'And some to view the winter weathers,
Climb up the window seat with glee,
Likening the snow to falling feathers,
In fancy's infant ecstasy,
Laughing with superstitious love,
O'er visions wild that youth supplyes,
Of people pulling geese above,
And keeping Christmas in the skies.'
John Clare, from The Shepherd's Calendar
The snow arrived this weekend. Someone up there must have read my blog about the unseasonal greenery and decided to put things right. Don't know where they got the geese from this early in December.
Anyway, it gave me an excuse to put in my favourite snow description. I discovered it when a friend wrote it on a Christmas card he sent a few years ago. Now whenever it snows I imagine those Georgian farmers' wives hunched over a roaring fire, frantically plucking their fat farmhouse geese somewhere in the clouds. Which is strange really, as I always feel that snow brings not that sense of bucolic contentment, but a sense of unpredicatable wildness.
In fact after nearly three months of ice and feet-deep snow last winter I vowed I never wanted to see the stuff again. But a walk in the ankle-deep, powder-light snow in the woods above Dunblane this morning has cured me. After more early morning flurries the sky cleared, the air was gin-clear, and the sun etched the trees as black silhouettes against the blue-washed sky. In the town the rooks seemed especially vocal, perched in the crowns of the snow-spattered trees yelling complaints at the passers-by. Perhaps they remembered the privations of last year's freeze better than I.
But my friend and I headed out up the road to the hills. In 1715 these moors were carpetted with the dead of the Battle of Sheriffmuir, now much of the hillside is shrouded with conifers. Here the snow was deeper, the sunlight sharper, and the views of the mountains to the north and south spectacular. I am hooked again.
The tracks through the trees were wide and sun-filled. We'd come to walk Jake, my friend's handsome, rangy, black-and-white collie. As he wove in and out of the dark trees he looked almost wolf-like, and I imagined how it would feel if there were really wolves lurking in the forest. So much of our landscape has been tamed since the last wolf was killed in Scotland in 1680, and their reintroduction would be hugely controversial. But I can't help thinking that bringing back our top predator, restoring our sense that something in the wild is bigger and stronger than us (even if the chance of an actual wolf attack is minuscule), would help us all get back in contact with the natural world and our place in it. Let's hope we'll find out one day soon.
Monday, 5 December 2011
Thursday, 1 December 2011
Does the World needs natural buddies?
The first day of December. Yet instead of the usual sepia-dominated winter palette, everything here is still very much in glorious Technicolor.
The warm, wet autumn, and the lack of frosts, have allowed many plants to keep living and growing well beyond their usual span. In the woodland by the river to the south of the village the young, fresh leaves of violet, water avens and ferns are bright green. They bask in the low, buttery sunlight now that the birch and hawthorns above them have lost their leaves. A small, still-copper-leaved beech tree is growing on the steep cliffs of the opposite bank like an outstretched hand. It catches a stray beam of sun and flames out against the dark grey rocks as I walk by. In the River Field there are still some meadow buttercups in flower. Some of their petals are pale and translucent where the morning's light frost has caught them, but most still have that solid, waxy, bright yellow shine of children's crayons. As usual I feel very lucky to be able to step out of my house to see all this.
It wasn't so glorious earlier this morning, when a series of cold, squally showers strafed the village on their way east. I sat inside reading an interview with David Attenborough in The Times. It was sobering stuff, and reminded me that not many are as lucky as I am.
'We have lost all touch with nature, says Attenborough', said the headline. This wasn't quite accurate. What Attenborough said was that now, according to UN figures, over 50% of us live in urban environments. That means that over 50% of the Earth's population 'is to some extent out of touch with the natural world'. He went on to comment that unless action is taken to help bring people back into some kind of contact with nature (in his case through making natural history programmes) we have little chance of convincing people - or politicians - to take action to protect it.
I was thinking about this on my walk. If 50% live in urban environments, that still leaves 50% in the countryside. What if everyone in the city had a virtual, rural (or at least nature-savvy) 'buddy' to communicate with, to tell them what was going on in the natural world? With all the social media at our disposal surely it's not beyond the bounds of possibility - a tweet, a Facebook page, a LinkedIn network? If every one of the million RSPB members, for example, agreed to put something on Twitter once a week - how many people would that connect with wildlife? Do you think it would work? Would you give it a try?
