Feeling sinister

Posted on February 6, 2015 by Becca

At the time of writing this blog entry, I am in sinister mode… In the sense that I am largely left-handed, owing to having fractured my right wrist! This was something of a surprise to me, because I actually did the damage at the end of December (when I elegantly toppled sideways off my bicycle on an icy towpath during a frosty winter ride). Being an old school stiff-upper-lip British stoic, at the time I sprang nimbly back to my feet and cycled on homewards, with only an aching shoulder for a few days afterwards as a memento. But while driving to teach at a London school three weeks later, my right wrist started to ache. Luckily I have a GP who is excellent at injuries and it took him all of two seconds of prodding to diagnose a suspected fracture of the scaphoid bone… Which an x-ray at Newbury hospital later confirmed.

Having not even heard of the scaphoid bone before, I was somewhat dubious about the need for wearing a splint, particularly as I’d been carrying on as normal for the best part of a month after my bike accident. But it turns out that this little cashew nut-shaped bone (located at the base of the thumb where it joins the wrist) is annoyingly tricky to heal once you’ve damaged it. Hence the fetching velcro and metal splint which I currently have to wear all day. If all goes well I should be healed and splint-free within a few weeks: in the meantime as I can neither cycle nor drive, I’m doing a lot of walking. I’m keeping my fingers crossed (on my left hand, anyway) that there will be no complications, so I can return to normal functioning by the time my busy teaching season starts in early March.

Fortunately I’ve had good things happening in January too. I belong to the Natural Voice Practitioners’ Network, an organisation for singing teachers, choir leaders and voice workers. In early January the NVPN holds its annual gathering, which usually takes place at Wortley Hall near Sheffield (see one of my earlier blog posts, Digging ponds and singing songs for an account of my visit to Wortley Hall in 2013). However, the NVPN membership has grown in recent years to such an extent that the main gathering was oversubscribed and a ‘mini gathering’ was organised for those of us who left it too late to book for Wortley. The venue for this smaller gathering was the beautiful Elizabethan Kinnersley Castle in Herefordshire.

Kinnersley Castle is still a family home, which can be hired as a venue for events. It is full of character – I was chuffed on reaching my room to find I would be sleeping in a four-poster bed! Our meals were home-cooked and plentiful, and the hospitality from hostess and NVPN member Katherina Garratt-Adams was warm and welcoming. The space that we used for our singing workshops and group sessions had a huge fireplace with a log fire that we all took turns toasting ourselves in front of (including Coco, Katherina’s friendly black labrador).

I always get a huge amount from these NVPN gatherings: not just song material for teaching with Sing The World, the Newbury-based choir that I co-lead, but also lots of useful ideas and guidance for all the issues involved in being a singing teacher. Having suffered from laryngitis and lost my voice completely back in September, I found the sessions on looking after our voices and developing our singing range particularly helpful. The NVPN largely follows a community of practice model for sharing expertise, which is an extremely effective way to support our professional development.

Staying at Kinnersley Castle was a fantastic experience and a great way to ease back into the working year after the festive break. It’s a venue with tons of character and welcoming hosts (including the lovely Katherina and Caius, pictured above).

Chilly winter weather doesn’t generally stop me from going exploring. We’ve had some glorious bright sunny midwinter days and I took advantage of one to go for a walk with my friend Will along the downs in the Vale of Pewsey. It was a route we hadn’t done before, up onto the Tan Hill Way and then round Gopher Wood and Oare Hill, finishing with a loop over Giant’s Grave, an Iron Age hillfort and settlement.

We were glad that we had done our route in a clockwise direction, as the final descent from Giant’s Grave down into the village of Oare was precipitous enough that I had to run down it with my arms outstretched and making whooping noises. (A vital strategy for obtaining maximum speed with the minimum of risk to myself or other walkers coming from the opposite direction.)

There is something about sunshine in the depths of winter that is particularly restorative, even in the Arctic winds that were blowing that day. And the landscape of chalk downland always holds a special magic for me, growing up as I did in the Chilterns. The walk route around Oare is one I will definitely revisit, perhaps in early summer when orchids may be about. Even in early January it was beautiful, with red kites and buzzards wheeling on the wind currents high above the hills.

Winter can feel like a bit of a miserable time, especially if the weather is wet and grey. Fortunately there are opportunities to dispel the darkness: Newbury hosts an annual Festival Of Light, a midwinter celebration where locals make lanterns from willow and tissue before joining together in a parade through the town. There were lanterns of all shapes and designs, including stars, fish, boats, spaceships and even a dalek and a Darth Vader! At the end of the parade there were hot chestnut sellers, brightly-burning braziers to warm your hands at and a lively band to keep everyone warm. There was a great energy there, definitely an inspired way to ward off the winter blues.

