbey is the third house of worship to stand on the site, and this incarnation was substantially completed by 1180. Its construction continued piecemeal over the next two hundred years, and it had a spire taller than that of Salisbury Cathedral (which is a whopping 123 metres (404 feet) high, the tallest in the UK) at the east end, and an impressive tower at the west end. The spire and the tower on which it was built fell around 1500, and the tower fell abut 50 years after that: both collapses demolished large parts of the building. All that is left intact today is the nave of this once-enormous abbey. It is still used for worship, and is a much-loved building surrounded by the ruins of its former glory.

West window of the nave and enormous Norman columns.

Looking up at the south wall of the nave.

The ceiling of the nave with ornate bosses.

The Watching Loft above the south side of the nave.

The 14th century tomb of King Aethelstan (c.893/895-939 AD), who is buried in an unknown spot somewhere in the Abbey grounds.

The 17th century font.

One of the many monuments on the walls to the great and the good of the area. This one commemorates Mrs Elizabeth George of nearby Steeple Ashton, who died in 1734.

Stained glass window designed by Edward Burne-Jones and made in the William Morris workshops in 1901.

A beautiful Jacobean carved oak chair near the altar.

And wow—look at these flowers. They greet visitors and worshippers alike as they come in through the porch, and whoever was on the flower rota when these were done gets a gold star from me! Such a simple and beautiful arrangement of blue delphiniums, white asters and a white umbellifer—possibly Ammi major (also known as Bishop’s Lace, which is appropriate)—plus foliage.

Flowers in the entrance to the Abbey.

Hannah Twynnoy bears the sad distinction of being possibly the first recorded death by tiger attack in the United Kingdom. Little is known of her apart from her gravestone, and a memorial plaque which provided some details of her life and sad demise, but which has since been lost. Apparently Hannah was a young barmaid at the White Lion Inn in Malmesbury, and one day somehow got close enough to a tiger displayed by a visiting menagerie for it to be able to maul her, with fatal results. She died on 23 October 1703, aged 33 years. She was buried in the Abbey grounds, and her headstone reads:

In bloom of Life
She’s snatchd from hence,
She had not room
To make defence;
For Tyger fierce
Took Life away.
And here she lies
In a bed of Clay,
Until the Resurrection Day.

Hannah Twynnoy’s headstone in Malmesbury Abbey graveyard.

The west front of Malmesbury Abbey.

The Old Bell viewed from the Abbey graveyard (nice table tomb in the foreground). The Old Bell claims to be England’s oldest hotel, dating back to 1220.

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Just outside the Abbey grounds is Malmesbury Market Cross, dating from c. 1490.

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