Gods and government, proud warriors and foreign invaders: discovering the landscapes and history of Atiu… South Pacific Adventure, part 8.

Posted on March 10, 2021 by Becca

(For new readers – if you’re just discovering this blog and you would like to read about my 2015 South Pacific travels from their beginning, you can click on this link to go to the first chapter: Travels in the Cook Islands.)

My second day on Atiu began with a gargantuan breakfast, fuel for the day’s explorations. Donna, Mark and I then jumped into Marshall’s truck and we picked up the three other tourists currently staying on the island, before heading out on a tour. First stop was the nearby village of Teenui, the closest thing that Atiu has to a busy metropolis.

Downtown Teenui village, Atiu (the Cook Islands).

On an island with a population of around 500 people, you’re unlikely to see much other traffic (apart from chickens). Marshall gave us a tour of Teenui’s sights, starting with the recently-created sports field, which had to be redone after the island was hit by five cyclones in a single season. Climate change is likely to lead to intensified cyclone activity in the South Pacific, so this doesn’t bode well for the people who live on islands such as Atiu.

Teenui sports field on Atiu, the Cook Islands.

We drove past the village store, which was originally the first school on the island (built by the London Mission Society). As elsewhere in the Cook Islands, imported (mostly Christian) religions have had a big impact on local society and culture. There are six churches on Atiu, including CICC (Cook Islands Christian Church), Catholic, Seventh Day Adventists and Jehovah’s Witnesses. Atiu people can and do marry folks from different churches, although this depends on each church’s policy: not every faith allows it.

Church in Teenui, Atiu (the Cook Islands).

Our next stop was the island police station (which also serves as Teenui’s bank and post office). Marshall explained that there are two police officers on Atiu, and the consensus is that no crime occurs after 3pm because that’s when they go off-duty… Or on Friday afternoons, because that’s the time for fishing. I quite liked the idea of limited hours for law-breaking. Presumably having the bank attached to the police station also discourages would-be bank robbers (unless of course they decide to carry out a bank raid after 3pm).

Police station, bank and post office in Teenui, Atiu (the Cook Islands).

The legacy of colonial occupation can be seen in government buildings, as well as in the ubiquitous churches. Atiu’s council chamber and tax filing office (Kavamani Enua, or Island Government) are based in what used to be the old British Foreign Office building, when B.F.O. staff were posted on the island. British colonial rule from the 1880s became New Zealand colonial rule in 1901: full independence and self-governance in the Cook Islands not being achieved until 1965.

Island government building in Teenui, Atiu (the Cook Islands).

Other important buildings we saw included the CICC hall, used for singing and dancing events; and the CICC church building itself, the largest church on the island. As on Aitutaki, there were very few graves beside the church, with local people choosing to bury their deceased family at home: only incomers or strangers usually find their resting place in the church cemetery.

Next to the church a limestone obelisk called te pito, ‘the navel’, marks what is said to be the exact centre point of the island. It carries the name of Paulo Ngamaru Ariki, the Atiuan chief who helped restore the CICC church in the 1950s; and Tamaivi Ngamaru Ariki, the chief who planned and built the original church in the 1860s. There are three ariki (chiefs) on Atiu: at the time of my visit only two lived on the island, while the third resided in New Zealand. Ariki descends in family lines, but not automatically to the eldest son of the family: local worthies meet to decide who will make the best successor, when the current ariki dies.

Monument to Atiuan chiefs Paulo Ngamaru Ariki and Tamaivi Ngamaru Ariki, at the centre of Atiu in the Cook islands.

As we travelled around Teenui it was quiet: we saw the occasional local driving a pick-up or moped; children strolling or playing; and of course chickens and dogs patrolling the mostly empty roads. With the population size having reduced by two-thirds in the late twentieth century (mostly due to the decline of exports of produce such as citrus fruits, coffee and copra), community life here is small-scale but still vibrant, with regular community meetings in each of the five villages.

Atiuan boy raking up leaves in Teenui, Atiu (the Cook Islands).

Heading out of Teenui our next stop was the island’s Enuamanu School, which bore a banner celebrating 50 years since the school – and Cook Islands self government – was established in 1965. All stages of education – infants, primary, secondary and college – are contained on the same site. Marshall told us that Cook Islands Maori is the first language taught in Enuamanu School and English second (unlike on Rarotonga). This prioritising of Cook Islands language seems positive, though unfortunately Atiu pupils are disadvantaged when they sit exams under the New Zealand exam system, as exams are set in English. Marshall said that for this reason he and Jéanne home-educated their children, to try to overcome this problem.

Enuamanu School, Atiu (in the Cook Islands).

After the school our next landmark was the village bakery, complete with cement bread oven! It reminded me of the cob oven (earth oven) at Wildwood Escot where I teach in Devon: basically a simple interior oven space enclosed in thick cement walls, heated by burning firewood inside. Should any cracks form in the oven’s walls (revealed by leaking smoke), this is mended by the simple expedient of plastering more cement on the outside… Hence the resulting huge oven structure, sheltering under its corrugated iron roof.

Bread oven in Atiu's bakery, the Cook Islands.

Once the wood has burned and the oven is heated, the ashes are swept out and the tins of bread dough popped inside to bake. The whole set-up is basic but practical, with the only machinery used a giant dough mixer that looked more like a cement mixer than anything else! I quite liked the minimalist kitchen (although I’m not sure what having a lawnmower stored in there added to the mix).

Bread tins in Atiu's bakery (the Cook Islands).

A little further down the road lay Atiu’s telecom mast, phone satellite and TV station. Microwave antennae capture signals transmitted from Mangaia and Mitiaro and boost them onwards. Atiu’s TV channel can receive several signals, but can only transmit one signal at a time to island residents – so locals have to be patient and cooperate with each other, taking turns to watch their favourite TV programmes. At least that avoids TV ratings competition…

Phone satellite, telecom mast and TV station on Atiu, the Cook Islands.

Our next stop was at a coffee plantation, formerly owned and run by German growers Juergen Manske-Eimke and his wife Andrea. Their business ended when Juergen sadly died in mid-2015, but the coffee bushes were continuing to grow well. Missionaries first brought coffee to the island, and it became a cash crop in the 1950s. The island’s calcium-rich soils lend Atiu coffee a unique flavour, and despite fluctauations in the coffee trade it continues to be grown and sold. The production of Atiu Island Coffee is now headed up by local woman Mata Arai, using hand picking and roasting with coconut cream, giving this coffee a very special taste.

Coffee plantation on Atiu, the Cook Islands.

Coming through the forest we emerged near the island’s airport. While we watched a Pacific golden plover or toretoreā (Pluvialis fulva) pottering about on the runway, Marshall related how an Air Raro plane had a tyre blowout while taxiing on the crushed coral runway a year or so previously. It must be interesting being an Air Raro pilot! A request had gone in for a new tarmac runway to replace the crushed coral surface. Locals had already begun clearing the site and bringing in machinery, only waiting for funding to be found so that they can begin work. Marshall also showed us two massive blocks of coral (each half as big as the pick-up we were riding in) that had been thrown up onto the runway by the sea during a cyclone in 2005.

Makatea cliffs on the northeast coast of Atiu, the Cook Islands.

Southeast of the airstrip we hopped out of Marshall’s pick up to walk over the makatea to the cliff tops on Atiu’s northeastern edge. Just as we’d found the day before when trekking to Anatakitaki, walking on makatea requires concentration. We were stepping over a fossilised coral reef, its rugged and undulating topography mirroring the choppy Pacific swell surging below us. Hardy plants such as ngau (Creeping half-flower, Scaevola paulayi) wedged their roots into the crevices, growing in wind-resistant mats and weathering the salt spray.

Plants growing on makatea (fossilised coral) on Atiu, the Cook Islands.

It wasn’t easy to picture the sharp crags of limestone that we were walking on as an undersea coral reef, millenia ago… Until I crouched down and looked closer, when an ancient tropical ocean landscape became revealed. I saw intricate patterns of many different coral species: hieroglyphics written in the skeletons of billions of long-dead coral polyps. There is always something mesmerising to me about being confronted with the geological evidence of deep time. Humanity takes itself and its everyday concerns so seriously… But really we’re just a recent blip on the evolutionary timeline. For some reason I find this weirdly comforting.

Fossilised corals in makatea limestone, Atiu (the Cook Islands).

Driving soutthest took us along the coast road that runs all the way around Atiu, with its handy signs at intervals indicating the distance to landmarks in either direction. Our next stop was at Oneroa Beach, a beautiful little cove with pinkish coral sand used by Marshall and Jéanne’s family. The edge of the reef is very close here, the wild Pacific surf rolling just a few metres out.

After a brief but lovely wander along Oneroa Beach, we returned to the truck and drove on along the coast road to Takauroa Landing on the island’s southern edge. This was the scene of an epic battle between Atiu warriors and invaders from Tahiti. History tells of how a Tahitian traveller shipwrecked on Atiu was cared for and nursed back to health by Atiu folk, but then travelled back to Tahiti… Only to return to Atiu with two vaka (war canoes) loaded with two hundred Tahitian warriors! Fortunately for the locals they were able to ambush the Tahitian invaders as they tried to access the island’s interior through a narrow passage in the makatea: after a pitched battle the Atiuans won. The ungrateful Tahitian who’d led his fellows back to Atiu was reputedly hunted down, fought with by the ariki, and killed. (And allegedly eaten, which seems fair enough.) Two marae at Takaroa Landing mark the burial sites of all those warriors who fell in battle defending their island.

Marae at Takauroa Landing on Atiu, the Cook Islands.

Here in the southern part of the island, the makatea is pretty impenetrable, with its combination of thick tangled undergrowth and forest on top of sharp craggy fossilised limestone. Marshall related how a local lawbreaker evaded arrest by local police for some time by hiding out in the makatea. After a few weeks however the wrongdoer turned himself in, finding living in the challenging landscape of the makatea too difficult!

Makatea scrub on Atiu, the Cook Islands.

A little further on into the coastal forest Marshall stopped the truck to show us a fruits from a boxfruit tree (Barringtonia asiatica or ‘utu). The seed from the centre of ‘utu fruits can be ground up or chopped to release a poison, which paralyses fish if the ground seeds are scattered into the sea. Formerly used for fishing in the coral lagoon, this is now illegal: a local man was recently caught using ‘utu poison in this way and fined $500 (after having been warned several times not to do this).

Marshall Humphreys displays Baringtonia or 'utu fruits, once used to poison fish but now illegal (Atiu, the Cook Islands).