The warm, wet autumn, and the lack of frosts, have allowed many plants to keep living and growing well beyond their usual span. In the woodland by the river to the south of the village the young, fresh leaves of violet, water avens and ferns are bright green. They bask in the low, buttery sunlight now that the birch and hawthorns above them have lost their leaves. A small, still-copper-leaved beech tree is growing on the steep cliffs of the opposite bank like an outstretched hand. It catches a stray beam of sun and flames out against the dark grey rocks as I walk by. In the River Field there are still some meadow buttercups in flower. Some of their petals are pale and translucent where the morning's light frost has caught them, but most still have that solid, waxy, bright yellow shine of children's crayons. As usual I feel very lucky to be able to step out of my house to see all this.
It wasn't so glorious earlier this morning, when a series of cold, squally showers strafed the village on their way east. I sat inside reading an interview with David Attenborough in The Times. It was sobering stuff, and reminded me that not many are as lucky as I am.
'We have lost all touch with nature, says Attenborough', said the headline. This wasn't quite accurate. What Attenborough said was that now, according to UN figures, over 50% of us live in urban environments. That means that over 50% of the Earth's population 'is to some extent out of touch with the natural world'. He went on to comment that unless action is taken to help bring people back into some kind of contact with nature (in his case through making natural history programmes) we have little chance of convincing people - or politicians - to take action to protect it.
I was thinking about this on my walk. If 50% live in urban environments, that still leaves 50% in the countryside. What if everyone in the city had a virtual, rural (or at least nature-savvy) 'buddy' to communicate with, to tell them what was going on in the natural world? With all the social media at our disposal surely it's not beyond the bounds of possibility - a tweet, a Facebook page, a LinkedIn network? If every one of the million RSPB members, for example, agreed to put something on Twitter once a week - how many people would that connect with wildlife? Do you think it would work? Would you give it a try?
Tuesday, 29 November 2011
Be careful what you wish for...
It's poured down here ever since I wrote yesterday's blog, welcoming the rain. I went out first thing this morning to see how the Allan Water was looking. I found it had morphed from Mr Hyde to Gargantua, consuming the fields on either side of its banks to become a vast, writhing body of water at least a quarter of a mile wide.
In the submerged field opposite there were a group of black-faced sheep marooned on two small hummocks of higher ground, but still up to their bellies in mud-thick water. They were so densely huddled together that at a distance I had thought they were a couple of large straw bales that had been washed down the river. It took the binoculars to pick out their bedraggled bodies and anxious fidgetting. The river must have risen pretty swiftly to trap them like that.
When I got back to the house I phoned a friend who knows the farmer, and caught him just as he was driving off to let him know. So later this morning I went back to see if the sheep had been rescued. It was still raining. A small digger and quad bike were down by the edge of the water. Most of the sheep were safely back on higher ground, still clinging together as if traumatised by their ordeal.
But I arrived just in time to see a small drama unfold. Black-faced sheep are, apparently, very flighty, and one sheep had obviously taken fright when the farmer and his helpers had tried to coax it off the rapidly disappearing island. It was heading towards me, struggling along the submerged fenceline on the opposite bank. It seemed to be pushed along by the flow, getting deeper into the water as it went, until it was actually swimming, its heavy fleece dragging it down. Someone - I guessed the farmer - was following it at the lapping edge of the water, trying to turn it back, until eventually he was forced to wade across to it, thigh deep in the roiling water. The pair disappeared behind trees for a few heartstopping moments, before the farmer reappeared gripping the sheep by the horn with one hand, while picking his way along the fence line with a stout stick in the other. It looked a dangerous place to be. I was glad when he managed to lift the sheep over the fence before climbing over himself and wading back to the 'shore'. I heard later that one of the sheep had been drowned, and I felt guilty for wishing for the rain.
Of course flooding is a natural part of the seasonal cycle. It's vital for wetland birds and plants. It has been used for centuries by farmers for water meadows. What's not natural is the speed with which water courses like the Allan Water now change from gentle lowland river to destructive tide. The Scottish Environmental Protection Agency (SEPA) can explain why better than I:
In the submerged field opposite there were a group of black-faced sheep marooned on two small hummocks of higher ground, but still up to their bellies in mud-thick water. They were so densely huddled together that at a distance I had thought they were a couple of large straw bales that had been washed down the river. It took the binoculars to pick out their bedraggled bodies and anxious fidgetting. The river must have risen pretty swiftly to trap them like that.
