More Running in the Snow

I was out again today for 10km, feet crackling on the frosted, beautiful crystalline snow.

I did the tour of the two lakes, both part-frozen and well populated with gulls standing on the ice looking puzzled. The kingfisher was on patch again, underneath the Barnby Lane bridge.

When the kingfisher flies off, it looks more like an exotic moth than a bird, and its stubby form is really quite ungainly.

I think the kingfisher dives better than it climbs!

So, through Beacon Hill Park which was fairly quiet, then to Rumbles for tea. Perfectly nice to sit in the sun with a hot tea! You should try it.

London Road Lake was icy today

Ducks in a drain

Clay Lane

Snow crystals are bringing joy to many

Looking south towards Claypole

Starlings in the tree

Construction site pond is now an ice rink

Beacon Hill looking North

The snowy way ahead at Beacon Hill Reserve

Cold castle

The Lock

Relaxing at the Sconce

posted from Bloggeroid

And Spring Sprung Over Newark

I've had a very busy few days, taking a guest to see the sights of town - perhaps slightly over-enthusiastically as I gave her blisters yesterday - but with conditions like we've had, it was far too good to waste.

Sunday was just a staggeringly nice day, the sun blazing down on our backs as we opened the front door and headed in the direction of Sconce and Devon Park. As soon as I walked down my driveway, ladybirds, big queen bumblebees and peackock and small tortoiseshell butterflies were dancing in the warm air.

After a few false starts, this was the new season in all its joy.

We walked down Boundary Road, and just after how I exclaimed how to me the emergence of the bright yellow brimstone butterfly males was the true marker of spring, one beautiful specimen flew across straight in front of us.

It was a pleasant change to be walking, rather than running painfully, on the Newark parkrun course, and robins and blackbirds serenaded us as we ascended the bark path. The Orchard was alive with bees feeding off the hawthorn blossom, you could hear entire trees all a-buzz, as long tailed tits and goldfinch flitted amongst the other trees.

Sadly Hawton Holt was closed on a Sunday, but Rumbles cafe wasn't, and it was a great feeling to have a cup of tea in the warm sun, and watch happy families using the park, and see the butterflies and bees meander hither and thither.

Yesterday there was a Northerly chill in the air that occasionally bursts of sun could only take the edge off. The butterflies stayed in bed, but there were a few bumble bees about in the cemetery, as squill emerged to take over from the over snowdrops, and the just past their peak crocuses. The male great crested grebes look magnificent at the moment, and even Leroy the muscovy seemed to be sporting an even redder face than normal - I'm told he's been seen being amorous with the local lady mallards and domestic ducks.

But it was on the path up the hill from Clay Lane to Beacon Hill estate that I heard the sound that really excited...the aerated two tone whistle "CHIFF CHAFF" sounding out over the woodland that straggles up the hillside. There was indeed a chiff chaff singing its song, the first I've heard in Newark this year, and how pleased I was to explain to my companion about this tiny bird, the feathered harbringer of wamer times.

Now, we await the sand martins, first of the hirundines.

Sconce Park Walk

Unidentifed blossom (too early for Hawthorn?), Valley Prospect end of the park

Newly opened daffodil, the Oak Wood by the River Devon

Bat box in the Oak Wood

Hawton Holt sign

The Fly Tipping Scourge, Alas

It really felt like a proper early spring day today. Every day the sun gets higher in the sky, and thus even if the ambient temperature isn't actually all that high - 7C or so today - it still feels pretty warming.

I did 20 miles, two bike rides in one. Phase one was the Cotham route, Phase two the Coddington one. I was hoping to come across bumble bees or butterflies, but in the end I saw neither. There were no flocks of redwing in the roadside trees, no fieldfare in the fallow looking farm fields.

No, what I did see was a couple of barrow boy scrappy kids on Hawton Lane, taking the metal pump out of what looked like a fridge freezer. I may be being cynical, but I don't suppose they had the license to deal with a fridge stuffed full of coolant. Nor did I think that after removing any bits of value, that it wasn't going to be left just where they were messing with it.

I see an awful lot of fly tips while out on the roads in these areas, or running along Clay Lane. Two main types - builders waste, including asbestos - and the aforementioned white goods. It just makes me really angry. You see on Facebook all the time that folk are leaving out stuff for scrappers to pick up, not wanting to pay the council for removal, and frankly not caring what happens to it providing the carcass of a washing machine isn't left on their front garden.