Heading now up the western side of the island we stopped at Taungaroro Beach, which like Oneroa was beautiful and deserted. Walking through the sand and looking out to the Pacific waves splashing against the coral reef, I felt a little like Robinson Crusoe (although hopefully without the white imperialist overtones).

Taungaroro Beach on Atiu (the Cook Islands).

It’s not just coral which makes up the pinkish sands fringeing these islands: billions of fragments of seashells too are rendered down by the action of waves and wind to create the lovely beaches that are such an iconic element of Pacific islands. I spent a happy half hour wandering and gathering seashells, including many cowries or pōre‘o. In many places in the world cowries have traditionally been used as currency: in the Cook Islands they were favoured more for jewellery, especially to convey status to the wearer.

Taungaroro was also the spot where we had a picnic lunch, to fortify us after our morning’s exploring. Banana muffins, fresh fruit salad with papaya and guava and pawpaw sprinkled with grated coconut, and a nice cup of tea to wash it all down: perfect.

After lunch I went wandering a little way into the coastal forest, to admire the tropical trees with their buttressed roots and epiphytic ferns growing in nooks amongst the branches. Atiu was a delight to a plant nerd like me: while my tropical botany knowledge wasn’t good enough for me to identify many species, I still felt happily at home in this green growing ecosystem, relatively unimpacted by tourism.

Tree growing in coastal forest, Atiu (the Cook Islands).

The plan was for us to continue on up the coastal road northwards to Oravaru landing – but our plans were temporarily foiled by a roadblock in the form of a fallen tree. We detoured via Ngatiarua village and back out to the coast by another route, finally reaching Oravaru on the west coast.

Fallen tree blocking coastal road, Atiu (the Cook Islands).

If you search on the internet for information about the Cook Islands’ colonial history, it describes how Spanish explorers sighted Pukapuka and Rakahanga (in the northern islands group) in 1595 and 1606; then Captain James Cook sighted other islands in the 1770s; followed by Captain William Bligh in 1789 (whose tyrannical captainship led to the mutiny on his ship the Bounty). The name ‘the Cook Islands’ was conferred by Russian navigator Adam Johann von Krusenstern in his 1823 Atlas de l’Ocean Pacifique, in honour of the surveying and mapping done by Captain James Cook: previously they were named the Hervey Islands after a British Lord of the Admiralty.

Ironically Cook himself never landed on Atiu during his voyage on the ship Resolution: instead one of his officers, Lieutenant John Gore went ashore in 1777, accompanied by the ship’s doctor, botanist and three boatloads of crew. They were met by some two thousand Atiuan warriors and people lining the clifftops, with full body tattoos and carrying spears – no doubt an intimidating sight. Bear in mind that on one of Cook’s previous expeditions to Tahiti, John Gore was the first person ever recorded to shoot and kill an indigenous Pacific Maori person, after an altercation over a piece of cloth. These were not casual explorers but the vanguard of a powerful military empire, intent on mapping and colonising what they regarded as ‘uncivilised’ territories, largely ignoring the rights of the indigenous people already living there.

Oravaru Landing, where Captain James Cook's crew first landed on Atiu in 1777 (the Cook Islands).

Gore’s party were taken inland by the Atiuans to the Orongo marae and cave of the warriors, which would have been an impressive and unsettling sight. It’s said that the landing party’s Polynesian interpreter saw a prepared umu pit (earth oven) but no animal carcasses, and assumed that this meant that they were on the menu! This proved not to be the case however: after being ceremonially introduced to the ariki and being the subject of several hours of close curiosity from the Atiuans, the landing party was allowed to return to their ship.

Marshall told us of an ancient local tradition, that when a new baby boy was born the child was taken to the tribal priest at the Orongo marae, who would wrap the baby up in leaves and leave him on the marae altar overnight. In the morning if the baby had managed to break free of his leaf swaddling he would be raised as a warrior at the Orongo marae and taught how to fight. If the baby was still wrapped in the leaves, the child would be returned to his parents and grow up to be a fisherman or planter.

Orongo marae was also the final resting place of the skulls of the island’s ariki, as well as those of great and heroic warriors. It was and still is a sacred place. In the 1960s two Mormon missionaries visiting the island were disrespectful and foolish enough to remove a skull from the Orongo cave, intending to take it with them to Rarotonga… But the woman missionary died before they got there. The skull was swiftly returned and replaced at Orongo.

The archaeology and history of pre-colonial times in the Cook Islands was seemingly only just beginning to be shown the interest and respect it deserves, at the time of my visit in 2015. I was reminded of Ngaa’s determined labours on Aitutaki to preserve and pass on the culture and history of his people. Compare this with the wealth of research and fieldwork that has been done on ancient cultures such as Egypt, Greece and South America. I suspect that partly this is due to the legacy of colonialism, and the fact that we white Europeans are still reluctant to engage with the reality of our colonial history: a history that contains a great deal of brutality and exploitation, and which persists to this day in some people’s colonial or white supremacist mindset. Too often I’ve heard white people try to diminish the impact of colonialism by saying “Explorers then didn’t know any better”, or “Every European nation was doing the same thing”, or even “These cultures had plenty of their own problems before we came along – what about their inter-island wars and cannibalism?” These defensive responses are missing the point: white colonial powers invaded lands, imposed Christian religion (with all its guilt-ridden and problematic dogma), took whatever resources they fancied, and ruthlessly eradicated many indigenous people through military force and disease. If someone did that to Britain we’d call it an act of war.

When we returned to Marshall and Jéanne’s home, I found a wonderful book on their shelves: Akono’ango Maori: Cook Islands Culture, by Ron Crocombe. Browsing through it I came upon a remarkable photograph taken circa 1904, titled ‘Ngatiarua on Atiu in old time dress‘. The dignity and pride of these muscled men standing with their heavy spears, gazing directly into the camera lens, shone out of the page.

Ngatiarua men on Atiu, the Cook Islands: photo taken circa 1904.

As a privileged white tourist in the South Pacific, I felt enormously grateful to have the opportunity to travel in these beautiful islands, and to meet the friendly and generous people who lived there. This friendliness and generosity is even more remarkable, given the explotiation of their lands and people ever since white colonisers first began occupying their territories. Writing this blog is my effort to show my gratitude to all the Cook Islands and South Pacific Maori and Polynesian people who welcomed me into their homes; and to raise awareness as far as I can of the destructive impact of European colonialism, and the importance of honouring South Pacific culture. It’s vital too that we take rapid steps to limit climate change caused by our industrialised nations, the latest colonial legacy to threaten the safety and future of Pacific island peoples.

I had only one more day to spend on Atiu. I could’ve happily spent another month there (and not just because of Marshall’s mouth-watering cooking!). I felt happily at home on this quiet little island with its rich history and diverse wildlife; its rugged makatea and green forest; and the shell-scattered beaches and sacred marae, freighted with memories and meaning.

Standing on Oneroa Beach on Atiu, the Cook Islands.

As Rowanleaf I write, photograph, teach and sing about the world, for the world. If you enjoy my work and would like to help support me to keep on doing it, please consider buying me a coffee at KoFi, or making a regular donation via Patreon. The links are here below: much gratitude to all those who have encouraged and supported me thus far. <3
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Coming up next time, in South Pacific Adventure part 9:

Aliens, natives, lorikeets, flycatchers and noddies: travels with Birdman George
in Enuamanu, Land of the Birds.

Big whales, big waves, and big respect to Aitutaki culture… South Pacific Adventure, part 6

Posted on January 27, 2021 by Becca

(For new readers: if you’re just discovering this blog and you would like to read about my South Pacific travels from the beginning, you can click on this link to go to the first chapter: Travels in the Cook Islands.)

Humpback whale tail flukes at ocean surface, off the coast of Aitutaki

I’d got the hang of riding one of Matriki’s sturdy (albeit basic) bicycles, so on a hot and sunny Monday morning I ventured all the way to O’otu at the Aitutaki’s northeastern edge. I was tempted by the prospect of snorkeling in the gorgeous lagoon, but it was a sweltering day for cycling… And it turned out that visibility in the sandy waters at O’otu was limited at best. As if in sympathy with the murky visibility, the viewfinder of my underwater camera suddenly started to look a little foggy too… Before the camera gave up the ghost and stopped working.

Frantic efforts to revive the wretched gadget with freshwater rinsing, drying it, and then packing it in uncooked rice were totally unsuccessful. I contemplated spending the rest of my South Pacific travels unable to take photographs, which plunged me into a pit of despondency… My trip of a lifetime, and I wouldn’t be able to record any more of the amazing nature and landscapes and adventures I was encountering. (I know: first world problems, please don’t despise me.)

As I was sunk in angst, salvation came in the form of Trevor appearing at my beach hut to announce that he was heading out on a whale-spotting boat trip with a few of the Matriki guests that afternon, and did I want to come along? I stiffened my wobbly lip and replied in the affirmative, carpe-ing the diem as I realised for the umpteenth time that here I was in a gorgeous paradise with friendly folks and amazing wildlife, and a broken camera wasn’t the end of the world.

Spotting a humpback whale's tailflukes on the horizon: thar she blows!

It’s only when we puttered out on Trevor’s little boat through Arutanga harbour and the reef passage into the open sea that the vastness of the South Pacific really hit me. As soon as you get outside the coral reef’s sheltering embrace, the ocean floor rapidly falls away to thousands of metres deep. My trip around the lagoon and motu with Puna a few days previously had been in sheltered shallow turquoise waters of five to ten metres: now we were bobbing over a Pacific swell, over midnight blue depths of over a thousand fathoms. Aitutaki dwindled and disappeared into the horizon, until all around us was nothing but ocean.

Trevor told us to keep our gaze trained on the surrounding seascape, to try to spot the spurt of exhaled breath or flick of tail flukes that would signal that humpback whales were in our vicinty. Although I’d heard reports from locals of occasional whale sightings offshore in the past few weeks, I was prepared for the disappointment of a no-show. Minutes stretched into nearly an hour with no sightings except a flying fish (local name māroro) Cheilopogon antoncichi – which was exciting enough to cheer me up!

Suddenly Nick, the thirteen year-old son of Kiwi tourists Tanya and Alex, shouted that he’d spotted something: Trevor affirmed the sighting and put the boat on a heading towards the far blue distance. And within half a minute all of us on the boat could see it too: the flick of a mighty tail as a whale dived towards the deeps.