Another winter event which got people together was the Thousand Voices evening. Local choirs (including Wacapella, our Sing The World performance group) sang separately at various locations across Newbury town centre, before joining together by the Christmas tree in the market place for a mass sing. It was great fun to take part… I’m not sure that I’ve ever heard The Twelve Days Of Christmas sung quite so loudly before!

In contrast to the gloomy and soggy winter of 2013/2014, December and January have brought a good share of bright days, perfect for getting out and about in. In mid-January I went for a walk across Snelsmore Common, a nature reserve on the edge of Newbury now managed by local wildlife trust BBOWT. This is a site both popular with locals and rich in wildlife and interesting habitats (including bogs with carnivorous plants known as sundews). Going back over a decade, I lived up a tree at Snelsmore for a short time, along with a host of other hardy souls seeking to prevent the dreaded Newbury Bypass from being constructed. The Newbury Bypass protest is well remembered by locals, whether or not they were involved in either the activism or the road building. I lost my heart to this lovely stretch of ancient woodland and like many of my friends it was gut-wrenching to be there when the bailiffs and bulldozers finally rolled in and destroyed a swathe of this amazing place forever.

Happily, activism and opposition to environmental destruction and social injustice is still going strong in the UK. As the media and political parties crank up their apparatus for the General Election campaigning season we’ll no doubt have more coverage than we want of democracy in action… But mindful of what’s going down in other areas of the world (Ukraine and Russia, for instance) it’s a good time to remember that we’re lucky to have a democratic system at all, flawed though it is. Being something of an anarchist/libertarian I’m not a huge fan of our current set-up, but I’ll certainly be voting on election day. The good news is that the Green Party is fielding candidates in every ward of Berkshire, which at least gives me an opportunity to vote for someone whose politics reflect my own interests. And for those who say that voting for the Green Party is a wasted vote because it will allow the Tories back in, my considered response is: thhhbbppppt. *blows raspberry*

There is a lot of brouhaha written and said these days about non-participation in democracy. Personally I think there is just as much radicalism and engagement as there ever was; it’s just that people have many more ways to express how they wish their locality and country should be run. Also the majority of us seem to be utterly unimpressed by the posturing of politicians and the ponderous workings of government, which these days looks increasingly like an old boys’ club of ex-Eton pupils.

If as some pundits seem to think our political system is in the throes of change, it may not be a bad thing. (It’s worrying that a few folks seem to think that UKIP is an answer, but I suppose all those sulking ex-Tories had to go somewhere.) My response to all of this is to get back into activism, so I will be going to the Time To Act climate change march in London on Saturday 7th March. The climate change debate continues but it’s evident that we can’t go on living as if we had a spare planet as well as this one, so why not come along too and make some noise in London this spring – if only to communicate to those currently hitting the political campaign trail that the environment is not only the concern of a minority bunch of tree huggers.

Rather than finish on a strident note, I will end this blog entry with a photo of a particularly magnificent winter sunrise. I never stop being grateful for this world in which I live… That’s kind of why I feel compelled to look after it.

I see skies of blue and clouds of white
The bright blessed the day, the dark sacred night
And I think to myself what a wonderful world.

– ‘What A Wonderful World’
Bob Thiele & George David Weiss

Three months later…

Posted on October 27, 2012 by Becca

If the title of this blog entry seems a trifle enigmatic, let me dispell the mystery: it’s been three months since I last wrote a blog entry. Lawks! How did that happen?

Well it happened, of course, because I’ve been a tad busy. All good stuff, many adventures and projects and work-related developments, but for several weeks other things (including this blog) have had to take a back seat for a while. The allotment that I share with my friend Tessa has also been somewhat neglected, or at least hasn’t received the kind of TLC that we were both able to give it the previous year. To be fair, the rather moist summer we’ve had has meant finding a spare half day to work on our plot when it hasn’t been siling down with rain has been virtually impossible. It’s also meant that an awful lot of veg that we planted did not do well: broad bean plants rotted and died, salads were a disaster area, peas were decimated by pigeons, even courgettes (which we’re usually reduced to putting in carrier bags and leaving anonymously on people’s doorsteps) fell prey to the slugfest that has been this year’s growing season. The only things that did well were our asparagus, Festival squash (pictured above) and some O’Driscoll drying beans (pictured below). These last are a Heritage Seed Library variety that grows like a runner bean, and is picked in late autumn, giving oodles of pleasingly white and purple speckled little round beans that I’m looking forward to eating. I grew mine from a few seeds donated by a kind friend.