Im probably being very very naieve, but if private contractors and collectors can make money out of scrap, why can't the local council? They could collect it for free, and make a little revenue on the scrap to plough back into local services. They are having to waste money on clearing up the rubbish anyway, people aren't going to stop fly tipping out of the goodness of their hearts.

And perhaps the drivers wouldn't be as dangerous as some of the current specimens, and the vehicles not so shoddy.

As for builders rubble, well, perhaps it might be quite easy to set up a camera trap at the well known dumping spots, and crack down hard on the miscreants. It sounds petty, but it really disgusts me when I'm out and about. Last summer, it seemed there was a fly tip every half mile between Cotham and Thorpe.

Well, I shall descend from my high horse now, and look forward to really starting to see some butterflies when I'm next off work! And head to RSPB Langford at the weekend, possibly, without getting blown away.

Unusual Ducks Ahoy!

I'm relishing walking rather than running at the moment, you get to see so much more...but then I feel guilty about not exercising properly, so when I'm on form again, I shall be walking AND running around.

Today was crocus hunt day in the cemtery, and as you can see below, I was rewarded by the sight of a single, rather pathetic specimen poking up dejectedly into the cold, sunless morning. The snowdrops are really coming into their own at the moment, and there is more (I think) cherry blossom on the trees - and more on the ground, where the wild winds have shredded it.

I was also hoping to see something unusual on the Balderton Lake, colder snaps being the best time to see more interesting birds than mallards and canada geese on the waters.

The first thing I noticed initially was that the male great crested grebes have put on their breeding colours - the tan red flashes on their ruffs were very prominent at a distance. The moorhens are getting feisty. But it was some handsome black and white ducks in the distance which really caught my eye. Three male goosander, and a chestnut headed female, were on the water, and that was not the last of it. Further round the lake were some unfamiliar ducks, silver grey and white, with a red-brown head. I had to confirm my suspicions on the net, but they were correct - I was looking at two male pochard, with a much darker female in tow. This is a new species for me to see on the lake, and I was excited to record it.

My walk was happily rounded off by a close up view of some long tailed tits on the pollarded willows at the water's edge on London Road Lake. They really are quite unafraid of humans, and allow quite a close approach to see their featherweight acrobatic antics on the twigs.

It took my mind off the tedious shopping I was about to have to do.

Cemtery blossom

More life and death

Snowdrop close up

Crocus!

Great crested grebe in the distance

Hide and seek with coots and moorhens

A Winterwatch Kind of Walk

What a cold, bright and beautifully lit morning it was, and with my pulled muscle not going into blinding spasms, I was out early (by my standards) with my little 10x25 field glasses and a lot of warm clothing on.

It was a wonderful walk, birdsong blipping out from every tree and hedgerow - the repetitive "deeeee-doooooo" of great tits being particularly noticeable; and there was a spot in the ditch next to the cycle path between the two lakes that a number of chaffinch, blackbirds and dunnock were using as a communal spa. As can be seen below, signs of spring were present despite the cold, and a juvenile blackbird was making a very scratchy and off key attempt to sing from a tree top before it was chased off by an adult male no doubt fed up with having to put its wings over its ears.

A final treat - on the park near my home, a small flock of redwing took up residence for the afternoon, brought into town by the cold.

Frozen lichen

Captivating light

The author and the sprouting crocuses

Life and death

Snowdrops

Balderton lake aglow

Great crested grebe in the distance

Canada goose and the skeksis like muscovy duck

Gorse in flower - goldfinches were loving it!

Redwing in the tree

Another Beautiful Winter Run

No idea what these fungi are, but they are very photogenic and they love my folks' garden

Tufted duck flotilla, London Road lake

Cherry blossom in December? In the cemetery

Hawton village weather cat

A Christmas Stroll

A coot gently paddles in London Road lake

...joined by some handsome mallard drakes

An ugly duckling

Castle Gate is gilded in gold

Satellite of Love

I was visiting the library today, when I found this fellow when I was leaving;

 

This is a satellite moth, so named for the white markings on each wing, clearly shown in the photograph above. They are reckoned to resemble a planet with satellites orbiting it.

It may surprise some people, but there are various species of moth that are autumn and winter fliers, rather than summer ones. The satellite is one, the furry dark december moth another. This specimen was in pretty poor condition, having been partially trod on by library visitors. It was still feebly alive, so I took it outside - cue strange looks - and found a sunny spot to release it in. But I didn't give much for its chances.

