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.