Slow Terns?

Not the Prairies but Gronant Dunes

I blog about SLOW things mainly. Taking time for noticing, sniffing, watching, being.  The little terns at Gronant beach don’t have much time for being slow right now.

This Sunday we responded to a plea on Facebook from the wardens at Gronant, the chicks are beginning to hatch and the kestrels have noticed.  Kestrels mostly eat voles and lizards but they will take little tern chicks.  The wardens reckon that having people placed carefully along the beach might help keep them at bay.   

From the path to the viewing platform, I spotted a reed bunting dressed like a country parson, singing in a tangled rose bush. It’s not a glamorous song but he’s persistent and I like his style.  High in the wide blue sky, specks of skylarks sang without pausing for breath.  And I’ll swear I heard the fishing reel sound of a grasshopper warbler coming from the tall grass. 

The edges of the board walk were lit up with deep pink orchids and silver sea holly like a glitzy catwalk.  As we approached the beach, the  creaky cries of little terns could be heard over the whistling marram grass.  We watched them overhead, bright white, like freshly laundered hankies fluttering in the breeze.  Some had tiny silver sand eels dangling from their beaks, others were chasing, swooping, landing, lost among the pebbles in the fenced-off colony.  

We chatted to Jack the warden, who was very bright-eyed even though he’d been on duty since 4am.  As we spoke a kestrel appeared, hovering over the dunes.  Jack ran off to the far end of the colony and we watched to see what it would do.  It hung motionless over the marram grass at the back of the colony then circled high and moved away.  Maybe our presence put it off?  Through my binoculars I could see it in aerial combat with a pair of buzzards. Obviously it has chicks somewhere in the vicinity and felt threatened by the presence of these big birds of prey.  So it goes in the natural world. Buzzards bother kestrels, kestrels bother little terns, little terns bother sand eels. 

Whether we helped see the kestrel off I don’t know. I do know that it was fantastic being at the colony. It felt big and wild there, we had a real sense of being right in the middle of nature's battle for survival.  And for me, I’m pretty sure a spell on a windswept beach under a big blue sky certainly helped my survival. I felt alive and ready for anything...though perhaps not being carried off by a kestrel.

Gronant has the potential to be the largest little tern colony in the UK this year but they need help.
If you’ve an hour or two to spare, get down there for a bit of reviving wildness and give a hand to protect these feisty little birds in the process. 

http://www.denbighshirecountryside.org.uk/little-tern-project/

Or search for Gronant Little Terns on Facebook - their photographs of little tern chicks are very cute!

A New Way

'One's destination is never a place but a new way of seeing things.'  Henry Miller

This is a quote from my book The Slow Tourist.  Today we decided to follow the instructions on page 14 and walk along a public footpath we've never been on before.  Here is what we found...

Bluebells beginning to appear

clumps of primroses

The Spirit of the Woods

A Bluetit's bottom

Silver Birches like brushes painting the sky

A peacock butterfly enjoying dandelion nectar

A tree window

A secret bank of primroses

Blossom alive with buzzing bees

And a fine view of Moel Famau

We've lived here for over 30 years and never followed this footpath before.  We walked for three hours and didn't see another person, only birds, bees, butterflies and lambs.  We had an epic adventure - without going very far, just like it says in my book! 

It also says;

Get an OS map of your area, find a footpath and follow it. Take a note book and pen, draw the flowers, bees, birds - just doodle, you don't have to be an artist.  Write what you see, how you feel.  Record the sounds on your mobile phone or a simple sound recorder, make a sound scape of your patch.  Who knows, in years to come, what you record in your notebook might prove to be of real interest to someone.  You might record a species that no longer exists or one that's new for that area. Even if you live in a town, sketch the buildings, record sounds in the parks, look for wildlife like peregrines nesting on tall buildings. 

But most of all, just enjoy what's on your doorstep.  

The Slow Arrival of Spring

I search for signs of Spring from the first of January.  But it can’t be hurried.  And because it arrives slowly, it’s all the more reviving.

 

The light glinting off a crowd of snowdrops under the hawthorn hedge flashes a signal of hope, like kids bouncing sun light off a shard of mirror and on top of the hedge a blue-grey dunnock throws back its head and pours out its sweet scratchy song.  I take my tea and go into the garden, bending low to the soil to look for more signs.  Little spears of crocus flowers thrust up through soggy soil, tiny primrose petals are ready to ping open, celandine leaves are glossy and polished ready for the Spring Show.  