Later on, I headed out for a somewhat limping, coughy and sneezy run. Many black headed gulls - in the hundreds - were on Balderton Lake, and a cormorant was making a rare visit to annoy the anglers. On Clay Lane, I had a typical sighting of a bullfinch, a white flash of rump flying across the path, and in the trees above there seemed to be both fieldfares and redwing, although the fading light made it hard to tell. The haw berries would be attracting them.

I eventually returned home to find the robins singing in the baby oak tree, and the blackbirds throwing the dead leaves around in every corner of the garden. The singing of the robins is a particularly cheery sound at present. 

Ten Miles of Serenity

Today’s run was the 10 mile route (actually 9.6, but 10 sounds better) through Hawton to Farndon, and back along the river.

It was a wonderful run for me. Not just because after Saturday’s Parkrun disaster I felt like I needed a long run to feel I wasn’t ready for the glue factory, but because I enjoyed the serenity I felt all around the route.

I love running through Sconce Park, even on a grey day in winter. I love dropping down into Hawton, always wondering if I might see a kingfisher at work near the River Devon bridge. I hate the climb up over the A46 bypass, but love the view on top of it, the asphalt stretching off into the distance. Willow Holt is muddy, but lush and green and gold with autumn colours. Wonderful.

The swans are no longer pillaging the oilseed rape field by the river like they did last year, but are munching winter kale in Hawton. But there are plenty of canada and greylag geese sailing the river, and a cormorant stretched out his archaeopteryx wings, decided he didn’t much like the sight of me and took off down river, leaving a trail of splashes as he did so.

High up and a little way off, a flock of unknown birds was circling for reasons I knew not, and on the water the mallards are now at their smartest, their heads more bottle green than a Carlsberg. Other flocks of thrush type birds teased me, too far off to confirm my hope that they were fieldfares.

In short, it was a day where there wasn’t anything massively exciting to see. But that didn’t matter. It was the joy of being outside, yet again, even while flogging myself to a jelly, listening to the radio, and feeling calm.

Feeling serene.

Copyright Cream Crackered Nature 18/11/13

Starlings

As I took these pictures at the marina bridge, the birds began to take off to form murmurations

Starling Hierarchies

Was out running today, not a huge run, just round the two lakes and along the river. Truth was, my legs were heavy and stuff after doing Parkrun yesterday, and my motivation was sapped by the comfort of being under my duvet on the sofa.

But I still went, dammit!

So, at about 4pm, I was crossing the marina bridge at the back of a well known budget supermarket, when I looked up the weight bearing tower, and saw a number of starlings sat upon it, either pre or post murmuration. They were perched in lines, probably about 50 birds in all, some on the tower, some on the suspension cables.

And it was clear that as I had seen on Autumnwatch footage about Brighton West Pier, there was a genuine "pecking order" (sorry) in place.

Some birds would fly straight into position, several other birds would shift along, and a bird would then have to fly off. This bird would flap off and try and settle down elsewhere, and be immediately chased off, until it found a spot which was presumably appropriate to its status, whereupon another bird was squeezed off.

There was a slightly seperate group of 4 or 5 birds engaged in an endless swapping of positions on a suspension wire.

I was watching entranced for a good 7 or 8 minutes, until the presence of other people on the bridge made me feel like I was being considered a staring-in-the-air nutcase. So I continued my run, and frankly still probably looked as strange as anything!

Copyright Cream Crackered Nature 03/11/13

The Dawn Chorus

I had been having a hard time sleeping last night, and figured a little fresh air would do me good.

It was 4am, and there was a thick haze in the sky negating any chance of doing any early morning astronomy. But there was still plenty going on to keep my senses occupied, although initially I couldn’t see any of it.

It started with me hearing a few high pitched “seeeeep seeeep” noises coming from above somewhere. At first I thought it was the sound of my own slightly cold-ridden nasal breathing, but a little self suffocation soon proved that wrong. It then occurred to me that it was possibly the sound of a redwing, those most attractive of winter thrushes.

This was just the beginning. Despite dawn still being the best part of three hours away, it seemed I had walked out into Halloween morning’s Dawn Chorus.

I wandered down to the road, drawn by the sound of some aggressive chirruping. And there on the actual main road, what must have been a pair of robins were fighting over the tarmac. The one who lived on the far side of the rode was clearly winning; he drove his opponent back onto the pavement with a series of aggressive flapping drives, and then mounted the pavement in triumph as the defeated bird submitted and flew off, leaving the victor to start feeding at the base of a tree.

