Spoonhill

I start under chestnuts’ spreading candelabras, through long, lush grass dotted with ladies smock. A cuckoo competes with a skylark. The horizon gleams rape-yellow. At my feet the crop is only just through, but the hedge growth provides abundant cover for blackbirds, finches, robins. The air is thick with St Mark’s flies, their legs drooping lazily. Two ducks and several pigeons break cover, startling me as much as I’ve startled them. Leaving the farmland, I head down towards Devil's Dingle. Celandines, buttercups and dandelions gild the knee high grass. But the real delights are the darkly rich English bluebells in the wood edge. On the skyline, pale poplars contrast with deep coloured pines. And everywhere there’s birdsong. back along the lane, I marvel at the true joy of this walk, the hedgerow, thick with vibrant growth: field maple, elder, holly, sloe, honeysuckle, hawthorn. Frothing below is a mass of flowers: greater and lesser stitchwort, vetch, yellow archangel, red campion, cow parsley. And birds: yellowhammers and goldfinches dart, exotically bright amongst the greens. And peace.

Homer walk

The open woodland holds a joyous orchestra of noise: brooks babble under bridges, frogs croak under the sedge, birds provide a continuous descant. Climbing some steep steps, I’m surrounded by violets and primroses: soft pools of colour amongst last year’s leaves. The gaps in the canopy are steadily being filled in green, yet on the ground there’s only the emerald of euphorbia. Anemones’ eyes watch me from a coppice, or perhaps they’re just admiring the huge cherries blossoming behind. Out of the woods, the land is far from open in the early morning mist, which clings to the trees of Farley and Sheinton. Caging me further are steep hedgerows, which show the first stitchwort, and muffle the call of crows foraging for worms in nearby fields. After 1km I'm into denser woodland. The ground is thick with storm debris and wild clematis tangles the trunks. Bees search amongst the garlic and dog’s mercury for potential nests. I follow one to the base of a huge ash: its muscular buttress roots have quarried away the Wenlock limestone, yet have themselves fallen prey to parasitic toothwort. The hedgerow is filled with pheasants and above me broad winged buzzards block out light from between trees.

Hope Bowdler

Water flows downhill so I decide to head up, onto Hope Bowdler, to try and escape the quagmire which has gripped Shropshire since Christmas. As I ascend the land falls away into a steep gully, which shelters ash trees, which in turn shelter crows - only their calls audible amongst the trees’ dense gnarled boughs. Brown skeletons of last year’s bracken crackle underfoot, yet green gorse and broom suggest a season on the turn. Behind me spectral shadows of Hazler and Ragleth hills rise. The land opens up into a wide plateau, with tantalising glimpses of the Edge to the right and Caradoc to the left, between the three craggy peaks which surround me. The wind is deafening, and yet Caradoc stands strong, raising its three fingers rock to the gale. Turning back, the Edge now comes into view, like a breakwater against the flooded fields below. As I descend down a track to the bottom of a gully, cliffs appear on both sides and I scare a roosting flock of fieldfares from a cluster of holly trees. My feet pump the ground with every squelch and more water trickles into the torrent below. My ears are still ringing with the wind. But even on the most inhospitable of days, with few creatures braving the elements, the Shropshire Hills are worth the effort.

Signs of spring #1 - the coming of the coots

After a winter of wind, rain and very little frost, Spring creeps up on you. The snowdrops suffered from no snow: they're designed to poke their heads delicately through frosted grass, rather than droop wearily in sludge, weighed down and prematurely aged by the storms. For me, one of the regular signs of the season is the arrival of the coots on the pond. Late February, whatever the weather, a pair appear, ready to hold court through the breeding season. Last year was a miserable year for them. Two birds arrived but one mysteriously vanished soon after, leaving a mourning mate. For several weeks it called pitifully and plaintively before giving up and leaving. This year two more coots are now in residence, already busy with nest building. Yes, they're bullies: the ducks have already retreated and the moorhens, who enjoyed the run of the grass last year, will once again get slim pickings. But they're also characters, and they let me know that Spring is nearly here.