 

As February blows in, my sparrows get fidgety too.   Via the nest box camera, I watch the male spring-cleaning, dragging out beak-fulls of old nesting material.  He struggles with a huge tangle of straw, heaving the lot up to the entrance hole but it won’t go through and he only manages to pull out a few strands.  But he’s determined and finally the box, which the female has roosted in all winter, is empty.  We fixed a camera next to ‘Sparrow Heights,’ the three roomed apartment block on the side of the house.  On the monitor, I watch the birds flitting in and out, choosing their apartments, chirping loudly when they’ve selected the one they want.

Now it’s March and daffodils wave as I tread the earth lightly on my way home from Dru Yoga at Theatre Clwyd.  The rhubarb’s showing tantalizing glimpses of ruby red stalks. I’ve seen skinny lambs, acid yellow primroses,
heard my blackbird sing under the darkening sky and a song thrush in his usual tree belt out his aria as I pass each morning.

I’ve done some great ‘slow’ things whilst waiting for spring.  I spent a Saturday with North East Wales Wildlife in Rhydymwyn, furtling about in mouldy barn owl pellets looking for the remains of harvest mice.  I learned how to recognise a vole's skull from a shrew's and became adept at telling species apart by removing their molars. Soon I was calling out, ‘field vole, bank vole, common shrew,’ like I’d been doing it for years!  No harvest mice but it certainly beat doing the weekly shop. 

At Theatre Clwyd, I watched a spell-binding production of Dylan Thomas’ Under Milk Wood, where I heard ‘the dew falling,’ and ‘the sleep of birds.’

Last week, back at the Theatre, I experienced a ‘Picnic Play.’  In the Clwyd Room we watched the cast of Under Milk Wood read Tom Stoppard’s ‘Inspector Hound,’ whilst we munched sandwiches and slurped tea.  We could’ve sat at the feet of the cast on the cushions and blankets provided.  A few did, but most laid their food out on tables, jars of mustard and sandwiches wrapped in rustling tin foil. It was great fun. Their next picnic play is on March 21^st. 

www.newwildlife.org.uk    www.newwildlife.wordpress.com

www.clwyd-theatr-cymru.co.uk

www.druworldwide.com

www.mammal.org.uk  

 

 

The Slow Days of Christmas....

In December, there’s Black Friday and Cyber Monday, (and thankfully,Small Business Saturday).  It can be dark, dreary, depressing and dear.....but it doesn't have to be. It’s still possible to take a step back and enjoy some ‘slow’ days.

A group of us decided to leave the Christmas shoppers to it and spend a Saturday on our bikes.  We cycled to a fab cafe in a converted barn (Meadow Lea Farm, Mickle Trafford). At a table between the glowing stove and the twinkling Christmas tree, we ate hearty soup and thick bread and planned a New Year's Day ride.....

 

 

On Sunday we were back on our bikes to join a few hundred cycling Santas delivering presents from the Pier Head in Liverpool to Alder Hey Children’s hospital.

 

 

 

 

 

 

After another morning otter survey with North East Wales Wildlife (with poo and paw prints to prove otters play in our river), we got creative and made a herd of silly reindeer with bits of tree and twigs.

 

 

On a dark and chilly day, my friend and me made a lovely mess (in her house) making home made Christmas cards, glue and glitter everywhere, mince pies and Christmas songs and mugs of hot choc.

This is the month when we love to take walks during that magic 'just before it goes dark’ time. Sometimes the sky is purple, pink, lilac, orange. When we get home we drink mulled wine in the dark, except for coloured Christmas lights.

I made an alternative ‘tree’ out of birch twigs and glittery pine cones. When I was collecting the twigs in the woods, I heard a tawny owl and later a crowd of 'cawing' crows came to roost.

I watch birds. They make me laugh on dark days.  These sparrows are outside my dining room window and one morning the sun came up like a big orange ball of fire and made the fluffy brown birds glow.