As soon as we were at a cautious but close enough distance, Trevor killed the boat engine and there was a frenzied flurry amongst some of us on board to scramble into mask and fins and slip over the side into the sea. As soon as I submerged into the water I could see two sub-adult humpbacks and a calf, gliding through the infinite blue sea-space with slow undulations of their tailfins. I was overwhelmed: feelings of awe, joy, nervousness, wonder. Swimming with humpbacks hadn’t been on my South Pacific wishlist yet here I was, sharing this underwater world with three massive marine kin.

Known locally as to‘orā, the humpback whale (Megaptera novaeangliae) is an uncommon migrant species which in 2008 was downlisted from ‘Vulnerable’ to ‘Least concern’ in conservation status by the IUCN. Estimated global population is 80,000 whales (just under two-thirds of the 125,000 humpbacks thought to have existed before commercial whaling began). The whales I was watching in the waters off Aitutaki weren’t feeding: they were living off body fat accumulated in their summer harvest of krill and small fish in the frigid but fertile waters of Antarctica. The calf with them would still be suckling milk and learning how to swim. As I hung below the surface of the Pacific I could hear the songs of the males, squeaks and whoops and long hoots that echoed through the aquamarine depths. (You can listen to them too in these two short film clips, recorded by German tourist Frank and kindly shared with me afterwards: a whale singing and two whales swimming and singing.) Only the male whales sing: and the whale songs here at Aitutaki are different to those sung at Tonga or elsewhere.

Two days after my magical visitation with the humpback whales I had another wonderful gift of a day. It began with Trevor and Tracey generously lending me a digital camera for my Punarei Aitutaki Cultural Tour; which then meant that I could take photos to record all the amazing things shared by local historian, archaeologist and champion of Aitutaki traditional culture, Ngaa (full name Ngaakaara Kita Taria Pureariki).

Me with Ngaakaara Kita Taria Pureariki, known as Ngaa: Aitutaki's superhero of traditional culture.

I liked Ngaa from the moment I met him, with his infectious enthusiasm, warm smile and determination to honour the rich heritage of his island’s history and people. Astonishingly, in the Cook Islands school history curriculum there is nothing about Cook Islands Maori culture, with the only history taught starting in the post-colonial era. Ngaa himself is working largely without support, to preserve and promote traditional Aitutaki culture. In a nation where the Christian church is central to most people’s lives and also to political and civic society, celebrating traditional culture is often seen as pagan, anti-Christian and wrong. Ngaa told me that sometimes he felt lonely in his work… But he knows he was born to do it.

Making woven palm leaf bowls at Punarei on Aitutaki, under Ngaa's guidance.

The day’s experience was hands-on, with Ngaa teaching us to make cooking mats and food bowls from woven coconut leaves; and how to cook our lunch in an umu (earth oven, with leaf-wrapped food cooked on fire-heated stones). On his family land at Punarei, Ngaa has recreated traditional Aitutaki houses with their steep pitched roofs (more cyclone-proof than modern dwellings).

The settlement of Polynesia and the Cook Islands is an evolving archaeological science, but it’s thought that from 1500 BC onwards the Lapita (early ancestors of Maori and Polynesians) travelled east and south from Papua New Guinea to populate what is now known as Polynesia. Over millenia the eastward migration continued, until the first peoples are believed to have settled on Aitutaki around 800-900 AD. Ngaa related how there are now twelve tribes on the island, with twelve sacred sites. Their history was kept alive by oral tradition, with women being the storytellers (possibly because the men were warriors who often died young).

When white Christian missionaries arrived on Aitutaki in the early 1800s they brought conveniences such as iron tools, sugar and kerosene… But they also forbade and devalued local culture, knowledge and traditions, systematically dismantling Aitutaki life. The colonisers carried infectious diseases with them such as leprosy and measles, to which the local people had little or no resistance.

Traditional Aitutaki house with steeply-pitched roof

When these white Christian missionaries arrived in the Cook Islands, they regarded tiki – wood or stone carvings in humanoid form – as pagan idols, to be removed or destroyed. On other islands many were burned, but by chance a white trader saw the potential to make a quick profit and sold many Aitutaki tiki to collectors overseas. Thirty-one tiki figures were taken from Aitutaki in the 1820s, ending up in European collections. Ngaa has carved tiki inspired by these original Aitutaki pieces, which he has managed to track down in museums all over the world.

Tiki figure carved by Ngaa, at Punarei on Aitutaki.

When I met Ngaa in autumn 2015 he had just returned from visiting museums in Munich, Barcelona and Cambridge to view these Aitutakian artefacts… Including tiki such as the tattooed female figure of a high-ranking founding ancestor of Aitutaki, which was displayed in the ‘Treasures Of Oceania’ exhibition in the Royal Academy in London in 2018.

It was obvious that having seen these artefacts from his own culture meant a great deal to Ngaa: but when I asked him if he wanted them to be returned to the Cook Islands he sadly replied that there seemed to be little political will to bring such cultural treasures home and conserve them properly. All the more impressive that Ngaa and his family (such as mother, pictured below teaching us how to weave the palm-leaf roofing used on huts) are doing such important and vital work, bringing their culture and history alive and passing on its creativity, strength and stories to the next generation.

Despite a lack of official support, Ngaa is working hard to bring Aitutaki’s history and culture to the schoolchildren and young people of the island, as well as sharing it with visiting tourists. He hopes to continue excavating local sites, researching artefacts taken into private collections, and collecting and singing the ancient chants and songs that form the oral history of his people. (There were at least three hundred chants, for everything from harvesting and cooking to gardening and hunting.) The language spoken on Aitutaki is unique, as on other islands: there are 15 different island languages in this South Pacific nation. I learned a few phrases: Po’ pongi (Good morning, “sun rise”); Ae’ i au (Good afternoon, “sun dimming”); and Pae’ ae koe (How are you).

I found Ngaa’s knowledge fascinating, his intentions inspiring, and his passion infectious. As someone who works in oral tradition (leading community choir singing) and outdoor teaching with children and young folks, my heart really warmed to him. I hope that his work continues to develop successfully, and his mission to keep his people’s culture alive flourishes. And if you want to support his work, he will shortly be publishing a book about Aitutaki’s history (working title: Food For Flame), which I will include a link for here as soon as it becomes available.

Ngaakaara Kita Taria Pureariki sharing his knowledge of the traditional uses of local plants, at Punarei on Aitutaki

Back at Matriki that evening I celebrated my lovely day by joining Trevor and Tracey and some other tourist visitors for a shared meal on the beach. The conversation took an unexpected turn, when someone mentioned that there was a tsunami warning for the South Pacific region, after a big earthquake that day in Chile. Tracey confirmed she’d received several email tsunami alerts, though to put it in context Trevor told us they receive one every few weeks on average. In the resort next door the guests had apparently been freaking out and had to be reassured by the resort manager going round to calm things down… But at Matriki there was a pretty laid-back attitude, with discussion of a possible six-foot wave arriving between midnight and 1.00 AM (to put this in context, Tracey did point out that this would mean the beach huts would be in the sea!).

Tiger the cat relaxing on the beach at Matriki, Aitutaki

Conversation turned to folkloric natural signs of impending tsunami: the sea drawing back, banana tree shoots bending over, crabs heading inland or climbing up trees. Suddenly we all got very interested in knowing where the Matriki cats were; but it turned out that Tuxi was perched contentedly on a chair, Bubbles was sat on the beach gazing out to sea, and Marmalade was fast asleep in a flowerbed. Finding this weirdly reassuring, we all agreed to adjourn to bed. Tracey said that if any of us heard anything (i.e. the roar of an approaching tsunami) to yell and alert everybody else and then head straight to the house: from where she and Trevor would put us in the pick-up and drive to a high point (the Piraki viewpoint).

It felt surreal to be going to bed, with the knowledge that a tsunami was possibly rolling across the Pacific Ocean towards us. In our dinner table conversation we’d all studiously avoided mentioning the Boxing Day tsunami of 2004, which killed an estimated 228,000 people in countries around the Indian Ocean… But I’m pretty sure that more than one of us was thinking about it. All those ‘Tsunami Evacuation Route’ signs I’d seen on Rarotonga didn’t seem funny any more.

Sunset on the beach at Matriki, Aitutaki

As so often happens in times of stress, my sensible head switched itself on: I filled my backpack with essentials, ready to be grabbed should I need to evacuate in a hurry. Obvious stuff like water, snacks, first aid kit, medicines, lighter, penknife, headtorch, mobile phone, passport and wallet all went in… Plus my journal, a carved stone heart, and a copy of Peace Is Every Step by Thich Nhat Hanh. I curled up in bed dressed for action and lay there in the dark listening intently to the sound of the sea breaking on the reef, and wondering if the waves sounded like they were getting bigger. But the human mind is good at accommodating what it can’t do anything about: I trusted in the good folks of Matriki and my preparations, sent a metta prayer out into the universe, and fell asleep…

…And woke the next morning to a beach undisturbed by giant waves, where the cats rolled in the warm sand and stalked fish in the shallows. My last full day on Aitutaki, which I commemorated by going for a farewell snorkel in the lagoon to say goodbye to all the little fishies and corals. As evening fell I watched another glorious sunset, before going to watch a resort Island Night from the beach nearby. Lots of drumming and singing and fire staff dancing, completely inauthentic (most of the this entertainment style is imported from Hawaii) but lots of enthusiasm. I enjoyed it, but found myself thinking of Ngaa and his mission to keep the authentic culture of his people on Aitutaki alive.

I know that I would be leaving Aitutaki the following morning, to continue on my travels to the smaller island of Atiu… And I wondered if I would ever return to this beautiful, complex, diverse place; to its warm, friendly, proud, intelligent people. I hope that the future for Aitutaki holds safe and sustainable lives, not so dependent on tourist cash; safety from cyclone and tsunami and climate change; and deep connection with the rich legacy of their past and their culture. Kia manuia!

Sun setting into the South Pacific ocean, Aitutaki

I write, photograph, teach and sing about the world, for the world. If you enjoy my work and would like to help support me to keep on doing it, please consider buying me a coffee at KoFi, or making a regular donation via Patreon. The links are here below: much gratitude to all those who have encouraged and supported me thus far. <3
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Coming up next time, in South Pacific Adventure part 7:

Ancient coral cliffs and dodgy landings; swimming in caves and spotting birds that live in the dark: exploring Atiu, wild little gem of the Cook Islands.