Not far away a blackbird was rooting around in fallen leaves in the gutter of the road, and others were beginning to stir and call, but not sing, in the trees in the small park opposite. The singing was being left to the robins. Above me a bird settled in a tree, it was an eerily streetlamp illuminated great tit, its face and chest looking orange in the glow.

As my eyes began to grow heavy, woodpigeons and collared doves started to crash about in the foliage. And as I headed back inside to successfully go to sleep, I reflected on what pleasure being outside at this crazy, early hour had brought me.

Copyright Cream Crackered Nature 31/10/2013

Thirty Years Since I’ve Been – The Natural History Museum

As you can tell with my other recent posts, I’ve been visiting London, and I felt that if I was in the city, it was a total necessity to drag my sister to visit the Natural History Museum - a place I think I last visited when I was at school in about 1984.

I was full of excitement, that quickly evaporated at the size of the queues. But they were moving quickly, and we were soon inside, confronted with the still astonishing Great Hall and its iconic brachiosaurus – inevitably seeming rather smaller than I remember it. It was surrounded by folk doing a Crystal Maze style trip round the skeleton in order to get into the Hall of the Dinosaurs, so my sister and I decided to head to the top of the museum and work our way down.

I’d forgotten that there was actually nothing at the top apart from the ancient tree trunk section. And on the level down it was the fascinating, but rather old fashioned, mineral exhibition with the gem-mier stuff in the exciting named “Vault”, the “Treasure Room” which was enjoyable, and an evolution exhibit that as ever my sister and I walked through the wrong way round.

It’s the big exhibits on the ground floor that are the problem. The blue zone has a marine life exhibition full of often model exhibits, very badly labelled and very confusing to look at. Everything is static, and lifeless, and a common recurring theme of downstairs was how dingy and threadbare everything looked. The lack of big sharks was, in my sister’s view,  unforgiveable. And a model giant squid nailed to the ceiling was no substitute.

Things get worse in the overcrowded and cluttered Hall of the Whales. Sea mammals mix awkwardly with land mammals, and the exhibit is impossible to find you way out of. We were looking for the big cats, and it took three circuits of the place before we got out.

I did love the expression on the blue whale’s face however, and spent a deal of time pretending to be the doomed sperm whale from “Hitch-hikers Guide to the Galaxy”.

The big carnivores were the most knackered looking of all the displays. The museum has taken an ethical view – correctly – that it is not going to seek out any new big predator skins from any taxidermy specimens, and the animals are thus rather faded as a result. It was great fun drawing the tiger though, with the pencil and paper provided.

“The Cocoon” however was very different. This is the invertebrate exhibit, and consists of a wonderful curving structure internal to a modern concrete and glass section of the museum. You get an exciting view of the outside of it, and then you actually enter it to see where I think the museum views its future – digital and visual exhibits replacing actual specimens, with more emphasis on how scientists go about their work of research and taxonomy. But as a lover of butterflies and dragonflies, I was sad to not see more on view, and the ones that were unforgivably badly labelled again. Or rather, not labelled at all, or a sort of laminated folder telling you what was in the cases presented to you by a floppy haired assistant.

What’s wrong with putting a label next to the thing you are looking at? Is it so difficult?

However, in general, this is by far the best part of the museum, and presumably when more money becomes available, other areas will be likewise transformed. Although my sister would say you can put all those rats in spirit a long way out of sight, incredible resource though the spirit collection is.

The shop has moved to the other side of the hall, and if you have a pressing need for a pteranadon glove puppet, like my sister had, is ideal!

All in all, it was great to visit again after so long, but it felt so staid and conservative for the most part. But I’m curious to see how they can “get with the times” and still actually fulfil the public desire to see exhibits of real animals, or whether they can educate the public away from this perhaps ethically unsustainable approach to curation.

 Copyright Cream Crackered Nature 22/10/2013

A multitude of different coloured diamonds in the gem vault

Cocoon exterior 1

Cocoon exterior 2

Cocoon interior

Autumnal Sights

Ran 7 miles around the two lakes today, and this documents what I saw...

Rosebay willowherb (?) in seed

Haws by Balderton Lake

Ash keys

Juicy hips at Balderton Lake

Swan, cygnet and goose

On the cycle path. Cotoneaster?

Elderberries, clay lane bridge

Escaped Muscovy

Ripening holly berries

This tiny fellow was on my front door. Native or invader? No idea.

Nature. With added thorns