 

A Border Raid...in search of cake

(Another 'Slow Flintshire' day)

‘It’s far too cold for a bike ride.  Let’s stay home and eat cake.’  That’s my trump card, a promise to make a chocolate fudge cake if I stay home.  But the stand of larch on the distant hill glows like forest fire, the sky’s a single wash of ice-blue that an artist would never get away with and I’m promised great cake at the end of the ride. So, we get the bikes out, the layers on and head off. 

 

I’m trying out a different bike, a more sophisticated machine, with drop handle bars and no room for a basket. The nearby section of the National Cycle Route 5 from Connah’s Quay to Chester is ideal as I’m a bit wobbly to begin with. It’s traffic free and today, mostly people free too.  We could have cycled alongside the River Dee into Chester but this route is inland, part of the old Mickle Trafford freight line and sheltered from the icy river wind by amber maple trees and berry-filled hedges.

 The first thing I notice about the bike, apart from having to swing my leg over the man’s frame rather than step through all lady-like (glad no-one saw that), is how my head is angled down.  I don’t like that.  I need to be able to look up so I can follow the flights of crows, gulls, lapwings, linnets.  Today I hear their calls and songs and see tantalizing flashes of feathers from the corner of my eye but it’s a strain to look up.    

The cycle path is great, I’m gaining confidence and we coast along past Chester.  We could come off at various points and visit Chester zoo, Ellesmere Port Boat Museum, the Wirral, New Brighton and even Liverpool, via the ferry.  But we press on towards Mickle Trafford and Meadow Lea Farm cafe for my promised cake.  But when we get there, it’s closed.  It opens Wednesday to Sunday 10 until 4.  Charlie forgot to note that on his last visit. ‘What a shame, their cakes were great too.’  I give him one of my looks as I blow hot breath into hands that would love to be curled around a steaming mug of hot chocolate right now.

We turn around and head back along the cycle path, past a horse and a fox made from willow.  We could detour off into Chester along the canal path and eat cheesy chips at Telford’s Warehouse, but we decide to head home.  My neck is aching from trying to look up every time I hear a ‘caw,’ or a ‘chack, chack,’ and what if I miss waxwings, I’m not familiar with their calls and the hedges are bursting with berries, and I desperately want to see waxwings...some cake would be nice too.

 

www.sustrans.org.uk

www.millenniumgreenwayfriends.org.uk

Postcard from the riverbank

The River Alyn flows through my patch, at least it does until the summer or when there’s less rain.  Then it flows under my patch.  It’s swallowed up by great yawning caverns, old lead mining tunnels and natural limestone fissures.  I’m always sad to see it go.  One minute it’s murmuring along at my side and the next day just a few silent pools remain.  I’ve never seen a kingfisher or a dipper on my stretch of the river but I’ve seen them upstream and downstream where the river stays at the surface.

After the heavy rain we’ve had recently, the River’s back and I hope so are the otters. I join Kate from North East Wales Wildlife to look for signs. 

 

 

 

The sky’s the blue of a jay’s wing feathers.  We walk along the squelchy banks, sinking into cattle trodden mud and slithering over sycamore leaves.  When we reach the holt and the camera, Kate scrambles down and removes the memory card to check later.

I love this section of the River.  The woodland opens out into a meadow and today the trees glow and the river fizzes and sparkles like someone’s dropped a crate of alka-seltzer tablets into it.

 

 

I turn from admiring the amber view and see Kate stooping over some otter spraint on a lump of limestone.  She points out tiny fishy vertebrae in the oily splodge.  We mark the place on the map, photograph the poo and amble on.

Coming around a bend in the river, we disturb a female goosander.  She hurries skywards leaving trail of water droplets hanging in the air like pearls.

At the foot bridge we find more spraint. Kate tells me about the otter slide she discovered here earlier this year when the snow was thick on the ground.  She said it looked like they’d been sliding down the steep bank and plunging into the river over and over again.   We stand at the spot imagining an otter water park.

On the other side of the River is an old willow with one branch leaning right across the water, a perfect play tree for otters.  We find more spraint.  There are definitely otters here then, and even though we don’t see them, just knowing they are around is exciting.

 

 

Back in the office with mugs of tea, we hunch over the computer screen to watch the footage.  The camera is triggered by movement.  The computer shows that it’s been triggered many times. But when we watch we see we’ve been out foxed by a fox - a badger, an annoying bit of Himalayan Balsam blowing in the breeze... and a bouncing Jay with sky blue wings.