With all the rainy weather I resorted to growing a few things on the windowsills of my flat (which helpfully face due south), including the biggest basil leaves I’ve ever seen in my life and a crop of ‘Apache’ chillies that are so spicy they are probably contributing to global warming. I am a chilliholic (I used to eat the ones that came pickled in jars of vinegar, then drink the vinegar) but these have given me a new respect for chilli-dom. They apparently score 75,000 – 80,000 on the Scoville Scale of chilli hotness: to give you some context, jalapeño chillies score about 2,500 – 8,000 on the Scoville Scale. I’m not sure whether to cook with the Apaches or stockpile them as lethal weapons.

Work has been full-on pretty much all summer and into the autumn, apart from a week off in early August to go to Voice Camp (of which more in a later blog). Despite the adverse weather conditions it’s been a good year so far for field teaching. I’ve especially enjoyed doing some Forest School sessions with the Thatcham Young Rangers youth group I co-lead. The Forest School ethos is that activities are hands-on and largely child-led: we leaders gave instruction in safe and correct tool use, establish some ground rules… Then let the kids choose their own activities. We’ve had den building, fire lighting, stick whittling, tree climbing – in fact, pretty much everything I used to do as a kid, but which most children today are usually not allowed to do. Even just getting messy was a novelty for some of them – though they soon got the hang of it, especially when they discovered how to make facepaints from elderberries and mud!

It’s been great being so busy, but because I’ve been teaching on Saturdays as well (running some wildlife gardening courses for adults) I have missed having weekends to go exploring. Last Saturday was free and I took advantage of the mild autumn weather to go on a yomp around Combe, a few miles southwest of Newbury. Amazingly I didn’t see a soul during the three-hour walk. I started high up on Walbury Hill, where the gorse and brambles lining the track were hung with cobwebs silvered with mist.

It was a perfect day for walking, cool and bright and still. There is something about being high up on hills and ridgelines that is wonderfully exhilarating. You’re about as far away from the sea as you can get in Berkshire, but there is something of the feel of the coast when you’re high up on the downs. It got me thinking about cliffs and the sea as I walked along… Maybe next year I will do some of the South West Coast Path when I’ve got a long weekend or a week free. In the meantime I was happy to be striding out over the hills, enjoying the autumn colours that are starting to show spectacularly in woodlands and hedgerows.

I know from my teaching at Rushall Farm that it’s been as tough a year for farmers as it has been for veg growers, so I was interested to see in one field a straggly crop of maize, interspersed with dense drifts of Scented mayweed Matricaria recutita. I wondered for a moment what kind of maize crop would have been gathered in after the cold wet summer – until I remember that maize is commonly grown as a cover crop on land where pheasant shoots take place. The mayweed was pretty, anyway.

My guess about pheasants proved correct. Once I cut into the woodland, the wretched things kept exploding from the undergrowth like demented banshees. It’s a mystery to me why pheasants sit quietly until they’re almost underfoot, whereupon they burst out in a flurry of scolding clucking and whirring feathers that causes any passer-by to suffer near cardiac arrest. I haven’t eaten pheasant for many years (although my maternal grandpa was a bit of a dab hand at poaching, family lore has it) but by the time I’d walked through the small woodland I would’ve quite cheerfully stuffed a few into an oven. The phrase “too stupid to live” kept coming irresistibly to mind. I know it’s not the pheasants’ fault that they’re here in such vast amounts in our countryside, and they are strikingly handsome birds… But boy, are they dumb. Maybe they have to be, for the purpose of pheasant shoots. I could be wrong, but I suspect that the average toff who goes pheasant shooting (and at a cost of around £1,000 per day, I’m guessing that most of the participants are toffs) prefers his flying targets not to be too quick-witted.

If I sound a bit jaundiced it’s because I am. It’s tricky; I work a lot in rural areas where being anti blood sports is not well looked upon, but it’s the ‘sport’ element of it that I dislike. I’d rather people shot and ate deer, if they have to shoot anything. We could certainly do with a lot less of those around, and in the absence of wolves I guess we could fill that ‘top carnivore’ niche. I don’t object to people knocking off pheasants and eating them per se. It’s the whole industry of it that bothers me – that and the way some gamekeepers and landowners see pheasants as privileged creatures to be protected at all costs, even if that means destroying actual native British wildlife. Our local MP and Minister for Wildlife and Biodiversity Richard Benyon controversially tried to introduce a programme for Defra to fund the capture of buzzards and destruction of their nests. Fortunately the resultant uproar from conservationists – not least because the proposed scheme was based on anecdotes of pheasant chick predation rather than any kind of scientific evidence – forced the government to back down. Or as Richard Benyon put it, “In the light of the public concerns expressed in recent days, I have decided to look at developing new research proposals on buzzards.” Mmm.

