March on the Edge

A typically windswept March afternoon on Wenlock Edge. The hedgerow’s a tangled mass of hawthorn and blackthorn. Filigree leaves of varied ferns carpet the area and Jack in the Hedge is poised to spring into growth. Through the gothic tracery of bare branches, you can look along the backbone of the Edge, before oppressive pines close ranks. There, above the ominous roar of Harley Bank, I hear the shrill cat-like mewing of buzzards. Ten appear, hunting in a pack like Harris Hawks from Arizona. One turns, drops, dives, captures something, swoops off. I am once again alone.

            The path narrows, meandering around spooned out hollows, with Dog’s Mercury spearing through the fallen debris of last autumn. I spot a huge colony of Hart’s Tongue ferns clinging to a quarry face, their leaves reflecting the last of the sun and catching the percolating water. Weaving between silver birch, under a drapery of catkins I pass another huge quarry, where the strong buttress roots of yew and willow cling like talons on the precipitous Edge.    
             Everywhere the scars of industry have been stitched over by nature: limestone quarries becoming bird baths, nesting grounds and grassland. Dark, satanic remains of old quarries and kilns, alongside the green and pleasant land of Shropshire’s hedges and fields - it’s what makes Wenlock so interesting.

The Court of King Caractacus

Caer Caradoc was the legendary safe haven for the Celts and their leader Caractacus two thousand years ago. Even nowadays, looking out just as imposingly over the town of Church Stretton, with its crown of battlement-like rocks, this hill fort is far from empty.

            As I walk down the track I disturb a flock of around 100 fieldfares catching the warm February rays from their roost in the tangled branches of some hawthorns. Their grey underwings flash as they fly, like airborne mackerel. This is one of my favourite walks and I have visited this track in all seasons discovering everything from fossils to drinker moths. I leave the path and cross a field disturbing ravens picking the last off a sheep’s carcass.

            The ascent is breathtaking and so too is the view. I stand on the rocks at the height of 350m and look from Wrekin to Wenlock and Clee to Carding Mill. My first wasp of the year buzzes past alongside stubborn mounds of snow that still haven’t melted from three weeks ago. It is strangely still and warm on the leeward slopes and only as you mount the crest does the chill rush of wind hit you. The grass up here is as short as the square at Lords’ thanks to the sheep that nibble it down year in year out; the ground dry. As the sun begins to dip below the creases and folds of the Long Mynd I begin my descent back to Earth.

Deer Diary

Between the catkins and silver birch trees I see it. An eye, a face and then it melts away I continue to wait on the gate as intently as the buzzard above me. Probably a dog I think, but then I see it again, its warm brown coat clearly visible in the morning sun. An eye, a face then the body and I realise my dog has transformed into a deer. Anyone who regularly travels through Farley Dingle will have seen deer: a warning road sign, a brief glimpse through the trees, or a heart stopping flash as they cross the path of the car. But this is different: eye to eye and personal. We all have that subconscious Bambi-born love of deer, but I’m not thinking ‘cute’, I’m looking at something big and wild, and wonderful because of it.  I move closer for a better look but no sooner have I taken a few steps than the deer vanishes into the undergrowth, the shaking catkins and bent grass the only sign that it was there.

Homer Odyssey

Braving a gale, I took the Homer Head walk the other day. At first there’s little to see - a field at first appearing bare but filled with the tentative beginnings of a crop – or hear - great tits’ familiar calls are just audible above the booming wind.

Then the great spine of the Wrekin rises up dark and menacing under a blackened sky.

                It’s the woods that steal the show, though. By all definitions they’re ‘species rich’ with blackthorn, hawthorn, hazel, oak, holly, pine. Gnarled beauties worthy of Tolkien’s ‘Ents’, a great lightning-struck beech, ivy filled ash perfect for roosting birds, and yew that have refused to fall onto Homer since before Homer was built. I’m rewarded by the glimpse of a deer, so slight and silent that I almost doubt my eyes as it disappears back into the trees with a single effortless leap.

