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.  

Welcome Back Warblers!

'Willow warblers...are amazing little birds: so small, such courageous travellers, so sweet a voice, such fierce competitors. It is when you can hear the first willow warbler of the spring and know it for what it is that you have passed the point of no return.  You have finished and revelled in chapter three of Ulysses. You have become a birdlistner. You are committed. And once you have done that, you know a lifetime of pleasure lies before you. Once you have cracked the willow warbler, you're a goner.'

The above is a quote from Simon Barnes' wonderful book 'birdwatching with your eyes closed.'

Yesterday evening, we took a slow walk over the iron age hillfort and across Halkyn Common, laughing at lambs lounging in the late sun, gulping air filled with the lettucey taste of new grass.  We stopped abruptly, looked at each other, cocked our heads on one side and grinned; huge grins that spread across our faces until there was almost no room left.  There was no mistaking that sweet scale-tumbling song. The willow warblers are back safely from Africa.  

It didn't go unnoticed that this moment of joy came on a day of harrowing news reports of the plight of human migrants.

Springtime Slaughter

Just as I'm rejoicing at the first swallow and the arrival of my chiff-chaff and while I'm waiting for all the other birds to come back home and fill the woods with their song, I read this news on the BBC web page -

'Hunters win Malta bird referendum on shooting ban.
Malta has narrowly rejected proposals to ban controversial spring hunting, during which migrating birds are shot before they can breed.

There were jubilant scenes in the counting hall as the pro-hunt activists celebrated victory, which was achieved by only 2,200 votes.

The BBC's Mario Cacciottolo in a tweet says that hunters' association head Joe Perici Calascione is "ecstatic" about the outcome of the vote and has described hunting as an integral part of Maltese tradition.

Malta is the only EU country that allows recreational spring hunting.'

This particular 'tradition' allows for the shooting of turtle doves and quail, though who knows what other birds will be shot in the name of tradition?  Malta has a pretty bad track record and groups like Birdlife International and the RSPB have been working on the island for years to try and prevent the needless slaughter of many birds, including birds of prey and song birds on their way North.

I have heard turtle doves in Italy and their soft purring song is mesmerizing and calming, like a meditative chant.  They are dainty birds and a delight to listen to on a warm summer's evening.  They do exist in this country but mainly in the South and they are on the RED list, meaning they are globally threatened.

Now that hunters in Malta can legally shoot them in the spring time before they have had chance to breed, we are even less likely to hear them here.

It's a sad, sad day for man'kind'.

If you go to www.rspb.org.uk and look up turtle dove, you can hear a recording of their special song.

Thankfully this little sparrow is safe from Macho Maltese hunters.

Reasons to be cheerful - Swallows and Rhubarb!

The swallows are back!  I look out for them arriving every year and I saw my first one this week, swooping through the dusky sky, no doubt relieved to have arrived safely.  It’s swapped red, African dirt for the green hills of Wales and right now it looks like a fair swap.  Lambs are springing like wind-up toys, cherry trees are frothy with blossom, the daffodils are bright suns shining along all the verges and the rest of the bird clan are cramming the air with their spring song.

The first birds of the season are always a delight.  When I open my back door on a chilly spring morning and hear that familiar ‘chiff-chaff, chiff-chaff,’ I break into a huge grin.  The tiny olive bird is the first of the warblers to return from Africa and soon there’ll be willow warblers, black caps, garden warblers and all the others.

And talking of ‘firsts’, this week we had the first of the rhubarb from the garden, lightly poached with a little red wine and brown sugar, delicious!

Go for a slow walk this weekend and see if you can spot a swallow - it's come a long, long way so give it a wave. 

And why not plant some rhubarb in a forgotten corner of your patch? You can just leave it to get on with the business of growing, which it will do effortlessly, and then give you juicy sticks to eat with ginger and ice cream.

To see the difference between swallows and house martins look on www.rspb.org.uk

Let me know if you see any!  Click on the blog title (Reasons to be cheerful) to bring up the comments box.  Or email me at sleepysparrow@yahoo.co.uk

Fantastic Friday

Friday 20th March is a special day.