Buzzards are actually commoner than they used to be, largely thanks to the successful reintroduction of red kites (one pictured above) into England. A lot of work was done with landowners and gamekeepers to prevent the newly introduced kites from being shot or poisoned, with the result that buzzards have also benefited. I’m really glad that these large birds of prey are making a comeback: my heart never fails to lift when I see them wheeling and soaring over freshly-ploughed fields at Rushall Farm. And towards the end of my walk around Combe there were a few red kites circling above me, riding the air currents over the downs… A fitting end to a good day’s walking.

Speaking of Rushall Farm, I had a particularly pleasing moth moment there at the end of a field teaching day this week. I had just finished cleaning the toilets (the glamour of working in outdoor education!) and spotted a very spanking Merveille Du Jour moth sitting on the toilet door. This moth’s name translates as ‘Marvel of the Day’, and it pretty much was. It feeds on oak Quercus spp., of which there is a good amount at Rushall thanks to the well-managed semi-natural ancient woodlands on the farm. All supported by funding such as the Higher Level Stewardship scheme which Rushall succeeded in gaining this year: a good example of how farming can benefit the environment and wildlife.

This weekend has started clear and cold and sunny, so I made the most of yet another free Saturday to stomp around Snelsmore Common for a couple of hours. The wind was bitter but the woods were looking fabulous: full autumn colours and drifts of leaves bowling around in the gusts. I found an Amethyst Deceiver Laccaria amethystina among the beech leaves, looking like it had been put there by a set designer. Fungi are the coolest things: they recycle dead leaves and wood, and many form dense networks of underground root-like hyphae which grow in close association with the roots of trees and other plants, benefiting them enormously. Fungal hyphae are tiny: in one gram of woodland soil there can be an astonishing 100 metres of hyphae… Yet the largest (and oldest) living thing in the world is a fungus: Armillarea ostoyae (Honey fungus to you and me) in the Blue Mountains in Oregon, one specimen of which has hyphae covering 965 hectares. Epic. How can you not like fungi? Especially as when they do pop their fruiting bodies up above ground or out of logs, as the familiar toadstools or mushrooms we’ve all encountered, they manifest in such a funky range of shapes and colours.

Autumn being the season of mists and mellow fruitfulness, the other good reason to walk through the woods at Snelsmore Common was to glean the ground underneath the many Sweet chestnut trees Castanea sativa that grow there. I was half expecting the squirrels to have got there first, but there were actually lots of nuts to find, especially when I rootled about under the thick litter of orange-brown leaves lying on the ground. I’m not sure yet how I’ll cook ’em up – maybe something involving mushrooms, which go well with sweet chestnuts’ rich earthy sweetness. Or possibly brussels sprouts, although it’ll be a while yet before ours will be ready on our allotment. Maybe I can cook and freeze the chestnuts in the meantime…

So by coming back to allotments and food, I’ve come full circle. Must be all this healthy outdoor walking giving me an appetite. My Festival squash are sitting cheerfully in a corner of my kitchen, from where I regularly choose one to roast or stew. I won’t be carving one for Hallowe’en, because they’re just too yummy to waste as lanterns… Though I might carve an ordinary pumpkin anyway, for a bit of fun. I’m looking forward to Hallowe’en – or Samhain, the old Celtic new year, as I celebrate it. In the half term holiday week I’ll be running some ‘Creepy Crafty Creatures’ family events at Five A Day Market Garden which will focus on bats, owls, spiders and other spooky wildlife; plus another wildlife gardening course for adults, so I’ll be keeping busy. In the meantime, I’ll leave you with a photograph of a very gorgeous creepy creature found on our allotment this summer: a beautiful toad who’d made herself at home catching the slugs feasting on our strawberries.

Happy Hallowe’en for next week!

Of martyrs and hermit crabs…

Posted on May 12, 2012 by Becca

Summer term progresses and most of my weekdays are now spent in field teaching, but the May Bank Holiday weekend gave me an opportunity to get away for a break with a friend, down on the Dorset coast. A singing workshop was being led by Gilo and Sarah, two lovely people that I met at the Unicorn Voice Camp last August. They are both fabulous singers and members of the Natural Voice Practitioners’ Network, to which I also belong. My friend and I expected a wonderful workshop, and we weren’t disappointed: Sarah and Gilo led around fifty people in a full day of harmony singing that was simply out of this world. The space we were singing in, the chapel at the Othona community near Burton Bradstock, was acoustically superb as well as being a beautiful setting in its own right. All in all, a great day.