Not months but moments

Posted on August 6, 2013 by Becca

‘The butterfly counts not months but moments, and has time enough.’
– Rabindranath Tagore

I start this blog entry with the above quote for a number of reasons, not the least of which being that time recently has seemed in short supply. Summer term is always busy for me on the field teaching front, and in June and July I worked several fifty-hour weeks. At the time it seemed like a good idea… And I certainly enjoyed the teaching. But working silly hours catches up with you: and lo and behold, I am now feeling thoroughly frazzled.

As this is self-inflicted suffering, I’m not asking for sympathy. It’s taken me a fortnight of not teaching to realise just how ‘busy’ I allowed my life to become. While it’s always nice to be working (paying the monthly bills being the tiresomely necessary process it is), like other members of my family I have a tendency to be a workaholic. This is promoted by the fact that I do work that is generally fulfilling and positive – i.e. environmental education, wildlife conservation, and teaching singing in groups.

One remedy for this is to get away for a bit. Luckily, I’d arranged some weeks ago to go on a camping weekend with some friends in the Cotswold countryside. A group of us stayed at a peaceful campsite on an organic farm near Stroud. The weather was glorious, the people in our group lovely, and I did manage to defrag my hard drive somewhat.

About half an hour’s walk from the campsite, through some National Trust woodland, is a beautiful lake fringed with water lilies and humming with blue damselflies. Several of us from the group, including children, spent two afternoons swimming here. One of the women whom I swam with, who is German, remarked on how curious it is that so few British people swim in outdoor places such as lakes and rivers; whereas in Europe it is a totally normal and common activity.

While ‘wild swimming’ has recently started to enjoy a revival in this country, it still seems to be regarded as an eccentric fringe activity, or even as something trangressive or reckless. I’m not sure exactly why this should be, but I suspect it has to do with two possible factors. One is exaggerated fear about safety. I fully accept that swimming anywhere (including in a pool) carries risk, and there were a few tragic fatalities during the recent heatwave where unfortunate people went swimming in dangerous places. But provided that one follows common-sense guidelines (such as those recommended by the Outdoor Swimming Society), the risk can be managed.

The other issue seems to be access, or lack of it. At the lake where we swam we did have a minor confrontation with a thoroughly unpleasant and aggressive angler who took grave exception to the fact that we were planning to swim in the lake – this despite the fact that the said lake was almost a kilometre long, and there appeared to be ample room for swimmers and anglers alike. After failing to intimidate us (although he did succeed in frightening some of the children in our group) he stomped back into the bushes, while we walked on and found a pleasant and safe swimming spot that was nowhere near any fishing activity.

Being something of a bolshie I tend to be strengthened in my determination to do something if someone authoritatively attempts to dissuade me from doing it. Nevertheless, I am disturbed by the fact that someone feels they should enjoy exclusive access to a body of water simply because they have paid a fee to fish in one small corner of it. Provided that wild swimmers act safely, treat swimming sites with respect (including respecting wildlife) and do not disturb other people, what’s the problem?

The angry angler incident was soon forgotten in the pleasure of swimming in cool water in such beautiful surroundings. The campsite itself was a lovely place, woodland-fringed with spacious tent pitches and few campers (the farm has a policy of limiting the numbers of people who can stay at any one time). There were eco-showers, washing up areas and very upmarket compost toilets: lah-di-dah loos, as a friend of mine might call them. With potted geraniums, mirrors, soft loo roll and a view down the wooded valley… Who could ask for more from a humble campsite bog?

As we’ve been blessed with long weeks of unusually hot and sunny weather, I’ve been able to indulge in wild swimming on a semi-regular basis. I was lucky enough to find a good spot in the River Kennet just west of Newbury, where on several scorching summer afternoons I enjoyed cooling down whilst surrounded by nature: trees, reedbeds, damselflies, fish and birds all doing their thing unbothered by me paddling about mid-channel. I encountered a few other local people enjoying the same part of the river, which was encouraging. One man asked me if I wasn’t frightened of attack from savage pike, to which I smiled and replied “No… I’ve got shoes on.” Perhaps I was being cavalier in my attitude to pike-related human maiming incidents: feel free to let me know if you have documented evidence.

One very real threat in the River Kennet has been a recent pesticide pollution incident near Marlborough. Someone somewhere released a tiny quantity of the organophosphate pesticide chlorpyrifos, which was enough to kill all the aquatic invertebrates living in a stretch of the river. The pollution effects were spotted by volunteers working for ARK (Action for the River Kennet), and the incident is still being investigated by the Environment Agency. Fish and birds that feed on the river invertebrates will of course be adversely affected too. I sincerely hope that whoever did this is caught: they may have been careless, stupid or ignorant but above all they should be stopped from doing it again. The Environment Agency is appealing for information, so if you’ve got any why not give them a ring on 0800 807060. And please always dispose of any pesticides, herbicides or other chemicals carefully: never pour them down a drain.

On a happier note, during September I’m running some wildlife gardening morning workshops at Five A Day Market Garden in Englefield. The photo above was taken of participants on my wild flower and insects course in mid-July, on a truly sweltering hot day. It was a great session with some lovely people, and I’m looking forward to more of them: Trees and Shrubs for Wildlife (14th September), and Garden Birds and Mammals (28th September).

My sessions at Five A Day Market Garden are not just for adults, either: there are two family activity sessions coming up in the October half term holiday: Animal Magic! on Tuesday 29th and Thursday 31st October. A good opportunity for families to come for nature-themed fun, and to get creative with arts and crafts. Both sessions are booking up in advance, so if you fancy coming along to either these or my adult wildlife gardening workshops, best to email me at becca@fiveaday.org.uk as soon as possible.

As well as holiday sessions I’ve been working with Thatcham Young Rangers, the environmental youth group that runs at the Nature Discovery Centre in Thatcham. Sadly the RSPB funding that enabled me to work with the group has come to an end, with my last session with the kids being in early September. (The Young Rangers group itself is continuing, under the great leadership of co-leader Becky O’Melia, supported by staff from BBOWT, the Berks Bucks & Oxon Wildlife Trust.) I will miss the children hugely: they’re a fabulous bunch, and hugely knowledgeable about wildlife. There were a few wobbly lips (including mine) when I told them I was leaving, but hopefully I’ll be invited back as a ‘special guest’ from time to time.

Partly as a result of recent changes (the RSPB ending their involvement at Thatcham, and BBOWT negotiating a working arrangement with West Berkshire Council to take on responsibility for managing several local nature conservation sites, including Thatcham Reedbeds and Greenham Common), I’ve been spending some time taking part in more voluntary conservation activities locally. As part of an ongoing conservation project, BBOWT organise regular moth trapping sessions at Greenham Common and Thatcham Reedbeds. I’ve managed to get along to a couple of these during the recent warm weather, when moths have been abundant. I’ve spent a fascinating few hours peering at the moths coming in to light traps, in the company of local moth experts and BBOWT staff. Moths range from the tiny and drab to the large and spectacular, such as the Elephant Hawkmoth pictured above. Well worth dedicating a few hours to, as long as you don’t mind a late night (most moths generally come out to play around midnight or later) and the odd mouthful of midges.

Of course, not all moths come out at night. I photographed this 6-Spot Burnet Moth during an afternoon butterfly transect up on Greenham Common, where it was enjoying the sunshine and 32ºC temperatures (unlike myself and the other two volunteers carrying out the butterfly survey!). These stunning moths, with their dark metallic green wings spotted with scarlet, are often present in large numbers in open flower-rich habitats. The adults feed on nectar in wild flowers such as thistles and knapweeds, whilst the caterpillars munch Bird’s-foot trefoil Lotus corniculatus.

Butterfly transects are part of the UK Butterfly Monitoring Scheme: a specific walk route is followed on a weekly basis between April and September, with the species and numbers of butterflies seen being recorded and data fed back to the UKBMS. On the two transects I’ve done recently at Greenham, the warm weather had brought out quite a few species – including a pair of Purple Emperors, which we watched gliding about in the tree canopy in the south of Greenham Common. Purple Emperors have a habit of sitting on animal poo to feed on the salts in it, not something that people generally associate with butterflies! I didn’t manage to get photos of the Emperors, but I did get right up close to this Grayling (above), while it pretended to be a stone. Grayling butterflies are found in southern coastal areas and heathlands but are declining in the UK, with numbers down 45% in the last 40 years.

Another butterfly we spotted during our transects were Common Blues, including this mating pair who very obligingly sat still for some time for me to photograph them. (I suspect they were rather preoccupied.) The male is on the left, the female on the right; while the plant that they’re sitting on is Bird’s-foot trefoil, one of their caterpillar food plants.

It was a bit of a treat for me to allow myself some time for volunteering, but I’m very glad that I did so. After last year’s dismally wet and chilly summer, when the heatwave hit the UK this year I was determined to make the most of it. Seeing so many of our native butterflies and moths on the wing has been a great reward. Hopefully I’ll get a bit more time for exploring and finding wildlife as the summer goes on.

When the summer school holidays roll around I often think I’m going to have lots of ‘spare’ time for doing things in, but as usual the time seems to be disappearing! I take advantage of office time at home to do lesson planning, including preparing music for the local community choir (Sing The World) that I co-lead in Newbury. It’s lovely to be listening to and choosing music, but now comes the task of learning it. I teach acapella harmony songs by ear, singing the parts to folks until they’ve learned them, so my brain has to file away quite a lot of music – in addition to the choir I’m also leading a Mellow and Magical singing workshop in October. My chosen method of learning songs is to listen to them on my MP3 player and practice each harmony part, so at certain points in the day I can be seen in queues at the post office or in the supermarket, singing along to a tune that only I can hear. No-one seems to mind, however.

As I seem to be flitting about doing all kinds of things, it seems appropriate to finish this blog entry as I started it: with a butterfly. While a great deal of my current workload is preparing for the months ahead, I will try to remind myself to stay in the moment, and enjoy each one for what it brings me. I hope that your summer brings you many magic moments, and plenty more sunshine.

Small Tortoiseshell butterfly at Five A Day Market Garden

Flowers, sunshine, showers

Posted on June 16, 2013 by Becca

The busy days of early spring and lambing have been followed by the equally busy months of April, May and early June, with my outdoor learning work filling most of my time. Despite our Arctic spring (courtesy of the jet stream’s wanderings), the seasons have been ever so slowly inching forwards, and although today is grey and rainy there are signs that we may have more of a summer this year than in 2012. Here’s hoping!