Wilderhope Manor

I walk past the back of Wilderhope Manor (at present scaffolded for roof work which can only be done when the bats and swifts are away), to where the land opens up into fields. The squelching mud is today iced over by frosts, cryogenically freezing the landscape into a Bronte-esque windswept moorland. There is a trickle of meltwater nearby and a bullfinch laps it up greedily. The ghostly call of a solitary crow is heard somewhere in the smoking mist. But this is an area of new discoveries despite its ancient atmosphere. Red kites were spotted last year and I find myself double checking the tail of every buzzard for a kite’s wide fan. A cold wind picks up, but the sleepy eye of the sun still just penetrates the shroud of mist. At first the wintry woodland appears dead but I notice tree creepers darting between the hibernating bows of ash and hazel. I walk through a gate and am greeted by a tremendous view. The wind has cleared the mist to reveal a different Wenlock Edge to the one I know. Not the two dimensional wall of limestone seen from Jenny Wind or Major’s Leap, but a rolling, three dimensional landscape of dales and valleys. The mysterious dark side of the Edge - hidden from the eyes of Longville and Church Preen by a dense deciduous cloak. The fields are green, despite the frozen puddles and bare hedges which surround them and in the orchard fieldfares and redwings are greedily scoffing apples. Another corner takes me back to the car park.

Swan Song

The winds have been wild, tearing branches, cracking trunks and driving the rain sideways against the window panes. It blew in something else, bizarrely, Mary Poppins-like. A swan. A swan on a smallish pond is a huge thing. We have a regular heron visitor, it's true, but he stands in the shallows at the edge, preferring to hide his size. The swan sat majestically in the centre, its mere presence enough to scatter the ducks. It wasn't fully grown, its Ugly Duckling plumage still visible, the greyish brown feathers adding to its general sense of despondency. You could tell it wasn't happy. It would periodically scramble inelegantly up the bank and wander round the grass as if looking for something, it's huge feet making squelchy indentations in the saturated ground. And then the wind changed.... and it left as suddenly as it had come.

Wenlock Winter

Winter on Wenlock Edge: a combination of frosty winds and the icy clarity of an idyllic winter's day. The night brought frost. Icy sheets forming across the umbellifers, creating parasols against the warmth of the sun's rays. As I walk the crackling of my footsteps on the iron ground disturbs fieldfares and redwings, roosting amongst the hazels and willows of a nearby hedge. A mixed flock of thrushes dive onto a hawthorn, strpping the berries. If it hadn't been for the mild autumn and early winter they would have been scoffed long before now. My breath steams before me as I round a corner and look on the land to the west, beyond the Edge. Here the air is still cold, but the view is different. The sky is sunny and clear and I can see past the Long Mynd and onwards to the Welsh Marches and beyond. The cold shadow of Wenlock Edge is slowly retreating from the landscape and possibly, as the days are lengthening, so too is the icy grip of winter.

Patten's Quarry

After a 400-and-something-step climb the ground opens into the vast bowl of Patten’s Quarry. Huge beeches form a stockade, their great buttress roots showing the most recent attempts to excavate the limestone. The winter sun struggles to reach the meadow, which in mid summer would be awash with bee orchids and bee beetles. It is now empty, except for a towering yew. There is a 20m tall sheer rock face at one end; the other end is open, gaping out down the gorge, where the Severn snakes away. The town of Ironbridge is a mere 300m below and although you can see it, it can’t see you. I descend through the woods down the old railway line and before I know it I’m back amongst the hustle and bustle of the Ironbridge tourists. Little do they know that above them lies a quarry, which produced the limestone for the iron of the world famous bridge, and nowadays produces some of the county’s best sightings.

Forever autumn

Is it the end of summer or the beginning of autumn? The steep hedgerows are a deep emerald and lack the early summer colours of dead nettles, yellow archangel and garlic mustard. A huge sycamore proudly brandishes its red stems, which stand out magnificently in the greenery. There’s a flicker of red in the sea of green and a pair of ruddy darter dragonflies emerge to wrestle in mid air. A stiff north wind picks up, driving the darters and the summer sun away. The thistles’ purple flowers have disappeared - bad news for bees but brilliant for birds, and I notice goldfinch and greenfinch gnawing at the cotton wool seed heads. I cross into another field where a hedge keeps the wind at bay and the season switches back to summer, golden stubble providing rich pickings for birds from crows to great tits. Walking along the verge of the next empty, ploughed field, autumn seems set to stay, and the bleak browns which will carry through to winter dominate. But there’s colour in the hedgerow: beautiful, bountiful colour - sloe and hawthorn laden with blue and red berries and rich, succulent blackberries hidden under fiery rosehips.