There'll be a solar eclipse,
a Supermoon,
the Spring Equinox
and if that wasn't enough,
it's the U.N. International Day of Happiness.

It's also World Sparrow Day,
and, apart from following Mark Twain's advice above, I recommend watching sparrows sleep, bathe, squabble, sing to make you smile. 

Enjoy the day.  Make someone happy.  Be happy yourself.
Sometimes it's just a matter of choosing it.

www.worldsparrowday.org
www.dayofhappiness.net

Wanted - Air Traffic Controller

It's crazy in my garden - it must be Spring.
Sparrows are scrapping, dunnocks are flicking their wings like flamenco dancers, blackbirds are posturing. A song thrush makes himself heard over the ruckus, repeating himself loudly, just incase we didn't get it the first time. Blue tits (eight of them) swing on the suet cake and starlings click and whistle from the terraces like rowdy football fans.

When I venture outside to hang out my washing, birds whizz past in a blur of brown and gold and blue and black and I have to dodge out of the way before I'm hit.  I take my tea to the blue bench and watch the shenanigans from a safe distance.



Some of our nest boxes

There are 13 nest boxes around the garden and the birds are busy house hunting, trying to make up their minds and then squabbling over the most desired residences. 
I watch a sparrow pulling hard at fennel leaves to line his nest. He's unable to break off the feathery fronds and it looks like he might end up wing over beak. I can't see him struggle so I go to his assistance and pull some off  for him. Two more sparrows brawl over a white feather that flutters into the new pond, lost.  Then a couple of blackbirds start a fight. It's violent. They end up at my feet, a blur of black and yellow. I almost have to pull them apart.

By mid-morning, calm has descended into the garden again. I scatter raisins and meal worms to keep the peace.

If you're fed up with the UK election already, here is something worth voting for -
Britain's National Bird, the result will be announced on May 7th.
Which one will you vote for?
http://www.votenationalbird.com/

Do leave a comment here and let me know. If it's too complicated on the blog, try
sleepysparrow@yahoo.co.uk

Forget the chocs and flowers - I want compost for Valentine's

The sky's been low and grey and spring seems a long way off. My lovely friend came to visit and brought me a tray of soil – nice!  She assured me it was full of hibiscus seeds she’d sown.  I put the tray on the window sill and each day I inspected it as I opened the kitchen blinds. 

Finally, last week a tiny seedling appeared! Bright, zingy and green, it filled me with hope and excitement.

I didn’t know much about hibiscus plants so I looked them up.  I discovered that the flowers are edible and that there are actually a whole lot of flowers you can eat.  

Nasturtiums, primroses, marigolds, violas, pansies - all look lovely in salads and fruit dishes, in soups and rice, in sweets, yogurt, cakes, biscuits, jelly.  And I see that hibiscus flowers look fab in the bottom of a flute filled with Champagne!

So, I'll be asking my Valentine to forget the bunch of flowers this year and buy me packet of Nasturtium seeds instead! And I’d rather have a bag of compost than a box of chocs - honest!

 

Planting seeds is a lovely, slow thing to do on a grey February day. Just push the seed into the compost, enjoy the smell of the damp earth and the anticipation of long summer days. Nature won't be hurried. But eventually, from that tiny seed a whole, flower-filled plant will grow and, in the case of nasturtiums, rampage all over your garden! But you'll get lovely peppery leaves and flowers for your salads and bees will bury themselves in the deep trumpets.  I love the way the buzzing reverberates when a bee is deep inside a flower and they come out covered in yellow pollen and almost too drunk to fly.

Tonight's tea?


 https://www.rhs.org.uk/advice/profile?pid=764

http://theedibleflowershop.co.uk/
http://www.nonowenherbalist.co.uk/  (Fabulous workshops if you live in North Wales)

Tuesday's Treasure

 

In winter things can look grey and boring but if you look, there are always splashes of colour to be found in the landscape.

 

These photos were taken on an old industrial site near where I live. 

As I was taking them, I could hear the call of a nuthatch, loud enough to make the frosted leaves tremble.

The metallic call of a great tit smashed through the freezing air, like a hammer on ice.