Most unusually, we did have a sunny and warm Bank Holiday Monday in early May. This was a great relief, as on the day I was paddling a home-made raft with a team of other volunteers down the Kennet and Avon Canal, taking part in the Crafty Craft Race to raise funds for Five A Day Market Garden where I work and volunteer. We paddlers worked in shifts to propel our catamaran-like craft the five miles eastwards from Kintbury to Newbury: you can see from the photo below that a fun time was had by all! (I’m the one paddling at the rear of the craft, in case you were wondering.)

Astonishingly, our ‘Ghostbusters’ team (hence the ‘spooky’ facepainting) won the race in our category! I put it down to all of us Five A Day Market garden volunteers getting lots of healthy exercise and fresh organic fruit and veg. (Plus having a superbly engineered craft, designed and built from an old swimming pool cover by Ghostbusters team member Dennis – kudos to him.)

Before the early May Bank Holiday weekend, warm days were rare enough that when they showed up I tried to get out to enjoy them as often as possible. One sunny weekend in late April I went out to see what spring flowers were in bloom, and discovered the most phenomenal bank of Cowslips Primula veris near Speen, thousands of plants in full flower.

Walking around Snelsmore Common the same weekend, I was struck by how many plants had been brought into simultaneous flowering by the warmth, after so many weeks of unrelenting cold. In Withy Copse, Wood Anemones Anemone nemorosa and Lesser Celandines Ranunculus ficaria were flowering together, starring the ground with white and gold. The large purple-blotched arrowhead leaves of Cuckoopint Arum maculatum were everywhere, while just the leaves of Bluebells Endymion nonscriptus were showing.

The trees were only just showing signs of waking up, with few buds opening to release the tips of new leaves, so there was still plenty of light reaching the ground layer where these fabulous woodland flora grow. In another woodland (Briff’s Copse near Hamstead Marshall) I found Moschatel Adoxa moschatellina, a diminuitive little plant that’s always been one of my favourites. Moschatel comes from the Greek word for musk, as the plant has a somewhat musky smell; its other common name is Town Hall Clock, so called because the five-sided flower is said to resemble the faces on a clock-tower.

Of course with the spring and summer flowers opening, there is finally some nectar and pollen for insects to find. With last year being such a dismal one for British butterflies, it’s even more pleasing than usual to see them on the wing on sunny days. I spotted this Peacock butterfly basking at Snelsmore Common in late April, before it swooped off at high speed as all the Vanessid butterflies seem to do.

Snelsmore Common was also the site for a singing picnic that I organised for local choir Sing The World, which I co-lead with my friend Tessa. We gathered down there on 3rd June to share food and drink, followed by an hour or so of harmony singing as the sun slowly set. A grand way to spend an evening, in my opinion. I love the way that singing unites people of all backgrounds and ages, there’s nothing quite like it. Currently I’m just starting to plan songs for my next singing workshop, which will be on 19th October at the lovely barn conference centre at Elm Farm Organic Research Centre near Newbury. I’m looking forward to it already!

With last year’s challenging weather it was nice to hear some good news about local wildlife conservation: the success of BBOWT’s Heritage Lottery Fund bid for the five-year Linking The Landscape project in West Berkshire. I attended a conference in mid-April organised by BBOWT, at which they were celebrating the previous five years’ conservation work done by BBOWT and West Berkshire Council on the local areas covered by the Living Landscape scheme. I had been involved both as a volunteer and as a freelance consultant in the Living Landscape scheme and the new funding bid, so I was very happy to hear the great news that all the sterling conservation work done so far by volunteers and professionals alike will not only be safeguarded but extended, for the benefit of local wildlife and local people.

The conference itself was an interesting day, with a fascinating speech on landscape-scale conservation projects across the UK by ecologist and Head of Planning and Environment for Forest Enterprise England, Jonathan Spencer. One of his points was that landscapes and wildlife are best protected when conservation is integrated with community needs, including economic needs – and vice versa. This is a message that I think many people, both environmentalists and developers, are still struggling to come to terms with. There’s often a sense in this crowded country of battle lines being drawn up, when actually it would make far more sense for conservationists, businesses and local communities to work together to develop ways of managing our land that allow for sustainable living and plenty of space for wildlife. Good food for thought!

During the afternoon of the conference we had the chance to take part in some workshops on a range of different topics: amongst other things I participated in a training session for monitoring the effects of grazing regimes on the heathlands and grasslands of the commons, with West Berkshire ranger Adrian Wallington and ecologist Thomas Haynes. The aim of this is to recruit volunteers to carry out simple plant surveys to help monitor the effects of the livestock grazing on vegetation on the commons, hopefully to improve management for all kinds of wildlife. What better way to spend an hour two on a sunny summer’s day, than sitting in the sunshine looking at flowers? If you agree, why not get involved by getting in touch with Adrian Wallington and asking him for more info.

Another highlight in April was going on a camp with Thatcham Young Rangers to Rushall Farm, in the Easter holidays. As the weather leading up to our camp had been pretty miserable, we kept our fingers crossed… And luckily, we were blessed with more or less dry days! The Young Rangers were total stars: most of them had never camped or slept away from home before, but they all mucked in and had a great time. We visited the farm animals, helped migrating toads reach their pond, built bivouacs in the woods, and sang so loudly round our campfire that they probably heard us in Reading! Because of the very cold night the kids pitched their tents inside the farm’s 300-year-old Black Barn, bedding down amidst much giggling. All of us adult helpers involved received beautiful handmade Thank You cards signed by every child, with the fervent request “Pleeeeeeease can we come and camp here again next year?”

We are now in the heart of the school visit season at Rushall Farm, with the field teaching team working at the farm most days of the week. In mid-May one of my fellow field teachers found some Early Purple Orchids Orchis mascula in Oaklands Copse at the farm, and was kind enough to tell me about them. Their spotted leaves had evidently been nibbled by deer or rabbits, but the pink flowers themselves had survived: a lovely sight amongst the trees.

Schools have also been coming to Five A Day Market Garden: Castleview School from Slough brought three classes of pupils on visits, which were great fun for children and adults alike. Not fazed by the showery weather, the staff and pupils got stuck into sensory and gardening activities, finally making three fabulous scarecrows, one of which is pictured here. The school brought a really positive and creative attitude with them that made working with their groups a total pleasure: I look forward to seeing them at Five A Day again next year!

On the gardening front, things are finally starting to get going on the allotment that I share with my friend Tessa. The rise in temperatures brought our strawberry plants into flower, which in turn brought out the honey bees from the hives in the corner of the allotment site. We’re hoping that this will be a better year for veg growing, as last year was pretty much a wash-out. So far the signs are promising: we’ve enjoyed our first crop of asparagus since creating our asparagus bed three years ago, our broad beans and sugarsnap peas are coming on a treat, and we finished off the last edible bits of last year’s brussels sprouts: the tender green tops and yellow flowers, which I discovered tasted jolly nice when incorporated into a sweet potato and feta salad.

As part of a planned new housing development, our allotments at Speen are threatened with possible relocation to a new site only 30 metres from the Newbury Bypass. Allotment members and the local community are currently being consulted about the proposals, with a public exhibition of plans for the suggested development at Speen Hall on 19th June. My feeling is that I support the provision of new social housing (of which some 40% of the proposed development is supposed to be), but no way do I want to be gardening on the edge of the bypass. Hopefully an alternative site for the allotments will be found which matches the peaceful current setting… Otherwise I may have to dust off my direct action techniques and dig out my D-lock! The plans are very much at the early consultation stage, so hopefully the feedback from allotment holders and others will produce a better solution for all concerned.

At least the slow start to the growing season this year has meant that I haven’t had to spend all my free time weeding the allotment, so I’ve been able to go out exploring for more wildlife. On a trip with the Young Rangers group to Padworth Common local nature reserve in late May, we were surprised to find a glowworm larva sitting on the edge of one of the corrugated iron sheets used as refuges by reptiles on the site.

Glowworms are actually a type of beetle: the adult females have two brightly-glowing segments on the underside of their rear abdomen, which they use to attract the flying male beetles on summer evenings. They feed on tiny snails and although said to prefer chalky or limestone soils can be recorded anywhere with suitable habitat: open vegetation such as grassland or hedges. The peak for finding glowing females is usually July, so why not have a look at a few sites in your locality and see if you can find some.

Staying with the theme of nocturnal and crepuscular wildlife, at the end of May I went on a bat monitoring and moth trapping evening organised by BBOWT and Berks and South Bucks Bat Group, on the southern side of Greenham Common. As the evening was mild (and teeming with midges and mosquitoes!) we were hoping for some good numbers of bats, but alas all the bat nest boxes we checked were empty and there were few calls picked up by our bat detectors. We were lucky enough to catch a couple of Pipistrelle bats in the mist nets set up by James Shipman and other BSBBG volunteers. These tiny bats can each consume up to 3,000 insects in a single night! After spending several hours being bitten despite liberal amounts of insect repellent, I was silently wishing the Pipistrelles good hunting.

The bat action being less than stellar, I joined the moth trappers for a few hours of identifying the various moths and other night-time insects lured in by the lamps and white sheets placed around the common. I love moth trapping: there’s something quintessentially English about sitting in the dark peering at moth identification books and fluttering beasties in bug pots, periodically bombarded by bemused cockchafer beetles. I’ve yet to meet a moth enthusiast who isn’t also a thoroughly nice person. Enthusiasm is infectious, and frankly I find the geekiness of entomologists rather loveable. I’m well aware that this qualifies me for geekdom myself: it’s an identity I happily embrace, along with my many other guises. Oh, and moth trappers always make sure that good biscuits are conveniently to hand, as you can see on the left-hand edge of white sheet.

In early June I went on a dragonfly and damselfly identification course, one of the many Developing Your Skills workshops that BBOWT run across Berkshire, Buckinghamshire and Oxfordshire. If you volunteer for BBOWT these courses are free of charge, but even if you pay, at £30.00 these courses are excellent value for money. This particular day was led by local ecology consultant Adrian Hickman, a very knowledgeable naturalist who can communicate what he knows in a clear and accessible way. Adrian’s morning classroom sessions focussing on identification features were reinforced by an afternoon fieldwork session on ponds around Greenham Common. And once again the sun was shining, so we had good amounts of sightings of Broad-bodied Chasers, Emperor Dragonflies, Large Red Damselflies (pictured above) and Azure Damselflies to name a few.