When I got back to the house I phoned a friend who knows the farmer, and caught him just as he was driving off to let him know. So later this morning I went back to see if the sheep had been rescued. It was still raining. A small digger and quad bike were down by the edge of the water. Most of the sheep were safely back on higher ground, still clinging together as if traumatised by their ordeal.
But I arrived just in time to see a small drama unfold. Black-faced sheep are, apparently, very flighty, and one sheep had obviously taken fright when the farmer and his helpers had tried to coax it off the rapidly disappearing island. It was heading towards me, struggling along the submerged fenceline on the opposite bank. It seemed to be pushed along by the flow, getting deeper into the water as it went, until it was actually swimming, its heavy fleece dragging it down. Someone - I guessed the farmer - was following it at the lapping edge of the water, trying to turn it back, until eventually he was forced to wade across to it, thigh deep in the roiling water. The pair disappeared behind trees for a few heartstopping moments, before the farmer reappeared gripping the sheep by the horn with one hand, while picking his way along the fence line with a stout stick in the other. It looked a dangerous place to be. I was glad when he managed to lift the sheep over the fence before climbing over himself and wading back to the 'shore'. I heard later that one of the sheep had been drowned, and I felt guilty for wishing for the rain.
Of course flooding is a natural part of the seasonal cycle. It's vital for wetland birds and plants. It has been used for centuries by farmers for water meadows. What's not natural is the speed with which water courses like the Allan Water now change from gentle lowland river to destructive tide. The Scottish Environmental Protection Agency (SEPA) can explain why better than I:
'Alterations to the course and morphology of the River Allan and its tributaries have changed its character. These have changed the natural dynamics of the watercourse, in many cases affecting the ecological processes important for sustaining biodiversity. In places, alterations to the catchment and watercourses have increased the rate at which rainfall reaches the river by increasing the speed of overland flow. This is a common aim of land drainage practices. However this results in higher river levels. Additionally straightening and dredging of channels associated with improvements to agricultural production on floodplains and the construction and upgrade of transport links. Combined, these changes result in fast accumulation of water in low gradient areas or where flow is constricted including both rural and urban areas such as Greenloaning, Dunblane and Bridge of Allan.'
Basically, we've been mucking around with the land surrounding the river for agricultural and commercial gain, and the river has bitten back, affecting farmers further down the line, and making flooding much more likely in properties in towns and villages built before the 'improvements' were made.
SEPA has been working with the Centre for River EcoSysyems Science (CRESS) at Stirling University on a scoping exercise to establish the best way to rectify the chaos this has caused. Unsurprisingly solutions include putting back the trees, damming up the drains, restoring the channel meanders and allowing the river to flood again where it won't damage properties. It's great that they are looking at ways to redress the problem - let's hope they can translate the planning into action.
Monday, 28 November 2011
Dancing in the rain
Last Friday was the first anniversary of the day the Big Snow came to Ashfield. The start of over two months of sub-zero temperatures, record-deep snowfalls, blocked roads, buried pavements, school closures, life chaos. It was the winter that put me off snow.
This year's anniversary passed without incident. It's been one of the warmest autumns on record, despite dire warnings of an even earlier start to the freeze. Now I feel every snow-free day is a bonus - I never thought I would welcome the gales and the rain with open arms. It's been wet, and windy, as well as warm, and I skid and slide gratefully through inches of mud, slick and slippery as butter. The ground is saturated, and every fresh downpour flushes straight into the Allan Water, which bellows and rips through the River Field like a riparian Mr Hyde.
I took a walk along the bank today hoping for a glimpse of the goldeneye I spotted the other day in the river, but it was far too turbulent for anything but a torrent duck to survive. In the field opposite I caught sight of a flock of starlings in an oak tree, perched at odd angles, like children's drawings of leaves, on its bare branches. There were several hundred of them, and as I passed they lifted and danced a miniature murmuration above me, ignoring the rain and the wind. The amoebic shapes they made reminded me of the pin and thread pictures that were all the rage in the 1970s - twisting and flexing, condensing and stretching. A natural wonder - something else to make me smile.