I've a feeling we'll have more luck with the camera on our next survey...

The next otter surveys are on:
Tues 19th and Wed 27th November 2013.

www.newwildlife.org.uk
www.rhydymwyn-hendre.org

Tales of a Rhydymwyn Riverbank

Last week, on a rare warm spring day, I joined Kate from North East Wales Wildlife on her regular otter survey route, past banks of pale yellow primroses and delicate violets.  The smell of wild garlic caused us to wrinkle our noses and talk about making wild garlic pesto sauce as the River Alyn murmured gently in the background.

Kate stopped and peered through her binoculars, ‘There’s some spraint,’ she pointed at an oily splodge on a prominent rock on the edge of the river.  We crouched over it and saw that it was full of white specks, ‘Frog leg bones,’ said Kate.  Of course we had to sniff the splodge, there’s a lot of speculation about the smell of otter poo.  Some say it’s like jasmine tea, others that it’s fishy or even like freshly mown hay, anyway, we agreed it’s not as unpleasant as it looks.  And more importantly, it meant there were otters here.  We spotted more and more spraint further along the river and then, even more exciting, paw prints in the silty mud

It was an idyllic spot on such a day, open meadow, slow meandering river, wild flowers, buzzards mewing, a woodpecker beating a frantic rhythm on a nearby dead tree.  Suddenly, we flinched at a sharp ‘peep’ and saw a blue blur as a kingfisher zipped past us.  It was tempting to take our shoes and socks off and paddle, but we were meant to be looking for otters. 

In fact, the cameras set up by NEW Wildlife have already picked up an otter and two cubs, we wanted to check if they were still around so were keen on finding fresh spraint.  The paw prints were certainly fresh and we imagined the otters scampering and playing over the many new branches fallen after the heavy April snows.  We were willing an otter to appear and kept our eyes peeled amongst the dark places under the overhanging bank and in the tangle of willow roots but we knew it was very unlikely. 

We agreed that just knowing they were around was enough.

Weed Medicine

The sun is bursting through the tall windows when I walk into the meeting room and I choose a seat directly in the path of the warming rays.  The smell of fresh coffee from Caffi Florence mingles with the nose-wrinkling aroma from a pile of wild garlic leaves on the front table.  I see from the handout that we’ll be shown how to make Ramsons Pesto sauce later.  I’m with 13 others at a Caffi Florence workshop, Loggerheads Country Park entitled; ‘ Hedgerow Remedies, Weed Medicine’.

Our tutor, Non Owen says; ‘weeds are wonderful,’ and gives us each a sample of nettle iron tonic, made in a previous session.  (From nettle tops, dried apricots, orange peel and some good red wine).  There are approving murmurs and ‘Mmms.’  ‘Tastes a bit like sherry,’ the lady next to me says, her eye-brows raised.

Non hands around a dish of dried rose hips for rose hip infused honey, telling us that they have 20-40 times more vitamin C than oranges.  There is silence as we watch the sun glint off the stream of honey Non is pouring into a pan.

         It is left to simmer whilst she moves on to Ramsons (wild garlic).  ‘It’s an antibiotic and a good spring tonic and cleanser,’ she tells us before turning on the hand blender.  We all lean back as Non switches to ‘turbo’ and prepares to lower the blender into a jug of oil and wild garlic leaves.  But it turns out to be quite tame and no-one gets covered in green slime.  Soon the liquid is the colour of a woodland and the meeting room smells like an Italian restaurant.  Non tastes it as she walks across to give us a sample.  She stops suddenly in her tracks, ‘Wooa,’ her eyes widen.  We all have a taste and experience that ‘kick’ as it slides down the back of the throat.  The room is filled with the sound of fourteen people tasting the green paste, smacking our lips, sucking in our cheeks, making sounds like appreciative cattle, ‘Mmmm.’

Meanwhile, the rose hip honey simmers on the stove and a Caffi Florence waitress comes in to take our drinks orders.

   

Next, dandelion coffee.  ’Good for the liver.’  Non prepares the dried roots and passes around the resulting pale brown liquid.  Eyes are screwed up, mouths are pursed.  It won’t be replacing my usual morning coffee, but I think of my liver and gulp it down.  