I’m looking forward to a summer of exploring nature and putting some of my newly-acquired skills to use: but one of the perks of working in environmental teaching is that even when I’m at work I get lots of opportunities to notice and appreciate the natural world. Recently I’ve started giving illustrated talks to groups, about subjects including wildlife gardening, foraging for wild foods and environmental education. It’s a genuine pleasure to be able to share my enthusiasm for the natural world with even more people, adults and children alike. A love of wildlife is catching, but unlike other infectious things, it’s really good for you! It’s good to see the BBC promoting their Summer of Wildlife, which will hopefully get more people turned on to nature in their own locality. I’ll certainly be out there: peering at moths, sniffing plants, studying dragonflies. However you plan to spend your summer, I hope you enjoy it too.

Wood anemones at Snelsmore Common

Midwinter musings

Posted on December 26, 2012 by Becca

Well, it’s been a wild and wet few weeks leading up to midwinter. On the few clear frosty days we’ve had, I’ve tried to get out and about as often as possible to make the most of the winter sunshine. Even when it’s bitterly cold, sunlight is a valuable commodity at this time of year. Especially after the predominantly cloudy summer we’ve had: several of my friends have remarked that they feel sun-deprived, as if their bodies are craving a top-up. As one of the benefits of sunshine is that it enables our bodies to synthesize vitamin D, a substance important not only in bone health but also good immune system function, it’s not surprising that we’re all craving a bit of brightness at this time of year.

Luckily I have several friends who enjoy the great outdoors as much as I do, so I have had the opportunity to go on some lovely winter walks. The photo above was taken at the end of November at the RSPB’s Otmoor reserve between Oxford and Bicester. Three of us had been planning for some time to go and see the fabled winter starling roost there: a purpose thwarted in previous years by weather and work commitments, but finally achieved this winter… And it was truly worth the wait. I’ve seen photographs and films of starling roosts; watched a small one in London, over Wandsworth Bridge; but finally getting to see the Otmoor spectacle was a real treat. We were lucky with both the weather (freezing cold, but sunny and windless) and with the numbers of birds (around 30,000 starlings). A few birders with whom we watched the roost told us that most of the evenings they’d come out, the numbers of starlings had been smaller and the flying display very brief… But on that Friday we had almost an hour of watching what has to be one of the most magical wildlife displays in the UK.

Unfortunately you will have to take my word for this, as I was so busy watching the roost that I neglected to take any photographs. I did attempt to film a few parts of the display with my little compact camera, but the resultant blurry clips do more to capture my excitement (lots of off-camera “Whoa!” noises) than the beauty of the spectacle. Starlings perform these extraordinary massed aeronautical manoeuvres for a number of reasons: warming themselves up before roosting for the night; competing to gain the best perches amongst the reedbeds; foiling potential predators such as sparrowhawks with the confusing numbers and rapidly changing direction of their flock. But when I watch this display I am simply swept up in the beauty of it. The ebb and flow of birds, cresting and falling in dark waves against the winter sky. Thousands of individuals transformed into a single entity, turning as one; then suddenly dividing into two clouds of beating wings that form into a heart shape, a drop of water, a rising hill: one cloud passing in front of the other and being reabsorbed, before the whole flock rains out of the sky into the waiting reeds.

Otmoor is worth a visit at any time of year, not just when the starlings are doing their stuff in winter. Its reedbeds and wet meadows support a huge range of bird species throughout the year, as well as dragonflies and damselflies in summer. And it costs nothing to visit, although making a small donation to the RSPB to support their ongoing conservation work there and at other sites across the UK would be a nice gesture.

This winter I have been busier than usual in the run up to Christmas, with field teaching work continuing throughout November. The Young Rangers group that I help to run at the Nature Discovery Centre in Thatcham has continued to be popular with local children, even now that colder weather and dark evenings have moved most of our activities indoors. We had a fun time carving pumpkin lanterns for Hallowe’en, and also making models of rockhopper penguins – which later ended up being used in a noisy but fun game of penguin skittles! Northern rockhopper penguins are mostly found on the remote Tristan da Cunha islands in the Atlantic Ocean, where their numbers are declining catastrophically. The RSPB is carrying out research to try to establish the causes of this decline: possible factors include climate change, overfishing and competition from other animals. Again, money is of course needed to support this conservation work, so if one of your New Year’s resolutions is to help wildlife then consider donating to the RSPB’s UK Overseas Territories appeal.

In November I also had the opportunity to revisit the RSPB’s east London flagship reserve at Rainham Marshes. I and a colleague were shadowing the RSPB field teachers there for a day as they worked with a local school, getting some ideas for developing our own teaching practice back at Thatcham. When we arrived the site was cloaked in freezing mist, which cleared slowly throughout the day to give some atmospheric views across the Thames estuary to the docklands beyond.

Rainham is an interesting site to visit, not just for wildlife and the excellent education facilities (I had major gadget envy for some of their teaching resources!), but also for the history of the landscape there. Gazing out over the foggy marshes I found myself reminded of the opening scenes in Great Expectations, with a young Pip startled by the appearance of the convict Magwitch out of the mist. I’ve always found the juxtaposition of industrial and natural landscapes fascinating, and Rainham is certainly a place with stories to tell.

Closer to home, I’ve been exploring some of the woodlands around Newbury. My old hiking boots finally gave up the ghost and I treated myself to some new ones, so this gave me an opportunity to break them in on short rambles in the beech woods around Cold Ash. With all the rain we’ve had the ground was pretty much a quagmire underfoot, but curiously it hasn’t been a good autumn for fungi – at least not on the sites I’ve been visiting. I did however see quite a bit of spalted beech wood on my walk – timber with a characteristic pattern of differently-shaded areas separated by dark lines.

These markings are caused by different types of ‘white rot’ fungi growing through the wood, bleaching out some areas and forming dark boundary ‘zone lines’ where two fungi meet. It’s common in beech and other hardwood trees, forming attractive patterning in timber that can then be turned or carved into bowls and other objects.

As well as exploring on foot I’ve been cycling quite a bit, especially along the Kennet and Avon canal towpath. In early December I cycled to Kintbury for a pint at The Dundas Arms, not realising that for most of the last mile or two the towpath was not so much adjacent to the canal as in it. High amounts of rainfall and maintenance work on some of the canal’s locks meant water levels had risen over the banks, making for somewhat soggy cycling. By this point on my cycle ride I was pretty determined that nothing was going to stop me enjoying my pint so I persevered, discovering en route that the secret to negotiating flooded towpaths is essentially just to keep pedalling, no matter what. I made it through the mire with freezing wet feet and a soggy bottom, but nothing that couldn’t be remedied with some Good Old Boy and a bag of crisps.

After frequent rain the ground is fairly well saturated, with standing water and flooding to be seen pretty much everywhere around Newbury and Thatcham. We’ve been lucky enough to escape the serious flooding that has caused so many problems in other parts of the UK, for which I’m very thankful: it must be hard for a lot of people to celebrate Christmas this year, displaced from their homes or businesses by inundation. Once again we seem to be suffering from ‘extreme’ weather events. After bemoaning the serious lack of winter rainfall last year, with consequent knock-on effects on habitats, wildlife and agriculture, the current heavy rainfall and consequent flooding may seem a touch ironic. But solutions to both issues may lie in the development of more sustainable water management systems, for example rainwater harvesting (RWH) and sustainable drainage systems (SUDS). I recommend reading this interesting article by Brian Pickworth, which explains how both flooding and drought could be tackled by the adoption of integrated systems for managing our water resources at times of peak and lowest availability.

A major part of any strategy for regulating water and managing the increasingly serious problems of flooding and droughts in the UK will have to be ensuring that we conserve as much of our natural wetland habitat as possible, of course. Much criticism has been levelled at the drainage and development of our floodplains, whether that be for housing or for agriculture. As a nature conservationist my sympathies are of course firmly on the side of wetland wildlife, which is the main reason why I’m opposed to the development of the so-called ‘Boris Island’ Thames estuary airport. The only case the airport-building supporters seem to have is an economic one… Although given the long-term costs of flood damage and other issues associated with unsustainable developments like these, someone clearly hasn’t been doing the math.

I’ve noticed recently that economic arguments are increasingly being used as a justification for development decisions that make no environmental sense. If any greenie dares to query the potential impact of anything ranging from fracking to nuclear power, it’s suggested that they are collaborating in some kind of Luddite plot that will drag Britain inexorably downwards in an apocalyptic economic disaster. I hope that people aren’t cowed by this financial McCarthyism. Using fear as a tool to push their own agendas is a technique long beloved by governments, but I’m hoping that in this age of access to information most of you will seek the science behind the headlines and prevent the destruction of ecosystems that are, ultimately, what keep all of us alive. It’s lovely to be able to fly abroad and visit beautiful places, but not at the cost of accelerating climate change and destroying our own native habitats and wildlife.

Ho ho ho… ‘Tis the season to be jolly, so I’ll end on a less polemical note! The nicest thing for me about this festive time of year is that I get time off from the pressures of work to go out and explore the countryside, as well as to catch up with friends and family. So in that spirit, I wish all of you a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year… And may you have a peaceful, healthy and prosperous 2013.

Sunset at Otmoor.

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!

Whatever the weather

Posted on July 1, 2012 by Becca

I write this on a grey, showery first day of July, after what has been a largely grey, rainy June. It feels cool and windy and not at all like midsummer should be: working outdoors almost every day as I do, I feel slightly more entitled to whinge about the inclement weather than most folks. And reminding myself that “we need the rain” doesn’t actually help much. At the end of the day, I would prefer to be field teaching without having to garb myself up like a North Sea fisherman. Not to mention that 75% of the schoolchildren who turn up on field trips appear to be offspring of parents who haven’t had the nouse to put the words “outdoors” and “suitable clothing” together in their overtaxed brains. Here’s a clue, folks: in the real world coats have to be waterproof. All the Hello Kitty accessories in the world will not comfort your child if they are soaked to the skin on a five-hour school trip in the countryside.

If I sound a tad grumpy it’s because I’m not well: after being surrounded by schoolkids barking out coughs like sealions for the past month, I’ve succumbed to a tenacious virus that has left me teaching in a sultry croak that occasionally frightens younger children. Taking days off sick when you’re self employed is not really an option unless you have pneumonia, so I’m consuming epic quantities of garlic and fresh lemons and fortifying myself with echinacea and paracetamol. Being able to teach in dry weather would be helpful but the latest forecast seems to be continuing on the moist side… Heigh ho. Waterproofs at the ready.