My friend Tessa and I had an interesting journey to Othona. We paused en route to eat our picnic lunch at Tolpuddle, the village associated with the famous Tolpuddle Martyrs: six farm labourers (George and James Loveless, James Brine, James Hammett, John and Thomas Standfield) who tried to organise themselves into an early trade union to alleviate the poverty in which they lived. In 1834, the six men were framed by local squire James Frampton and sentenced to seven years’ transportation to Australia. Such was the outcry from the public, trade unions and a few MPs that two years later the men were all pardoned. They returned to Britain but found continuing ill treatment at the hands of wealthy landowners: five of the original six eventually emigrated to Canada where they lived out their lives in peace.

Astonishingly, the Sycamore tree under which the men held some of their union meetings is still growing in Tolpuddle (and is pictured above). I stood under it for a while and thought of those men daring to work together to change their world for the better, despite the fear of retribution from the rich and powerful. A significant message in these difficult times. No doubt certain people in government today wish fondly that transportation was still an option.

Before we arrived at Othona, we also went for a walk along nearby Chesil Beach. It was a grey evening with an almost completely calm sea, and the only people to be seen on the beach were fishermen. This mighty shingle bank had an almost surreal quality in the fading light: I could have sat meditatively on it for hours, gazing out to sea. At this western end the shingle is pea-sized, increasing to cobblestone size as you go east. According to local legend, smugglers landing on the shingle at night could tell exactly where they were on the coast by the size of the pebbles. I paddled briefly and narrowly escaped frostbite: early May is not propitious for sea-bathing in Britain. Tessa was far more sensible and kept her wellies firmly on.

In places along the shingle, some plants have managed to grab a foothold: I saw plenty of Sea kale Crambe maritima, with its fleshy crinkled leaves looking a lot more impressive than the stuff I’ve grown on the allotment. I tried munching a few leaves and they were surprisingly tasty, in a cabbagey sort of way. I couldn’t help thinking that they would be rather nice stir-fried with some ginger and spring onions and a few seared scallops.

Another coastal specialist growing at Chesil Beach is Sea campion Silene uniflora (pictured at the start of this blog entry), with white blossoms nodding above pinkish-green calyxes and slender stems and leaves. Amongst the flowers, black lumps of ancient peat lay scattered over the shingle, washed up onto the beach from sediments formed in a lagoon that lay further offshore when sea levels were lower over 4,000 years ago. Near one I found a wave-worn plastic soldier of unknown regiment, frozen in mid-stride: I left him storming the beaches on a block of peat not far from some World War Two tank traps, as he seemed quite at home there.

When we finally arrived at the Othona community to stay for the weekend, we were made instantly welcome and plied with delicious food, including ice cream for pudding with homemade butterscotch sauce. Othona has a core group of members living there as part of a spiritual community and runs a programme of events and ‘Open Space’ weekends that are open to all-comers. Along with its sister site in Essex, Othona in Dorset has a Christian basis but is open to people of all faiths or none, believing that what people share is more important than what divides them. As someone currently following a pagan tradition / the Tao Te Ching / meditation as a spiritual path, I found this open-hearted and inclusive attitude to spirituality refreshing and healing.

I would recommend staying at Othona to anyone. Not only was it peaceful and welcoming, but they have the most amazing tree-house in their garden and the sea is only ten minutes’ walk away. Before Othona took on the site in the 1960s it was the home of a small community of women dedicated to a life of self-sufficiency, vegetarianism and prayer. Known locally as the White Ladies (after the undyed cotton or silk habits they wore), each woman lived in her own wooden house and cultivated the land around it: sort of ‘Eco Nuns’, as someone described them. Sounds like a pretty good life to me. And I feel sure that they would have built a treehouse too, if only they’d thought of it.

While walking along the beach below Othona we found a Common hermit crab Pagurus bernhardus firmly ensconced in the recycled empty shell of a Common whelk Buccinum undatum. Hermit crabs scavenge on anything from dead fish to bits of seaweed, so are quite happy foraging around the tideline on beaches. Apparently if one hermit crab fancies another’s shell they may try to forcibly evict it. Even marine life has its perils, it would seem.

We were lucky enough to get quite a bit of sunshine over the weekend, very welcome after so many grey rainy days. On the Sunday we joined another friend (John) for a fossil hunting walk from Charmouth to Lyme Regis, managing to pick up quite a few nice ammonites and other fossils on the way. The best place to find these is not in the disintegrating (and hazardous) cliff faces, but amongst rocks and shingle on the beach. This doesn’t however discourage lots of people from whacking enthusiastically at anything rock-shaped with fossil hammers, so our walk was musically punctuated by the chink of steel on stone.

I went on many childhood holidays to Lyme Regis and have lots of good memories of this part of the coast, so it was especially nice for me to share a day there with two friends. We ate lunch (massive fresh local crab baguettes) on the beach, and soaked up the sunshine.