It's hard to believe that these ubiquitous birds are on the UK's Red List of threatened species. Scotland now holds 22% of the UK's breeding population, despite starlings almost disappearing from mainland Scotland at the turn of the nineteenth century. Now its the South's turn to lose them. The British population crashed by 71% between 1970 and 1999, most of them from south of the border. Changing farming practices have been blamed, just like in the case of the brown hare, and the arable weeds, and the farmland birds. Is it me, or is there a pattern there?
This year's anniversary passed without incident. It's been one of the warmest autumns on record, despite dire warnings of an even earlier start to the freeze. Now I feel every snow-free day is a bonus - I never thought I would welcome the gales and the rain with open arms. It's been wet, and windy, as well as warm, and I skid and slide gratefully through inches of mud, slick and slippery as butter. The ground is saturated, and every fresh downpour flushes straight into the Allan Water, which bellows and rips through the River Field like a riparian Mr Hyde.
I took a walk along the bank today hoping for a glimpse of the goldeneye I spotted the other day in the river, but it was far too turbulent for anything but a torrent duck to survive. In the field opposite I caught sight of a flock of starlings in an oak tree, perched at odd angles, like children's drawings of leaves, on its bare branches. There were several hundred of them, and as I passed they lifted and danced a miniature murmuration above me, ignoring the rain and the wind. The amoebic shapes they made reminded me of the pin and thread pictures that were all the rage in the 1970s - twisting and flexing, condensing and stretching. A natural wonder - something else to make me smile.
It's hard to believe that these ubiquitous birds are on the UK's Red List of threatened species. Scotland now holds 22% of the UK's breeding population, despite starlings almost disappearing from mainland Scotland at the turn of the nineteenth century. Now its the South's turn to lose them. The British population crashed by 71% between 1970 and 1999, most of them from south of the border. Changing farming practices have been blamed, just like in the case of the brown hare, and the arable weeds, and the farmland birds. Is it me, or is there a pattern there?
Thursday, 24 November 2011
A glimpse of wildness
I put a hare up in the Big Field this morning. As usual it took me a few seconds to focus in and decide it was a hare, not a rabbit. Big rabbit? Black tail tip? Keeps going? Must be a hare. Of course by this time it had nearly disappeared over the hill. I tried to jog after it, wellies slipping clumsily on the wet grass, but inevitably it had gone by the time I reached the brow. It was still a thrill - hares are pretty thin on the ground around here.
I like hares. They have a sense of wildness and danger about them. Just like their lagomorphic cousins the rabbits they were first recorded in this country when the Romans arrived - another tasty addition to the menu perhaps? But unlike the rabbits they have never submitted to the indignities of being 'farmed' - their solitary habits and spartan taste in housing have seen to that. While the rabbits settled down to their cosy-but-tame warren lives, the outlaw hares have toughed it out in their forms - simple hollows in the long grass where they can hole up during the day before making night-time raids on our fields and pastures.
Centuries of hunting - outlaws are always hunted - hit their numbers, but what's really proved their downfall has been the loss of their hiding places. Intensive farming over the last 40-odd years has seriously reduced the number of places hares can hole up. Numbers have plummeted by 80% compared to a century ago.
Luckily, I discovered, over a decade ago the brown hare was put on on the list of species which have a government-backed Biodiversity Action Plan, to help restore its population, with a target of doubling its numbers by 2010. Checking out the Biodiversity Action Plan website (which has now been archived) it's heartening to read that the Countryside Council for Wales (CCW), Natural England (NE), Scottish Natural Heritage (SNH) and the Joint Nature Conservancy Council (JNCC) were all tasked to communicate the declines in brown hare populations and:
'Use the popularity of brown hares to highlight the impact on biodiversity of modern agricultural practices and loss of mixed farms.'
Though strangely I couldn't find any up-to-date communications from them on the subject, or for that matter, information on the success of meeting the 2010 target. This may be because I'm not that great at searching for this kind of thing. If anyone out there has better information I'd be pleased to hear it. We all need a bit of wildness in our lives.
Tuesday, 22 November 2011
A tale of two gateways...