In contrast, the whistle of a bullfinch seemed soft and fuzzy, like the edges of these teasels.

 

Wrap up warm, go outside and look for treasure...

 

Doorstep Epiphany!

Another adventure close to home...

Gladstone's Library, Hawarden, Flintshire.

I know it’s only 7^th Jan but yesterday I did possibly the coolest thing I’ve done this year (it may well end up being the coolest thing I do all year).  All it took was a twenty minute drive, a flash of my passport and a glimpse of my address on a heating oil bill. 

I walked into the high-vaulted, Hogwarty room as the glow from January’s amber light licked at the Gothic windows, seeping in through leaded panes, making the oak beams glow and igniting work-smoothed, wooden desks.  Dust motes danced in those slices of amber light the way I was bursting to, but somehow I suppressed my excitement and watched the receptionist’s lips mouthing instructions.

Her animated eyebrows said more than her paper-thin library whisper and the pages being turned upstairs in the gallery shouted down to me. I wanted to yell, ‘Ok, Ok, just show me where to sign!’ And I wanted to pirouette over the wonderful, creaky floor boards, hang on to the honeyed-rope handrails, pull myself up the ridiculously quaint spiral stairs and twirl with the dust motes through that soft amber light to a desk that was glowing just like the Tardis before it leaves on an epic adventure and begin to write my life, for I had the feeling, it was just about to start!

One of many 'Tardis' desks, waiting for adventure...

Joining Gladstone’s Library as a Reader was easy and FREE.  It’s a magical, peaceful, contemplative place with fabulous food and great coffee and you can even stay the night!

There are all sorts of events coming up from an invitation to 'gather round the hearth' with writers and poets, to the annual Gladfest event, craft fairs, interesting talks and tours and you can even learn Greek in a week!

www.gladstoneslibrary.org

Another Doorstep Adventure

With a flask of coffee and the last of the Christmas Stilton we set off to roam the ramparts of one of the largest hillforts in Wales.  Penycloddiau is about a 10 minute drive away.

The Offa's Dyke National Trail passes through the fort, over rounded hills, past a bronze age burial mound and a half frozen pond that may have provided the Iron Age residents of this high fort with water.  The deep ditches and banks that kept livestock in and invaders out are still clearly visible.

Today, us and a couple of Ravens were the only invaders.  The great black birds, glossy in the low winter sun, dropped their heavy 'kronks' like molten iron into the heather. 

Two and a half thousand years ago people lived and worked up here in thatched roundhouses.  Perhaps they took time out to admire the view across to Snowdonia as we did today, picking out the rare summit view of mighty Yr Wyddfa, the dinosaur back of Tryffan and the great bulk of Cadair Idris?

If you take your mobile phone (not very iron-age I know) you can dial 01745 222 123 when you get near one of four numbered posts and hear the voice of a hillfort resident telling you what life was like for the iron age folk who lived up here.
Or find out more about this and the other hillforts in this Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty on the web site.

www.clwydianrangeanddeevalleyaonb.org.uk

Looking Back towards Moel Famau

Snow Senses

Happy New Year!

In winter I like to give my senses a bit of an airing, I mean really focus on each of them, not just sight. I shut my eyes and sniff and taste and touch.  Being out in the snow is generally not an olfactory experience but if I try hard enough, there's always something to make my nostrils twitch. 

 

Sounds:  

The chacker-chack-chack of fieldfares in wind-bent hawthorn, 
the crunch of footsteps in ice-crusted snow,
the heavy kronk of a tumbling raven,
the pebble-tapping clicks of a stonechat.

Smells: 

Wood smoke from the chimneys of thick-walled miner’s cottages,
sweet, wet hay scattered for foraging sheep and ponies.

Touch: 

The prickle of gorse when I try to pull myself up a steep slope for the best coffee stop view,
the hot plastic cup from my flask warming my hands,
sticky cake crumbs on my lips,
icy wind against my cheeks.

Taste: 

Hot, sweet coffee,
chocolate cake,
a lemon-ice taste in my mouth from a gulp of mountain air.