Our day out coincided with the Lyme Regis Fossil Festival, an annual event that celebrates all things geological and palaeontological. We enjoyed some of the street theatre on offer, including the roving Big Noise Band and the eccentric Battle For The Winds performance (which was frankly as mad as a sack full of weasels – British eccentricity at its finest). I also spotted a rather enigmatic young lady dressed in period costume (pictured below), taking the air on the promenade. I thought perhaps she was meant to be a young Mary Anning, the nineteenth century fossil collector who is one my earliest heroines.

Also part of the festival was stone balancer Adrian Gray. Some time ago my parents gave me a photograph of one of his delicately-balanced pieces, but I hadn’t appreciated just how astonishing his work was until I watched him in action. He stands one massive sea-smoothed stone atop another, in positions that seem to defy gravity. Lest people grow suspicious of trickery, he periodically takes these balances apart and perches a new stone in place of the first one. I could’ve watched him all day. I think stone balancing could be the new Jenga.

After fortifying ourselves with some ice cream we headed back to Charmouth over the clifftops, following a route that would have given us spectacular views had it not been diverted away from the cliff edge due to coastal erosion in 2009. My understanding is that the path could simply be moved slightly inland when erosion occurs, remaining close to the cliff edge… But that would require the cooperation of local landowners, including a golf course. In the meantime walkers enjoy fine views of local roads and roundabouts, although a small section of the path does still cut through part of the golf course, where I saw my first Early Purple Orchids Orchis mascula of the year, growing alongside Cowslips Primula veris, Bluebells Hyacinthoides non-scripta and Common Dog Violets Viola riviniana.

The Dorset coast is a stunning and fascinating place, rich in geology, wildlife and poetry. One day I’d like to live closer to it, and walk there often. John Masefield puts it better than I can, in his ballad Sea Fever:

I must go down to the seas again, for the call of the running tide
Is a wild call and a clear call that may not be denied;
And all I ask is a windy day with the white clouds flying,
And the flung spray and the blown spume, and the sea-gulls crying.

Till the next time, Jurassic Coast.

Cogden beach, looking west to Charmouth

Snake charming and lashings of ginger beer

Posted on April 15, 2012 by Becca

It has been a few weeks since my last blog entry: part of the reason for this is shown in the photo above, i.e. it’s been lambing time at Rushall Farm. This has obviously kept the farm staff very busy, and likewise the education team – everyone wants to come for a visit during lambing time, so all the field teachers have been working flat out. Which is not say that it hasn’t been fun. I’ve had some great school groups and done a lot of striding about up hill and down dale in the sunshine. It’s been great to have become part of the regular team at Rushall, and I’ll be back there again throughout summer term too.

The preternaturally warm early spring weather lured me out on my days off work, too. I went on a pleasant trudge around Donnington Castle one Sunday in March, and explored the woodlands behind to see what wildlife was stirring (apart from a dozen or so Newbury families sunbathing on the grass around the castle itself).

Castle Wood is an ancient semi-natural woodland, a woodland with native tree species that has been there continuously since 1600 AD. Such woodlands often have high biodiversity: they are rich in plant, fungi and animal species and provide valuable habitats in the British landscape (which has lost almost 90% of its original woodland cover). As someone who has spent a not inconsiderable portion of my adult life up trees trying to stop roads being built through ancient woodlands, I am probably biased… But I do like a good old woodland to potter about in. It’s almost as much fun as rock pooling or beach combing: that same mix of wildlife discovery, striking landscape and a sense of adventure.

Ironically, it is human management of such woodlands that best conserves their wildlife value. Traditionally woodlands such as these would have been a source of timber and firewood, with some of the trees coppiced – cut down near the ground and allowed to regrow several smaller stems – on a rotation cycle, thus yielding a crop of timber but also opening up clearings and allowing flowers, insects and birds to flourish in the increased sunlight. You can see in the photo above a Hazel tree, which was probably last coppiced 50 years ago. In a ‘normal’ coppice rotation cycle, it would have been cut every 10 – 20 years, depending on what the resulting timber ‘poles’ would have been used for. Today woodland management such as coppicing is largely carried out by conservation organisations, although some land owners do harvest timber sustainably. At Rushall Farm, Joo – one of the field teachers – makes high-quality charcoal from wood sourced from the farm’s woodlands, which he sells locally. It’s always worth buying British charcoal rather than the stuff you see on garage forecourts – this is generally made from tropical forests. British charcoal burns hotter and cleaner, too.