Hare today...gone tomorrow

From the savannah-like grassland, burnt and browned by the late summer sun, Europe’s cheetah emerges. First some black ears and yellow eyes then some white feet and a tail. The brown hare is the fastest mammal in Europe, reaching speeds of 45 mph, however due to loss of habitat it has been steadily declining. It moves quickly and cautiously, ears twitching, eyes darting, feet pounding silently on the dry grass. It is startled and dives into the meadow, the swallows are chattering as the hobby glides past, yet I focus on the hare, invisible in the swaying stems of scabious. The minutes pass before it emerges again, hugging the meadow at all times. It then plucks up enough courage to cross the garden to the vegetable plot, looking around nervously it wanders in, eyeing up the cabbages greedily. Normally I would run in and scare off the intruder at this point, but today I just watch the animal nibble the crop-it’s not everyday that you get a hare coming for tea.

The perfect hobby

They’re not harvesting here yet, but yesterday the sickle shaped wings of the hobby cut through the Shropshire landscape. A pair of ‘big swifts’ darted between the motionless pines and poplars of the Corve Dale making even the swallows look sluggish. They changed direction and altitude in a matter of seconds, elegantly effortless, as they hawked for hawker dragonflies. The hobby is the peregrine’s daintier and more agile cousin, smaller than a kestrel or sparrow hawk it flies direct and at speed. It is a great migrant, wintering, like the swallows it hunts, in Africa, and possibly the pair I saw were already on their way south. Certainly I haven’t spotted them before. I focus the binoculars on them as they circle, silhouetted far above my head, then suddenly, out of the blue, they dive. The chase is on. Struggling to keep up with them I see the slate-blue wings, white cheek patch and the heavily streaked belly. They swoop across the grass almost scratching the hedge top, and then, as they head back into a dizzying climb, they finally flap their wings.

Moth magic

Moth trapping is a hobby I strongly advise everyone to get involved with: it’s very cheap, requiring only a light and some egg boxes, and, with thousands of British moth species, it’s infinitely rewarding as you reveal the night’s haul.

            Today there was a good mixture of the common, the spectacular and the quirky. The ermines - fairly small, either white or light brown, with black spots – are common, yes, but equal to many butterflies in terms of beauty, and ten can easily visit in one night. The great thing about moths is the majority are asleep in the morning so require no chasing after with a butterfly net. But some are more lively than others and the carpets often refuse to sit still. A green carpet, freshly emerged, is one of the commonest garden moths, but with its jet black and emerald green wing is incredibly striking. Many of the moths you might disturb in patches of nettles during the day are carpets and they are fast flying – often making a mass breakout from the trap in a shower of green, white, brown or yellow.

            Poplar hawkmoths are a regular. At about 4 cm across and quite happy to sit in your hand, you could almost make pets of them. Today I had a first - the spectacle - which gets its name from the ‘spectacles’ around its eyes. Species I have never seen before can visit the trap and I have been trapping for five years now. Moths are some of Britain’s most underrated animals: very few people have seen the rich metallic gleam of the burnished brass, the painted crimson splodges of the garden tiger or the bird dropping-like Chinese character. Once you have – you’re hooked

Summertime...and the living is easy

On the hottest day of the year so far, I take a stroll where both the parched landscape of summer and the greenery of spring sit side by side. On Windmill Hill, above the carpet of trefoil, speedwell, buttercups and clover, small heath butterflies dance restlessly. Wild strawberry flowers twinkle through the grass and a startled rabbit bounds away from me. I take a path diagonally down through warped trunks, onto the old railway.

            On the track I realise how dry it’s been. The earth is like concrete, although ferns, wild garlic and minute willow saplings have managed to penetrate it. I see flashes of wings - a dunnock darting in front of me with a caterpillar; a wren cocking her head on a low branch. The shade becomes dappled, then dark, so I can now only hear the birds. A jay cackles as I try to spot it amongst the trees. Only the blackbirds reveal themselves, skittering across the path in their search for food.