                Beyond, a stunning view shows why the Shropshire Hills are an AONB. The prehistoric coral sea of Wenlock Edge guards the Celtic hill fort of Caer Caradoc, and, in the foreground, the month-old Buildwas flooding and island-like villages Harley, Sheinton and Cressage. A 180 degree panorama showing 20 million years.

Bits, bobs and buzzards

Firstly, a bird box update. After constructing them during the Christmas holidays I didn’t know what to expect. They did provide a welcome, temporary shelter for some wrens during the recent cold snap. And so far the blue tits seem to be taking a great interest in them, perching on the threshold, going in and out. Fingers crossed for more drama over the forthcoming weeks.

            Now plants. Last year the drive was covered in tiny self set primrose plants. Using a fork in autumn, I painstakingly put them into a seed tray and despite the snow and ice around 50 have survived. Last weekend I began to plant them out into the spinney where they’ll hopefully flourish. On a good year we have great, pale buttery mounds erupting through the ivy groundcover there, and by adding more I’m just giving nature a helping hand. Primroses and cowslips seem to like my heavy clay soil and both of them are favourite spring flowers. Whilst on my hands and knees I looked up to see the return of the waxwings – a bonus which I hadn’t thought I'd see again this winter.

            Finally – and this is breaking news as I write - the pine plantation opposite me is alive with buzzards that are being mobbed by crows and crows that are being mobbed back by buzzards. As dramatic as a First World War dogfight and every bit as noisy. Never mind the Rolling Stones, Boomtown Rats or Fleetwood Mac, birds are the great comeback artists. Every winter no matter how harsh, bitter or persistent the pigeons return to coo, the ravens to cackle and buzzards to mew.  And the great thing is that their concerts are free!

Who's afraid of the big, bad coot.

The start of February. Gone is the oppressive slate coloured sky of January ready to cover us in blanket of snow, and in its place a vast blue mass that seems to have lifted itself and our spirits. Calm, gentle, but shattered by the croaking, honking and hooting of the coot. We often think of these as kind, family birds, slightly comical with their oversized feet, but how we’ve misread them.

            The winter pond has been the home of the mallards, almost twice the size and weight of the coot, but come spring, David seems to scare Goliath into submission. When a coot wants the pond, it gets the pond: even if the ducks are forced onto the grass, over the hedge or down the road, they’ll be kicked off sooner or later. And my, can coots kick! Their gargantuan feet allow them to power through the water, getting nest material or food for hungry chicks. And those feet are weapons as well: they keep most rivals at bay and I’ve even watched them drown mallard chicks by forcing them underwater.

            From February, when they arrive, to October, when they leave, the coots rule to roost. Nature is all about interactions between organisms- a specie, a pair, a family, an ecosystem, a biome. These interactions can be productive or destructive, as in the case of the coot and mallard, but both types are interesting and worth a look at.    

Oh my darling Celandine

Without ‘Gardener’s World’ on TV it may seem that all things horticultural are dormant at this time of year until Monty Don revives them all again in spring. However a walk down the road led me to discover three very different flowering plants. The first was the lesser celandine, despite the fact it was just a single flowering and rather tatty individual the intense yellow stood out from the brown and green hedgerow backdrop. The melt water from the ‘mini ice age’ of last week must have re-invigorated it as with the stinking hellebore I found on the banks of the village stream.    

            The stinking hellebore is a fairly rare plant but due to its liking for Wenlock Edge’s calcareous soils it thrives on the edge of our rivers, streams and roads. What the plant doesn’t have in looks - even the flowers are green - it makes up for in interesting facts. All parts are poisonous and if consumed will lead to violent vomiting and delirium; it uses yeasts to colonise the plant and raise its overall temperature in order to make it more attractive to pollinators; and when crushed it releases a foul smell leading to its other name Dungwort.

            Finally on the path up to the village church the snowdrops that were nervously poking through the snow last week, are now all out. The great survivors of any winter, neither snow nor ice nor flooding can prevent them from flowering year in year out, despite their apparent fragility. And as the afternoon sun shone over the great humpback of the Clee and melted the final slushy ice, I thought: ‘Is that the end of winter?’