Just a couple of miles up the road from the Loch Lomond and the Trossachs National Park Gateway Centre that I described in the last blog (build budget £3m, I believe) is the gateway to the mainland section of Loch Lomond National Nature Reserve (NNR). In case you're not familiar with the term NNR, let me quote Scottish Natural Heritage, which designates and manages them: 'the key purpose of National Nature Reserves is to showcase some of the best wildlife in Scotland for everyone to see and appreciate. This purpose is unique and distinguishes National Nature Reserves from other protected areas.'
I saw no signage to Loch Lomond NNR from the road here. Nor could I see any in the local village hall car park that serves the NNR. There is a small wooden fingerpost at the gate to a muddy field next to the village hall that says 'Aber Path' - which, if you are initiated, is the route you need to take to get to the Reserve. And to be fair there is a small leaflet dispenser with brochures describing the route by the gate.
We walked down the sloping pasture, past a few inquisitive bullocks, sometimes sinking ankle deep in cattle-poached mud. Someone - the farmer or perhaps a Park ranger - had thoughtfully laid some railway sleepers over a particularly glutinous patch, though one now lurched at an angle, requiring some tricky footwork to cross dryshod. We were fine as we came prepared with wellies and waterproofs - it's not a route for trainers. There's very little waymarking - without the leaflet and some local knowledge we'd easily have lost the way. But we eventually came to the Reserve entrance - where there was, at last, an NNR monolith and a small interpretation board.
It's a glorious place. The narrow path winds its way through the woodland fringes of the loch. Oak at first, grading to alder, birch, holly and ash as you move east. The light followed suit, paling from a warm, golden glow under the autumn-yellowed oaks to a cool green haze below the hollies and birches. A jay shot out of the trees ahead of us, a vulgar cackle belying the tasteful pastels of its blue and pink plumage. Not a bird you see that often in Scotland, thanks to the shortage of oak woodland - acorns are its food of choice - but common enough around Loch Lomond. We saw three during the morning.
We could also see a lone great crested grebe floating some way off in the loch - another Scottish scarcity - especially in inland waters. At the last count just 1500 overwintered in Scotland, with most keeping to the estuaries of the Forth and Clyde. I took them for granted when I lived down south. Now I see them for the exotic, elegant birds they really are, with their long, sinuous necks and subtle, mocha headdresses.
As the path emerges from the woods the full drama of the view unfolds as you look north along the length of Loch Lomond over its wooded islands to the mountains of the Highland Boundary Fault. To the east there are the broad, ochre wetlands at the mouth of the Endrick Water, home to rare species like Greenland white-fronted geese, brook lampreys and Scottish dock (none of which we saw, sadly). The route on the map ends at the Endrick Viewpoint, but we continued on a rougher path along a bund at the edge of the wetland.
It was hard to square this watery, tawny, wide-open sky landscape with the woodlands and mountains with which Loch Lomond is synonymous. Much of the path was a few inches underwater, increasing the feeling that we were in, rather than on, the Reserve. Waist-high (what I took to be) reeds (but was told were actually grasses) on either side hissed and whistled in the slight breeze, reminding me of walks through East Anglian reedbeds. No marsh harriers here, but we found snipe and woodcock, reed bunting and mallard, long-tailed tits and wrens.
At the end of the bund we had to pick our way, pathless, though wet woodland, over barbed wire fences and through more muddy fields before we found our way back to the village. We saw no-one else during our walk around this beautiful NNR, which indeed boasts some of the best wildlife in Scotland.
I wonder what the budget for this gateway is?
I saw no signage to Loch Lomond NNR from the road here. Nor could I see any in the local village hall car park that serves the NNR. There is a small wooden fingerpost at the gate to a muddy field next to the village hall that says 'Aber Path' - which, if you are initiated, is the route you need to take to get to the Reserve. And to be fair there is a small leaflet dispenser with brochures describing the route by the gate.
We walked down the sloping pasture, past a few inquisitive bullocks, sometimes sinking ankle deep in cattle-poached mud. Someone - the farmer or perhaps a Park ranger - had thoughtfully laid some railway sleepers over a particularly glutinous patch, though one now lurched at an angle, requiring some tricky footwork to cross dryshod. We were fine as we came prepared with wellies and waterproofs - it's not a route for trainers. There's very little waymarking - without the leaflet and some local knowledge we'd easily have lost the way. But we eventually came to the Reserve entrance - where there was, at last, an NNR monolith and a small interpretation board.