Sights: 

 

Black raven in a blue sky, sheep splashed with either red or purple paint, one lamb or two?
Yellow gorse flowers shining on the hillside,
watery-orange sun slipping below the whale-back-mound of Moel Arthur. 
  

                                       
                        

Winter Solstice Celebration

On the shortest day the dawn chorus filled my bedroom and for a moment I thought I was lying on a mossy woodland floor looking up at the bud-thick branches of oaks against a spring-blue sky, but it was only my CD alarm clock, set to wake me slowly and easily at 7.30am. I stretched and smiled thinking; from now on, little by little, the days will get longer. 

Clutching lemon tea, I watched the birds on the feeder – mostly blue tits and sparrows, swinging and clinging and swapping places like an acrobat troupe, I could almost hear circus music.  And then, in a flurry of pink, a puff of long-tailed tits appeared.  With slight-of-wing, they landed, lifted off, landed, criss-crossed each other and seemed to alight on each branch of the old cherry tree for seconds. Then suddenly, they were gone.  Fleeting, exciting, breathtaking – a bit like life.

A plump female blackbird maintained her dignity as she balanced on a thin branch of the new crab apple tree, leaned across and plucked a tiny yellow fruit.  She brought it to the patio and chased it over the paving slabs before stabbing it with her knife-thrower's beak.  Later I found the empty skin glowing like a tiny sun amongst the dark and slimy leaves.

A ringmaster dunnock strutted around the base of the tree, piping in the next act.  I glanced around to see who would enter and spotted a nuthatch in its steely-blue cape, mousing down the tree trunk before it completely disappeared –no drum roll, no smoke, no mirrors.

Ambling around the garden I found some early Christmas gifts...

 

 

More Slow Adventures from Home.

We had a hard choice this morning, fight our way to the shops and get mixed up in craziness or wrap up warm and head for the hills.  No contest.  And when you only live a hop, skip and a jump from an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty and the sky is as blue as a robin's egg and the earth is all crunchy, it's even easier to choose the hills.

We didn't take a flask and buns this time, we knew the Shepherd's Hut would be at the top car park at the start of the walk up Moel Famau in the glorious Clwydian Hills.  

The little corrugated hut was tucked into its usual corner and the chimney was smoking.  But we had to earn our treat, though it was no hardship walking up that lovely hill.  We had plenty of smiling company as quite a lot of people had chosen to walk the wide aisle to the top of the hill rather than struggle up the supermarket aisle.

In the distance, the hills of Snowdonia glistened.  We watched a kestrel looking for a meal.  He hung in the ice-blue sky like he was being dangled from invisible wire. If it snows, he'll find it very difficult to find food.  Kestrels see in ultra violet and they hunt by following the ultraviolet light reflected off the urine trails of dribbling voles!

And then a human kestrel came into view!

Back down at the welcoming Shepherd's Hut, we had thick hot chocolate with gooey marshmallows and THE most delicious little cakes.  I had lemon, Charlie had chocolate.  We were supposed to share but they were so good, we didn't. 

The wood burning stove was full on and even though we sat outside in the icy air, the lovely Hut owners had thoughtfully placed the table and chairs next to the nifty little hole in the side of the hut and we could just feel the heat from the cosy stove. I rummaged through the fabulous local products they have on sale, rubbed on some muscle and joint oil (smelled delicious), flicked through the stunning hand made cards then picked up leaflets about wilderness skills and the history of Moel Famau before leaving, with the promise to return on New Year's Eve when the hut will be twinkling and serving warm fruit punch to welcome in 2015.  Fancy joining us?



www.shepherds-hut.com

www.visitclwydianrange.co.uk

www.originaloutdoors.co.uk

 

 

 

December's Slow Treats...

No Black Friday in the Clwydian Hills, only gold and copper and red and lilac.

 

 
 
 

And if you half closed your eyes, the landscape could even look a little like this collage I made at a lovely community art class in my village...

with scrunched up magazine pages, hand-inked paper and Ferrero Rocher wrappings, which of course I had to eat first!

 

 

www.ronniedrillsmaartgallery.vpweb.co.uk

 

www.newwildlife.org.uk