I found this 7-Spot ladybird Coccinella 7-punctata trundling over the moss, happily prospecting for food in the mild weather. Good to see one of our native ladybird species as opposed to the now-ubiquitous Harlequin ladybird Harmonia axyridis, a species originally from eastern Asia which can out-compete and even feed on our native ladybirds. The whole ‘alien species’ issue is a hot topic in conservation and gardening circles, and rightly so: it costs conservation bodies, local authorities and environmental organisations millions of pounds each year to tackle problems caused by the spread of invasive plants and animals such as Japanese knotweed Fallopia japonica, New Zealand pygmyweed Crassula helmsii, and American Signal Crayfish Pacifastacus leniusculus. If you want to help control the problem, check out some of the links above and choose your garden plants carefully.

The warm temperatures have brought lots of spring flowers out early too: I spotted Coltsfoot Tussilago farfara beside the pond at Thatcham Nature Discovery Centre. This dandelion-like bloom always sends up its flowers with their curious scaly stems before its broad downy leaves appear. Reputedly the flowers can be brewed into a nice wine, whilst the leaves were once dried to make herbal tobacco. They have what I would describe as an apple-like scent if you crush them. The scientific name comes form the Latin tussis meaning cough: a syrup of Coltsfoot can be used to treat persistent coughing.

Cycling back from Thatcham along the towpath I came upon a whole bank of Sweet violets Viola odorata, many of the blooms the white variant of this particular species. As mentioned in my previous blog entry, I can’t get enough of violets so I lay full length on the bank in the sunshine, sniffing up their scent until my nose was anaesthetised and I had a big silly grin on my face. Luckily no-one came along the towpath at that point and found me, or they might have suspected I was under the influence of something slightly stronger than Coltsfoot wine.

It’s great to have so many peaceful and lovely natural spots within easy cycling distance of where I live. I took advantage of the continuing sunny weather to stop off for a picnic after a day’s teaching, in a secluded little spot tucked away in the reedbeds near Thatcham. Apart from the occasional distant roar of passing trains (a sound that I find quite soothing) it was basically just me and the Chiffchaffs (Phylloscopus collybita) doing their onomatopoeic thing in the willow scrub. A rye bread sandwich, a bottle of ginger beer and thou, as Omar Khayyam might have said had he been there. Which he wasn’t. So I got to drink a whole bottle of Fentimans ginger beer and eat all the posh crisps myself. Life doesn’t get much better than this.

Lest readers of this blog think I spend most of my time slacking off, I hasten to add that I have actually been working very hard over the past few weeks. One of my jobs is assisting ecological consultant Rod d’Ayala with the reptile surveys he is carrying out in the Greenham and Crookham Commons area. In particular, the surveys are aimed at identifying breeding and hibernation sites for Adders Vipera berus.

As Britain’s only venomous snake the Adder has unfairly been saddled with a fearsome reputation, but these wary creatures are very sensitive to disturbance and will usually get out of your way long before you see them. If you do something silly like trying to pick one up and get bitten, it’s highly unlikely to be fatal: the last death in the UK from an Adder bite was in 1975. If you stay on footpaths and don’t go poking around in the undergrowth on heathlands (where Adders tend to be found) then you should be safe enough. If you like to walk your dog in these areas, my advice is to keep it on a lead (which you should be doing anyway, if you’re walking through a nature reserve). As a reptile surveyor, I follow a specific route and check known locations for Adders and other reptiles, but even I find it hard enough to track them down. When I do come across an Adder I try my best to get close enough to take a clear photograph of the markings on its head and neck, as these enable us to identify individual animals and thus assess how well populations are faring on each site they are known to occur. The photograph below is of a particularly handsome and fat male I spotted on Crookham Common, curled up peacefully sunbathing in a clump of heather. Beautiful, isn’t he?

Of course I see lots of other wildlife while I’m out surveying for reptiles. On sunny days there have been quite a few butterflies about, including Brimstone Gonepteryx rhamni, Orange tip Anthocharis cardamines, Peacock Inachis io and Comma Polygonia c-album (pictured in the photo below). All of these early-flying species overwinter as hibernating adults (except the Orange Tip, which overwinters as a pupa), and consequently emerge in spring hungry for sources of nectar. You may also see them sunning themselves on south-facing banks or sheltered stretches of footpath, warming up their flight muscles ready to go searching for food. One thing that often surprises people is how territorial butterflies are: I watched a Comma sunbathing on a farm track at Rushall, where every few minutes it would dart upwards and see off any other butterflies that happened to fly past it (including a rather startled Peacock), with a rustle of flapping wings.

Whilst wandering through the woods at Rushall at the end of March I did see quite a few flowers blooming, including Primrose Primula vulgaris, Wood Anemone Anemone nemorosa and even some very early Bluebells Hyacinthoides non-scripta. Much as I love Bluebells, there is something slightly eerie about seeing them in flower in March… Climate change sceptics, please take note.