            Back out in the sunshine I marvel at the swallows’ aerial acrobatics as they wheel around their roostings in some old, unconverted barns. I head down an arrow straight track, through clouds of cow’s parsley. The foliage is abuzz with life: soldier beetles, red tailed bumble bees, lesser spotted crane flies, and the metallic tick of click beetles. A small tortoiseshell darts past my ear; a speckled wood brushes the hedge top.

            In the next field there’s a beautifully clear stream. Along its banks, ragged robin and dog daisies make the most of the water, along with the midges which feed the swooping swallows. A brimstone butterfly flashes yellow. Summer.

Where kestrels dare

There’s a gliding club on the Long Mynd but the true masters of the airspace above the Shropshire Hills are the kestrels. Atop the highest peak in Shropshire-Abdon Burf on the Brown Clee - I think I have the greatest view in the county. From the Clent Hills to Cader Idris, from the wilds of the Mynd to the urban skyline of Birmingham, I can see for 70 miles in every direction. I stand admiring it until a silhouette skirts the ground before me - a kestrel. Head into the wind it hovers, glides, swoops and soars, covering the slopes in a blink of an eye or hanging motionless, for an eternity defying the wind. On a hilltop you see kestrels as you rarely do from lower ground, at eye level, or even from above.

            The kestrel drops beyond the slope and I walk back. The top of the Clee is more of a plateau than a peak encompassing ponds, bogs and marshes. A reed bunting perches in a reed bed, its call non existent over the howling wind. Wagtails dart on the grass between the most powerful of gusts and crows walk rather than fly. A wheatear hops onto some quarried rocks-the Brown Clee was once heavily quarried and the scars, such as the ruined stone crushing plant, are still visible. Although there is an abundance of birds and a variety of them, they hug the ground: the wind is too strong for them, not one flies where the kestrels dare.       

Spotted! - flycatcher

For all my time living at this house I’ve marvelled at the airborne agility of the swallows, however this year those ‘red arrows’ may have a dog fight on their hands...

            For several days I have seen a bird from the window but have dismissed it as ‘just another warbler’- brown colouration, fairly small -  and I’ve never got close enough to identify it properly. Yesterday an opportunity arose, as it perched  conveniently on the car aerial. Bird book in hand, I watched for ten minutes and worked my way through each warbler, discarding them in turn. It was only when I turned the page onto flycatchers that I saw a photo jump out at me.

            A spotted flycatcher. At close range you can see the streaks on its head and breast that seems less pure than most warblers. And this bird was more captivating than the warblers, rather than hiding in trees or reed beds this was out in the open and its large black eyes were constantly turning, tilting and taking in the surroundings. Sure enough I was shown why it gets its name. Whereas the swallows dart around in constant flight the flycatcher is like a guided missile, from its perch - the aerial -  it locked onto some prey, darted off and returned in a single swift movement. Sadly the spotted flycatcher is declining - between 1980 and 2005 numbers fell by 79% - so I’m very privileged to see such a bird at such close quarters. The real moral of this story, however, is never make assumptions. Nature is full of surprises and is constantly out to trick us: if I had lazily assumed and called the flycatcher ‘just another warbler’, I may have never spotted the spotted flycatcher

Swallow that!

I’m reminded of Blue Planet – a swirling mass of mackerel whipped into a ‘bait ball’ by speeding tuna - as I watch the fifty or so swallows wheeling, circling and diving over the pond. At around 2:00 pm - even in the most terrible of conditions – they gather, swooping and skimming the water, in their hunt for the newly hatched flying insects.

            It is those insects I went in search of today. Faintly inspired by Springwatch I went pond dipping, something, rather like rock pooling, guaranteed to bring out the kid in everyone. With every net load you get a new trophic level – the entire pond pecking order from hydra and bloodworms to water fleas and great diving beetle nymphs. If you never break the surface of a pond, you never really see this diverse and hugely important ecosystem. And by temporarily transferring them to a plastic container, you get to witness their interactions firsthand. It is the nymphs that interest me the most, though. From the strangely familiar, large eyed and long tailed damselfly nymphs to the transparent body of the phantom midge larvae. It is these animals that link the pond to the sky - providing vital roles in both ecosystems.