In an effort to cheer myself up I’m posting some photos taken in late May and early June, before Britain entered the Rain Age. My friend Chris led a walk at Hartslock Nature Reserve near Goring, for Reading and District Natural History Society (RDNHS). It was a scorchingly hot day, and a lovely opportunity to revisit a nature reserve where I once lived for a few months in a caravan as the resident warden ‘guarding’ a colony of Monkey orchids (Orchis simia). The photo at the start of this blog is of Hartslock Woods, looking east down the River Thames. If you don’t know this site (which is owned and managed by local wildlife trust BBOWT) then I highly recommend you visit it: it’s fabulous for plants, invertebrates, birds and commands views over the Thames Valley and Goring Gap second to none.

RDNHS was founded in 1881 and is still going strong: the group runs a programme of outdoor visits to sites of wildlife interest and indoor talks about subjects ranging from earthworms to bird conservation in Ecuador. I don’t get along to their meetings as often as I’d like (especially at the moment, as I’m teaching six days a week and several evenings too), but I can thoroughly recommend them. Not only do you get a fascinating look at the natural world, but you meet some phenomenally accomplished amateur and professional naturalists who will generously share their knowledge with you. A list of their upcoming outdoor trips (on midweek evenings as well as Saturdays and Sundays) can be found on their website.

The Monkey orchid (Orchis simia) pictured in close-up above is one plant that gives Hartslock its botanical cachet. In 2002 a Lady orchid (Orchis purpurea) flowered at the site, and by 2006 the first Monkey-Lady hybrid Orchis simia x purpurea was seen in flower on the reserve. Now there is a thriving colony of 250+ hybrids alongside the existing Monkey orchids on the main orchid slope, and there has (and continues to be) lively debate about the pros and cons of hybridisation. My take on it is that ‘hybrid vigour’ (check out the sturdier-looking hybrid plant below) may well prove to be a healthy thing for the Monkey orchids long term… And that Mother Nature generally knows best and gets on with sorting things out, regardless of what opinions we puny humans may have. For more background info on the science behind the hybrids, check out Chris’s Hartslock website.

Being an unimproved chalk downland reserve, Hartslock is generally fantastic not just for orchids but all kinds of plant species. There is a small colony of (introduced) Pasqueflower Pulsatilla vulgaris, of which one was still in bloom in late May.

Another notable at Hartslock is the semi-parasitic Bastard toadflax Thesium humifusum, a tiny creeping little plant that taps into the roots of other plants and derives some of its sustenance from them. It reminds me of a diminutive mistletoe, although confusingly it is part of the Sandalwood family. There is a bug Sehirus impressus that feeds solely on the sap of this rare plant. We found one of these small dark metallic blue bugs on our ramble: my photo doesn’t do it justice as it was so warm the bug was practically break-dancing in its pot, but never mind.

After several hours in the scorchio sun my water supplies had run out and I was ready to call it a day… But not the stalwarts of RDNHS, who gamely set off on a foray to inspect the neighbouring slope for botanical and entomological gems. My ambition for my twilight years is still to be actively enjoying nature, so those more senior members of RDNHS are an inspiration. I salute them! Those of us who work in conservation owe a massive debt to such passionate and thorough amateur naturalists who have amassed a huge body of painstaking observations of our native wild plants and animals.

From the older generation to the younger… It is peak season for field teaching and I have been very busy working with schools and youth groups at Rushall Farm, Five A Day Market Garden and the RSPB’s Living Classroom at Thatcham. Schools often prefer to schedule their field trips for the summer term, although to be honest they could have just as good a day out in spring or autumn – or even winter for some study topics.

At Rushall Farm schools come on residential camps as well as day trips, which gives us a chance to do more adventurous things such as campfires, bivouac building and team building activities such as sheep herding. I’m telling you now, if you haven’t seen a class of eleven year-olds trying to get half a dozen confused sheep into a pen, you haven’t lived. I haven’t laughed so much in ages. One pupil related to their parent that they’d been “sheep hurdling”: that pretty much covers it. And the bivouacs that the kids build in the woods are works of art. Maybe not always 100% weatherproof, but creative marvels nonetheless. Ray Mears, eat your heart out.

What I like about the camps at Rushall is that you get to know the children over a couple of days and build up a rapport with them. Too often when classes come on trips there are worksheets to be done and curriculum topics to be covered: all worthy stuff and part of what outdoor education is about, but for me the real point to it all is making sure these kids develop a strong and lasting connection with the natural world that will sustain them throughout their lives. There’s a lot of talk these days about Nature Deficit Disorder and the lack of contact that most children (and adults) have with nature, so it’s easy to feel despondent… But what I see when I’m field teaching is children quickly getting into the wild experience, especially if there are ‘real’ things such as mud, sticks or campfires involved. The only things holding kids back seem to be adult fears about risks (not a problem if you plan things properly and set boundaries with groups) or getting clothes dirty (leave the designer gear at home). No-one will be able to see your designer labels once they’re muddy, anyway – and tribal facepaint (as modelled by me below after a bivouac building session at Rushall) beats Bourjois make-up any day.

It has been challenging teaching on some of these really wet days, but to give the kids credit, I haven’t heard a single one moan about the rain – even when they’ve been sent to us with insufficient footwear or rainproof clothing and have consequently spent the day somewhat damp. I’ve loaned a lot of clothing to kids in the last month in an effort to keep them at least partly dry: my feeling is that maybe instead of twittering on about reviving O-levels and getting kids to learn poetry by rote, Mr Gove should ensure that all schools have a set of wet weather gear that can be borrowed by kids going on field trips. Why should kids suffer because their parents are apparently clueless about what constitutes ‘appropriate clothing’ for a country where rain is the norm at the moment?

Getting off my soapbox… Despite the wet weather, I’ve had some great days out with school groups. Hunting for minibeasts, pond dipping and going on sensory nature walks are still crowd-pleasers. And even when I’ve had a gruelling day with a ‘challenging’ group, the things the kids come out with when I ask them what they remember about the day never fail to lift my spirits. No-one works in environmental education for the financial rewards, and teaching of any sort is at best demanding and at worst exhausting, but when I think of all the thousands of children I’ve worked with it feels worthwhile. I know what a positive impact my early nature education experiences had on me at primary school, and how that’s sustained me in later life. I just hope that some of what I do will have a similar effect on the children I teach.

Since the rainy season began and I became temporary host to the World’s Most Persistent Cough, I’ve not had much time to garden on the allotment that I share with my friend Tessa. Last time I visited (over a week ago) the blackfly were taking over the broad beans and I spent an unpleasant half hour dealing with them, as well as weeding like a fiend. However there has been just enough sun to ripen our strawberries so this weekend we picked four punnets, as well as some early raspberries and a few broad beans. It’s been a weird year for gardening so we’re not getting too bothered about our lack of produce so far. Everything looked very pale and washed out (literally) until very recently, but now hopefully things will get growing if we get a few warmer days. I planted some climbing French beans that a friend of mine gave me seeds of: an heirloom variety called O’Driscoll, which you can leave the pods on to grow large and then harvest the bean seeds for drying and using as a cooked pulse. I’m looking forward to sampling them later this year.

One other nice thing I did on one of the few sunny Sundays we’ve had was to go for a bike ride along the canal towpath to Kintbury. It was hot day and I was very glad to break my journey near the wonderfully-named wet woodland called The Wilderness, and go for a wade in the River Kennet (which runs parallel to the Kennet and Avon Canal at this point).

The river was crystal clear and beautifully cool and I spent a very pleasant half hour paddling about in it, spotting fish and botanising along the banks. The Kennet is a superb chalk stream, despite worries about its falling water levels. On the Action for the River Kennet (ARK) website you can find a lot of information about its current problems and wonderful wildlife. Simply put, we’re using too much water: ARK states that Thames Water abstracts 19 million litres of water per day from the aquifers that should be feeding the Upper Kennet. With all the rain we’ve had it may be hard to imagine that lack of water is still an issue, but it is. Leaks from water company infrastructure are definitely a factor, but that doesn’t mean that as individuals we shouldn’t also take steps to conserve water in our homes and gardens. My personal favourite tip is: Turn off the tap whilst brushing your teeth. This saves about 12 litres of water per person, every day. If everyone in Berkshire did this, it would save over 10 million litres of water per day… Which is over half of the water currently being taken out of those aquifers.

Time for me to go and pack my bag for another day’s field teaching on the morrow, so I’ll end this blog entry here. The forecast is for heavy rain and we have a large school group booked in at Thatcham so no doubt that will be interesting! But on the plus side we’re finding lots of groovy snails and slugs on our minibeast hunts… And frogs in the meadow. I will leave you with a picture of one the kids found last week, whilst sweep netting for insects. They were thrilled, the frog less so. It may be tough sometimes being a field teacher in the rain, but it’s even tougher being an amphibian who lives in area used regularly for environmental education. I suspect we’ll be seeing the same frog more than once before the end of term.

Ychydig o law…

Posted on April 29, 2012 by Becca

The talented multilinguists among you will of course have spotted that the title of this blog entry is in Welsh, and a very useful phrase it’s proving to be at the moment too. Translation? “A spot of rain.”

As a field teacher constantly working outdoors, I often use the phrase “There’s no such thing as bad weather, only unsuitable clothing” as a way of getting students to dress less for fashion purposes and more for the vagaries of British seasons. However, even I have found myself musing in the past week that perhaps it would be nice if it rained more at night rather than the frequent torrential daily downpours we’ve been getting. I know that we desperately need water, but as I cycled to the train station in yet another ‘heavy shower’ I found myself yelling “Stop raining!” As I write this, rain is battering my windows yet again, and the forecast for early May is ‘largely unsettled’. Thank you, Met Office. I think I will go and buy a new pair of waterproof trousers.

Luckily, when I went to stay with a friend in south Wales in early April we had at least one day of perfect sunny weather. We took advantage of this to go walking around Dinas Head on the Pembrokeshire coast. This part of Wales is a National Park and popular with walkers, with a lot of steep ups and downs along cliff edges (vertigo sufferers beware). The glorious views across the bay to Fishguard and out across the Irish Sea are worth a little exertion… And a stiff onshore wind kept us from overheating on the uphill stretches.

I love the sea in any kind of weather, so this was pretty nearly a perfect day for me: a long walk outdoors, fabulous views, sunshine and a picnic on the beach at the coastal village of Cwm-Y-Eglwys at the halfway point. There was plenty of wildlife to get distracted by along the way as well: gorse and violets, wheeling gulls overhead and even a rocky outcrop garnished with what looked to be Guillemots (Uria aalge). As I was carrying my camera I hadn’t brought binoculars along as well, although a helpful lady (who turned out to be an RSPB member) assisted with identification. If you are good at birds and can make them out in the picture below, let me know if she got it right.