It's a glorious place. The narrow path winds its way through the woodland fringes of the loch. Oak at first, grading to alder, birch, holly and ash as you move east. The light followed suit, paling from a warm, golden glow under the autumn-yellowed oaks to a cool green haze below the hollies and birches. A jay shot out of the trees ahead of us, a vulgar cackle belying the tasteful pastels of its blue and pink plumage. Not a bird you see that often in Scotland, thanks to the shortage of oak woodland - acorns are its food of choice - but common enough around Loch Lomond. We saw three during the morning.
We could also see a lone great crested grebe floating some way off in the loch - another Scottish scarcity - especially in inland waters. At the last count just 1500 overwintered in Scotland, with most keeping to the estuaries of the Forth and Clyde. I took them for granted when I lived down south. Now I see them for the exotic, elegant birds they really are, with their long, sinuous necks and subtle, mocha headdresses.
As the path emerges from the woods the full drama of the view unfolds as you look north along the length of Loch Lomond over its wooded islands to the mountains of the Highland Boundary Fault. To the east there are the broad, ochre wetlands at the mouth of the Endrick Water, home to rare species like Greenland white-fronted geese, brook lampreys and Scottish dock (none of which we saw, sadly). The route on the map ends at the Endrick Viewpoint, but we continued on a rougher path along a bund at the edge of the wetland.
It was hard to square this watery, tawny, wide-open sky landscape with the woodlands and mountains with which Loch Lomond is synonymous. Much of the path was a few inches underwater, increasing the feeling that we were in, rather than on, the Reserve. Waist-high (what I took to be) reeds (but was told were actually grasses) on either side hissed and whistled in the slight breeze, reminding me of walks through East Anglian reedbeds. No marsh harriers here, but we found snipe and woodcock, reed bunting and mallard, long-tailed tits and wrens.
At the end of the bund we had to pick our way, pathless, though wet woodland, over barbed wire fences and through more muddy fields before we found our way back to the village. We saw no-one else during our walk around this beautiful NNR, which indeed boasts some of the best wildlife in Scotland.
I wonder what the budget for this gateway is?
Monday, 21 November 2011
Scotland's shame?
What would the words ‘Loch Lomond and the Trossachs National Park Gateway Centre’ conjure up for you? A place to find out about the stunning wildlife and habitats of the park? A starting point for daily guided walks and activities? A scene-framing, mood-setting haven?
How about, as I now find the website boasts: ‘Cafe on the loch, a childrens’ play area, and a superb gift shop.’ The strapline for the site, which also includes the adjacent, vast shopping centre which is Loch Lomond Shores, and a Sea Life Centre, is actually: ‘Shop, Eat, Play (with picture of an exotic fish attached).
My other half and I headed to Balloch, at the south end of Loch Lomond, early last Friday to get an outboard motor fixed. As we found the marina was closed until 10am I suggested checking out the Centre, which I’d never visited. Misgivings began as we turned off the main road into the car park – a vast labyrinth of tarmac, dividing into bays with neatly trimmed, suburban hedging and street lights. I didn’t feel as if I was being led to the entrance to one of the most spectacular and wildlife-rich national parks in the country. I felt like I was arriving at an out-of-town shopping mall – which I was.
Compare that with the vision of the architects who designed it:
‘… the Centre acts as a symbolic gateway to the woodlands along the shore beyond the development and, hence, to the National Park itself. In contrast to many other visitor centres, the transparency of its construction suggests that the main exhibit is the world outside’. So said Bennetts Associates. They must be turning in their zero-carbon office spaces.
To be fair, the Gateway Centre was actually also closed, so I couldn't go inside. It was ironic indeed that it was those transparent walls that allowed me to see the large multi-coloured ball pit of the children’s play area rammed up to the glass, the café, and the extensive gift shop packed with geegaws and trinkets – which were all obscuring any view I might have had of the woodlands, the loch, and the world outside.
There is an unfinished temple on the top of Calton Hill in Edinburgh, built to honour the dead of the Napoleonic Wars, which is known as ‘Scotland’s Shame’ because they couldn’t raise enough money to finish it. I think it now has a competitor for the name.
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