Bluebell Beauty

An annual pilgrimage to Helmeth Hill, some fabulous spring woods. Before I even get there the track takes me through a mass of flowers – stitchwort, vetch, red campion, soapwort. Soft foxglove leaves and unfurling bracken fronds bring future promise.  Knarled hazels and alders mark the damp ground, and marsh marigolds tumble down the path of a stream. Delicate wood sorrels colonise the moss of fallen trunks; there’s a wiff of wild garlic on the wind; my pace is measured by the drumming of a woodpecker.

            Once inside the wood, birdsong takes over, drowning out the woodpecker, the lambs, even the ravens on the hills. The path rises steeply and I take it slowly: there’s so much to see. It’s mainly ash and coppiced hazel, open enough to allow the anemones, bluebells, violets, sorrel and garlic to flourish: a tapestry of blues, pinks, white and green. Mossy trunks and decaying stumps have their own beauty, many home to bracket fungi. Honeysuckle scrambles over others. Hollies add a dark, wintery note.

            Later, the oaks take over. It’s more enclosed here, the steep slopes so densely awash with bluebells that little else has a chance. Today is dull, but even so they radiate light. In sunshine, the iridescent combination of violet blue and emerald spring green is dazzling. I’ve waited longer than ever this year. Now I simply stand, and enjoy.

The Water Margin

There, I hear it again, the tap, tap, tapping. What is it, I ask myself, as I scan the nearby bank of the pond. The tapping continues and my ears home in on a clump of last year’s hogweed – just dishevelled remains after the snow crushed it like matchsticks. Tap, tap, tap and my eyes focus on a single wasp, its mandibles chomping away at the stem. I would rather have seen a bee getting material for a nest, but the buzz of a wasp is surprisingly comforting after the recent heavy rain and biting wind. I move further round the pond, fish fry are topping on the surface and I catch a fleeting glimpse of our very own Loch Ness Monster - the ghost carp. On the opposite bank I see bubbles on the surface: they must have come from a tench feeding off the bottom of the pond. All the while frogs are calling - since April their croaks have been like cicadas in Crete - just as loud, normal and annoying!

            The serenity is shattered: the fish dive as I here the ominous call of a heron. It lands on its chosen peg on the far side of the pond and then wades in - an expert fisherman. I watch it for 10 minutes before it decides to cast in, its snakelike neck striking the water and then getting a frog. Then, expertly balancing the prize in its bill, it throws it down its neck. I stand up and make my way back home. The heron sees me and flies away, but it’ll be back. The fish begin to top, the frog chorus returns and still – tap, tap, tap.....    

Let's go spy a kite

For years, I’ve looked forward to my sporadic journeys down the M40 for one reason only: kites. As the motorway cuts dramatically through the chalk near Stokenchurch, you can always see large numbers of them swooping overhead. On holidays in France, too, I’ve marvelled at them riding the currents of the gorges. But, despite living a stone's throw from a wood know as Kite’s Nest Plantation, I’ve never seen one at home. Last week I looked out the window, hardly registering the bird of prey, and looked again: ‘That’s a buzzard, I tell myself, no, a goshawk...a peregrine.’ It was none of the usual suspects. The red kite flew out of the sun like a spitfire pilot, its wide wings effortlessly gliding, soaring, turning. It was only when it turned to make for home that the distinct fan tail gave away its true identity. Now I’m waiting to see it again.....

Blithe spirits

I have the babble of a stream on my right which seems to have woken the birds - a jay cackles, a song thrush drops to the ground by a bed of wild garlic and a single golden saxifrage, a raven cronks and blue tits chatter nervously in the hedge. I see some weary snowdrops, silently thankful that winter has loosened its grip, and then turn my attention to the hill ahead.  The taller cousin of Wenlock Edge takes you up towards Bourton Westwood at around 258m. The far off song of skylarks teases me as I climb. I challenge myself not to look at the view until I reach the top.

            North, the last of the snow is retreating on Caer Caradoc, but opposite, the softly folding south Shropshire landscape - Spoonhill, Corve Dale, Aston Hills and the imperious Clee – whispers of spring. Now I see as well as hear the skylarks, their soaring flight and trilling song both noticeable against the cold wind. Is it the words of the poets, or their increasing rarity, or simply their illusiveness? I don’t know, but there’s something magical and ethereal about skylarks which have taken this walk out of the ordinary.