On the way home to my friend’s house in the wilds of Dyfed we stopped off for a visit to Pentre Ifan, a Neolithic stone tomb dating from 3,500 BC or thereabouts. The earth mound that would once have covered the 16-tonne capstone and uprights has gone, leaving the stones standing dramatically against the Pembrokeshire skyline. As it was late in the day we had the site to ourselves, which was probably the best way to view it. A suitably peaceful end to a windy but gorgeous day.

The following day dawned cloudy and wet, so we made the best of it with an expedition to Carreg Cennen, a ruined 13th century castle near Landeilo. Perched on a hilltop with what modern estate agents would probably call ‘commanding views of the surrounding countryside’, Carreg Cennen reminds me of all the castles I ever visited on school trips, when I used to clamber over ruined battlements and daydream heroically about swashbuckling exploits. As I recall, I was always an outlaw or daring raider, rather than any of the castle’s legitimate aristocratic inhabitants. Obviously watching too many episodes of The Flashing Blade had a lasting effect on me.

If you should go visiting Carreg Cennen yourself the most important bit of kit to take with you is a torch, because in the limestone underneath the castle is a long narrow cave that visitors can explore. In these modern days of health and safety obsessiveness it was heartening to be able to scramble down the steep narrow entrance passage, treacherously slippery steps and claustrophobic pothole unhampered by any kind of fussy warning notices. I for one thoroughly enjoyed banging my head on the low stone ceiling. Good old-fashioned British fun.

Since school term has started again after the Easter holidays my field teaching work is back in full swing at Rushall Farm and for the RSPB at Thatcham Nature Discovery Centre; but I also had an interesting photography job in mid-April, covering the opening of BBOWT’s new environmental education centre at Woolley Firs near Maidenhead. When I worked as a countryside ranger in Maidenhead a few years ago I met Woolley Firs Conservation Trust founder Rosa Lee, who was passionate about her vision to turn the site into an education centre for young people. So it was wonderful to see her dream finally realised, as a result of many years of hard work by herself, other trustees, corporate sponsors and of course BBOWT volunteers and staff.

After spending a hectic afternoon photographing VIPs and children from St Luke’s Primary School I had a chance to admire the site and all the latest interactive IT gadgetry that BBOWT education officer Lyn will be using when teaching. You can probably tell from my photos on the BBOWT website that the centre will be very popular with local schools, and I’m looking forward to popping in again soon for a visit to watch Lyn in action.

As the weather continues to be on the doleful and damp side, I’m snatching the opportunity to get and about whenever there’s a break in the clouds. Last weekend I managed to meet up with another friend for good long ramble from Pangbourne along the Thames towards Mapledurham. The photo above is of a scarecrow en route that has been steadily evolving over the several years we’ve been doing this walk.

On the slopes around Mapledurham there are fine examples of Chiltern beechwoods, and bluebells were just starting to come into full flower. Wafts of bluebell scent drifted towards us as we walked along: even with the occasional inevitable (you guessed it) heavy shower of rain, it felt good to be out enjoying the English spring. I am particularly fond of blue flowers and there’s something almost hypnotic about the indigo-blue of bluebells when they are blooming en masse. That intense blue haze striped with light and shadow is a particularly British woodland experience, one we should value highly. That our native bluebells Hyacinthoides non-scripta are threatened by climate change, habitat loss and accidental cross-breeding with the non-native Spanish bluebell Hyacinthoides hispanica is something that all of us should be concerned about. If you’re a gardener, I urge you to avoid planting Spanish bluebells if at all possible. It’s not always easy to find British-grown native bluebell bulbs or seed, but it is possible.

Our walk homewards led us back along the Thames valley to Pangbourne (resisting the urge to visit Mapledurham watermill, as the entrance fee was so steep it roused our righteous ire). One of the less usual sights of the Chilterns that we passed on our return journey was field after field of peacefully grazing alpacas. I failed to get a photo of one, although I did take a picture of a pleasingly spotty horse in a neighbouring field. I believe the technical term for this breed is appaloosa. I have long left behind my (exceedingly brief) horse riding days, but a childhood fascination with cowboys will never leave me and I feel sure that if I ever did get an opportunity to ride the range, an appaloosa horse would be just the ticket. With me wearing a black stetson, naturally. If it happens, rest assured you will read about it here.

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)

Stop Press: Winter Not Yet Over

Posted on March 4, 2012 by Becca

It’s that time of year when weather can be at its most British: sunny and mild one day, wild and wet and cold the next… And the past week has been true to seasonal form. Last Saturday I was cycling around Thatcham Reedbeds after working with the Young Rangers group at the Nature Discovery Centre. Glorious sunshine had brought out local people and the wildlife, and I found not only Blackthorn Prunus spinosa in flower but also catkins on the Alders Alnus glutinosa around the edge of the lake there.

From Blackthorn we get the phrase ‘Blackthorn Winter’, which refers to a spell of cold weather often coinciding with the blossoming of this early-flowering native shrub. Blackthorn flowers appear before the leaves, which makes them easy to differentiate from Hawthorn Crataegus monogyna. The other plant that could be confused with Blackthorn is Cherry Plum, Prunus cerasifera; but this tends to flower earlier still than Blackthorn, grows taller, and is largely lacking the long sharp woody thorns that Blackthorn bears in abundance. I can testify to the wounding power of these: some years ago I spiked my arm on Blackthorn during a conservation task, and unbeknownst to me the brittle thorn broke off inside the muscle… From whence it was surgically removed some four weeks later, after I’d begun wondering why my arm wasn’t healing up.

Alder is another interesting native tree: usually found growing alongside water or in damp woodlands, it bears long catkins in the spring from which the wind blows clouds of pollen onto its smaller cone-like female flowers (last year’s woody ‘cones’ are visible in my photograph). Alder wood has the useful property of not rotting when under water, an attribute that led it to be used for making bridge piles, sluice gates, water pipes and clogs. It also produces a good quality charcoal that was once used in the production of gunpowder. It is a valuable tree species for wildlife, supporting leaf- and nectar-feeding insects and seed-feeding birds, as well as helping to stabilise waterside banks with its roots. In folklore Alder had a somewhat sinister reputation as the pale timber appears to bleed after felling, turning from its pale freshly-cut colour to a bright orange-red.

There was a lot of bird activity on this mild day too, with smaller birds such as Great and Blue Tits, Blackbirds, Robins and finches hectoring each other from the bushes whilst waterfowl were busy on the lake. No sign yet of the Sand Martins returning to their deluxe nest box complex (that you can just see on the lake island in the photo above), but lots of paddlers about: Mallards, Shovellers, Tufted Ducks, Great Crested Grebes, Coots and Moorhens with their comedy feet, Mute Swans and of course the ubiquitous Canada Geese. People feed the birds on the lake (usually grain that is bought from the Nature Discovery Centre, helping to generate a little extra income) so there are always plenty to see.

Our Young Rangers session was about recycling and Fair Trade: the children divided into two teams (boys and girls, inevitably) and built ‘buggies’ from recycled materials that were then raced against each other. ‘Team Girl 6’ were the overall winners, success largely due to their superior abilities to co-operate and work together, it seemed! Notably, their buggy included a matchbox luggage compartment for storing useful stuff, and was accompanied by a selection of nifty team flags. I predict that Jeremy Clarkson should be worried.

After playing some ‘Unfair Games’ we made spring chocolate cornflake nests, using Fair Trade chocolate. The kids even made some for me and co-leader Becky, as well as other staff at the Discovery Centre, so I was nicely fuelled up for my bike ride back home afterwards. Just before I set off I discovered my first Sweet Violet Viola odorata of the year, flowering on the sunny bank near the centre. They have sweetish scent which is unlike any other flower, and which possesses the curious power of temporarily anaesthetising your smell receptors. I’m not sure what evolutionary benefit this would confer, but it remains one of my favourite early spring wild blooms. The leaves are also the foodplant for Fritillary butterfly species, should you need any further encouragement to find room in your garden for a few violets.

Early flowers are appearing and so are the lambs at Rushall Farm, the first mob of ewes having begun giving birth. This is the start of what will be a flood of over 1,400 lambs by Easter – and many hundreds of school children and youth groups who come to the farm on educational visits, too. I was teaching at Rushall this week and will be almost every weekday from now until Easter: we had two schools of ‘littlies’ who were fun to work with, and on Thursday we all got to see a ewe giving birth to triplets – high excitement! The kids were awe-struck and asked lots of questions about the process (especially about the gory bits). Steve the shepherd handled the whole thing very competently with the assistance of a veterinary student on work placement at the farm, even managing to keep a running commentary going whilst rummaging about inside the sheep. Very impressive.

After a rather nice mild end to the week, Sunday came over decidedly wintery again, which was frustrating as I’d been stuck indoors with a stomach bug on Saturday and was pining for some fresh air. I decided to head for the allotment anyway, whereupon the rain turned into near-horizontal snow. Digging up leeks in a howling blizzard is an interesting experience; whimpering slightly I managed to get my harvest in and scuttle home to a hot bath, with leeks for supper. The allotment hasn’t got much going on with all the cold weather we’ve been having: our broccoli won’t be ready till late spring or early summer, and our cabbages probably fall into the category of ‘baby vegetables’ at present. It’s a bit like waiting for Christmas. I’m still munching my way through last year’s frozen runner beans and courgettes though, so I’m not complaining.

The aforesaid stomach bug was particularly annoying as it prevented me from going along to sing at a ‘Ukes For UNICEF’ charity benefit festival in Berkhamsted on Saturday. Unfortunately that left my co-performer John in the lurch, although he of course managed to give a successful ukulele-playing solo spot. And we did have a good night earlier in the week at the Unplug The Wood open mike at the Lion Brewery in Ash. It was standing room only and people were very complimentary, plus I won a bottle of wine in the raffle so a good evening out! For those of you who weren’t there, there are a couple of videos up on YouTube of me singing with John on uke, should you be so inclined to have a listen.

The coming week sees me busy teaching at Rushall and co-leading Sing The World community choir in Newbury, so fingers crossed for weather that feels more like spring than winter as March marches on. I spotted some Lesser celandines Ranunculus ficaria starting to open on a south-facing hedgebank as I drove home last week, beautiful little starry yellow wild flowers that shout “NECTAR!” at any passing insects who may have been brave enough to come out of hibernation…
So for their sake and mine, hopefully some warmer days will soon turn up.

Rowanleaf

Writing, Singing & Teaching About The World

Tag Archives: education