Just in time, our drinks are delivered, along with a tray of home-made cakes - lemon, fruit and chocolate brownies.  The weekly Nordic Walking Group strides past the window, their poles clicking on the path.  Perhaps they’d benefit from our next weedy remedy, a chickweed bath soak?

Finally the rosehip honey is ready.  Non decants it into small brown jars for us to take home for a vitamin C boost. 

As I leave, I can still taste the wild garlic on the back of my tongue and I see there’s Ramsons soup on the Caffi Florence menu.  Non was right, weeds are wonderful and FREE.

www.nonowenherbalist.co.uk  Medical Herbalist and Aromatherapist

www.caffiflorence.co.uk  Workshop programme

Up with the lark

The wind’s from Siberia, slicing through the crystal clear sky like an ice axe.  We’re up on Halkyn Common, Snowdonia on our left, The Dee far below on our right. I hear a faint song, like a thumb being drawn continuously over the teeth of a metal comb - not a dunnock, not a robin. Pulling my fleece hat off my right ear, I angle my head away from the whistling wind and look up.  Finally I spot a black dot way up high, just in front of the tissue paper moon, underlined by an EasyJet vapour trail, my first skylark of the year.  He pours down his song, never pausing for breath. 

It's only February, he won’t breed until April but he’s making sure he gets the best territory– the birdie equivalent of spreading his towel on a sun lounger before breakfast.

There's a ‘gulp’ of magpies clattering in a scrawny hawthorn.  I pity the ground nesting lark, though I once walked past a skylark’s nest everyday for a month and never knew it was there until someone showed me.  They’re very good at leading you away from their chicks.  Can they fool the magpies though?

Slow Saturday

I live near Mold.  It’s a ‘Slow Town’.  So I decide to do something ‘slow’.

(www.cittaslow.org.uk)

I phone my friend. ‘How do you fancy a walk followed by coffee and homemade cakes?’   

‘Count me in,’ my friend’s a big cake fan.

We head for the village of Cilcain where every Saturday afternoon there’s a community café in the village hall. (www.cilcaintoday.org.uk)

 If there’s one thing I like as much as homemade cakes, it’s second hand books.  On the way in to the village hall, there’s a table piled high with them, impossible to pass.  After a leisurely browse, I select a book about mosaics and my friend finds one about Shackleton’s epic voyage.  We put our money in the honesty box and follow the tinkling sound of teaspoons on china. 

The hall is laid out with half a dozen gingham covered tables. My eyes come out on stalks as we approach the huge serving hatch and I take far too long choosing a cake. A queue builds up behind me but everyone understands my dilemma and waits patiently whilst I chose from chocolate, lemon, apple, fruit, brownie or flapjack. 

The café has a different theme each week.  Today there are crafts made by local people.  I chat to a woman who makes fabulous notebooks, cufflinks, earrings, cards, and art work from old newspapers and books.  ‘Everyone calls me the newspaper lady,’ she laughs, ‘people have started bringing me foreign newspapers and old menus from their holidays.’   I buy a beautiful blue-washed bookmark. You’d never guess it was made from old newspapers. 

On our way home along the quiet lanes I hear a familiar sound but one I haven’t heard for ages and I just can’t place it.  ‘What is that?  It’s like one of those swannee whistles that clowns blow when their trousers fall down.’ I hear it again and shout ‘Lapwing!’  We look over the hedge into a flooded field and see six.  I raise my binoculars, which have been around my neck all through coffee and cake.  Not a good idea.  I clean off the crumbs and look again.  There’s something about the cry of a lapwing which stirs the heart and makes me think of the wild moors and far off places yet here they are, on my walk home, taking advantage of the soggy field to probe for worms and insects.  Two take to the air, flapping their broad black and white wings and repeating that funny pee-wit call. 

A couple of lanes further on something zooms out of the wood just ahead of us, ‘Woodcock,’ we both shout together.  It zigzaggs up the field towards another bit of wood, its long bill pointing the way.

Red streaks appear in the darkening sky as we approach home.  ‘I could get to like this,’ my friend beams, ‘let me know if you plan any more slow outings.’