Another insect I spotted that appreciates Primroses and other spring flowers is the helpfully named Bee-fly, Bombylius major. Resembling a small bumble bee with its furry body and hovering habit, the Bee-fly also has an enormously long proboscis that it uses to feed on nectar, perching on flowers to do so. Female Bee-flies can often be seen flying low over the ground to search for tell-tale small holes marking the burrows of beetles, solitary bees and wasps. When they find a burrow they will lay their eggs in the soil, sometimes flicking them in with their legs. When the eggs hatch out they find a ready meal in the larva of the beetle, bee or wasp that was the original inhabitant of the burrow. Perhaps not the most savoury of life cycles, but I like Bee-flies: there’s something quite otherworldly about their appearance, and for me they are one of the signs of spring having truly arrived.

Sunshine and my allotment beckon, so my adventures over the Easter holidays (visiting a friend in south Wales) will have to wait until my next blog entry. I’ll wind this piece up by hoping that all of you have had a good Spring Equinox and Easter. As the hosepipe ban commences here in drought-ridden West Berkshire, I’m wishing for rain but hoping that most of it will come at night, rather than when I’m teaching school groups outdoors. Now where did I put my waterproof…

Lesser celandine (Ranunculus ficaria)

Bogs and Bonfires

Posted on January 22, 2012 by Becca

Wednesday was the weekly volunteer conservation task up at Greenham Common, and a welcome break for me from filling out grant applications and website building. The midweek group carries out practical tasks and wildlife surveys at various sites including Greenham and Crookham Commons, Bowdown Nature Reserve and Thatcham Reedbeds. These all fall into a larger area designated as the West Berkshire Living Landscape project, a conservation initiative run jointly by BBOWT and West Berkshire Countryside Service to improve wildlife habitats and promote involvement and appreciation by local people.

This week we were at Brackenhurst (an area on the south side of Greenham Common), which is also one of the sites that I help survey for reptiles. We were clearing birch scrub from a wet valley bog (or mire) that runs down to the woodland edge there, to enable it to remain as an open wet habitat rather than getting taken over by trees and drying out. A lot of practical conservation in the UK consists of this sort of thing – halting the natural development (or succession, as it’s known) of open habitats like heathlands, marsh and grasslands, because for most areas in Britain the natural state would be woodland. It might seem a funny sort of way to help the environment – cutting down trees – but heathlands such as Greenham cannot be managed as open habitats by grazing alone, and without this kind of intervention most areas would ‘scrub up’ and become woodland… With a consequent loss of wildlife species associated with open habitats.

Plants that are found in these damp valley bogs include Sphagnum mosses, Sundews (Drosera species, carnivorous plants), Cross-leaved Heath Erica tetralix and Bog asphodel Narthecium ossifragum. They are also valuable to animals such as dragonflies, Bog Bush cricket Metrioptera bracyptera, and reptiles and amphibians including Grass snakes Natrix natrix and newt species. It being only January, there wasn’t much wildlife in evidence to be photographed: a Buzzard Buteo buteo flew over, whistling loudly, but lacking a zoom lens my photo of it wasn’t worth posting here – unless you have a good imagination!

Usually we stack some of the cut scrub to make habitat piles that will be used by small mammals, insects and other animals: we also burn some of it, which has the pleasant side benefit of boiling our storm kettle for tea breaks, the mainstay of all voluntary conservation work. We still had some munchables left over from our Christmas barbecue, so everyone tucked into gingerbread men and biccies whilst finding time to admire items of protective clothing, such as Mike’s kneepads!

Ade (West Berkshire Ranger) and Roger (BBOWT Living Landscape Project Officer) who usually manage the Wednesday work parties were both busy elsewhere

this week, so under the capable supervision of four BBOWT trainees we cleared a considerable amount of scrub, with a midway lunch break featuring (of course) more tea and biscuits. Conservation can be quite hard physical work, so it’s always heartening when task leaders understand the importance of keeping their volunteers’ caffeine and blood sugar levels regularly topped up! A process that was further aided by the discovery of a bag of marshmallows (also left over from our Christmas bash). Toasting sticks were deftly whittled into shape, and soon people were tucking into smoking caramelised treats with only a few minor tongue burns (approximate core temperature of toasted marshmallows being slightly less than the centre of the Sun).

These Wednesday volunteering sessions are always enjoyable, whatever the weather, and the people who come are friendly and often very knowledgeable about local wildlife. Anyone can join and all tools and protective kit (work gloves etc) are provided, you just need to bring a packed lunch if you’re staying for the whole day. Ade or Roger are the folks to get in touch with to find out more – see my links to West Berkshire Countryside Service or BBOWT at the start of this blog entry.

Intrepid BBOWT trainees demonstrate safe marshmallow toasting technique!

Rowanleaf

Writing, Singing & Teaching About The World

Tag Archives: activism

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Bogs and Bonfires