My Very Own SpringWatch

 Spring Fever.....

Whitethroat

It is spring fever. That is what the name of it is. And when you've got it, you want – oh, you don't know quite what it is you do want, but it just fairly makes your heart ache, you want it so!

Mark Twain

Twain knew a thing or two - he even commented on his own demise, though of course he wasn't even Twain......

Anyway, Spring is the season of discontent - or perhaps of a kind of restlessness, as we emerge from both winter and lockdown.  Nature seems to have held back this year, with the cruellest April since Chaucer inspired Eliot's Waste Land.   In Norfolk we shivered and sheltered from strong winds and showers through to almost the end of May....,

But the rains have brought regeneration to the soil, and now the trees are in leaf, and everything is charged with the fire of life, bursting with pent up energy, making up for lost time.  Hares stop and start as if it were still balmy March:

Deer of all kinds are busy too:

Reeves Muntjac

Fallow Deer

And on the Wild Ken Hill Estate the Exmoor Ponies are up early in the morning:

The Ken Hill Estate is owned by the Buscall family, and this is where Chris Packham and Michaela Strachan are currently based with their team for BBC SpringWatch.  The estate covers some 4,000 acres, though not all in one piece.  Ken Hill House, or Snettisham New Hall, for instance, which sits in the middle of the reserve, is privately owned (by a retired city gent cum priest, I believe).  It was built as a retreat, not a country house (not a gentleman's House)  in 1878-9 for a Yorkshire industrialist, and was/is the first major provincial example of the Queen Anne or Domestic Revival style, a fusion of free Gothic planning with Free Classic detail. Apart from impressive architectural details, the house also boasts a game larder, from 1880 - not something that Chris Packham would necessarily approve of.....

Other parts of the Ken Hill Estate, by the way, include the house opposite mine, and my allotment - but that's another story.....

Anyway, while Packham attempts to recharge his Tesla, I embark on a SpringWatch of my own, trawling the woods for evidence of spring and rebirth and similar things to bring balm to my sorry soul.

There is plenty to see, and to hear.  Like this Sedge Warbler, belting it out atop a prominent twig. 

A Robin joins in, his varied song loud, but halting, as if he turns the pages of his music every so ofter:

Everyone is active, either staking aural claims to territory, or flitting from tree to bush, like this little Chiffchaff, in search of food and calling to his mate:

There's movement all around, as a Blue Tit takes off from a pine:

Or a pair of Linnets chase each other away from me:

In the water, an Egret splashes for a minnow:

And an Avocet sifts the muddy shallows for shrimp or other morsels:

A handsome Reed Bunting nervously does a high wire act:

While a male Stonechat proudly shows off his bling:

Everyone is hungry, and parent birds are busy gathering food for their broods, like this beautiful Meadow Pipit:

And this sleek female Blackbird (whose mate is busy singing the most gorgeous arias nearby):

Of course, Spring is not just about birds.  Although I hear reports of a shortage of some insects, perhaps, again, it's a late start to the year?  Here a Ladybird doesn't mind the nettles:

And this beetle (I'm sorry, but I don't know his name - could he be a Rhopalid Bug?) likes the flowers of Garlic Mustard (or Jack by the Hedge):

Spring is a time of rebirth. Slaughter (lambs) and rebirth. [I only recently realised that the slaughter of lambs at Easter was historically a way of preserving pasture to fatten the rest of the flock..... But Jesus was a shepherd so he would have known that.....]

Our own two daughters were born in Springtime, and indeed this piece is put together on Hannah's birthday as a special memorial to that day, several years ago, when Amanda brought her into this world:

And here are some flowers for both of them:  May Blossom (Hawthorn), whose scent is just divine:

Daisies, the bright joy of light:

Forget-me-not, the bitter irony of nature:

And the delicate red (or purple) dead nettle (or Archangel):

So..... Chris Packham and Michaela Strachan are in the neighbourhood, and can be seen socially distancing in a field every evening for the next couple of weeks.  OK, it's the vogue, but it does lack the intimacy and warmth of earlier programmes with a nest-like den and clever graphics.  But, hey.....

Anyway, though I was intending to buy them drinks in The Rose and Crown (where Chris has stayed in the past) and we are but a hare's leap apart, we have had to keep our distance, socially or antisocially, and so the above is my very own SpringWatch from the Ken Hill Estate. The official Springwatch cameras roll 24 hours a day and are monitored 20 hours a day. (I cannot compete with that....)

Members of the crew get around the sprawling site, that stretches five miles (8km) across, in a fleet of buggies and there are nine miles (14.5km) of cables being used by the technical team across the site.  (I cannot compete with that.)

(from)

BBC Springwatch at Wild Ken Hill: Behind the scenes

By Zoe Applegate and Kate Scotter

BBC News, East

I do like the programme, and have always enjoyed watching and listening to Michaela and Chris. It's great to know that some 4 million people will also be watching, and learning.  (And I do hope that dog owners will take heed of the warning last night about letting dogs off the lead in conservation areas......)

Apparently Sitting Bull had this to say about Spring:

Behold, my friends, the spring is come; the earth has gladly received the embraces of the sun, and we shall soon see the results of their love!

Yes - Spring Fever indeed! And I hope you may have enjoyed my personal SpringWatch.....

PS, For more about Wild Ken Hill, please see https://www.richardpgibbs.org/2021/04/a-lesson-in-rewilding.html, my earlier blog about a guided tour of the estate at dusk....

Thank you all, and Happy Birthday Hannah!

Strictly for the birds.....

Come, Fly with me.....

Words fail me.

[If you can access dropbox, then this is a link to a high resolution video clip:]

https://www.dropbox.com/s/sg7ighhj79ozv8b/Bye%20Bye%20Blackbird.mp4?dl=0

[But if that doesn't work, then this is the same sequence but at a lower resolution:]

{which you can watch on full screen but which, because of the resolution, doesn't look as good as the dropbox file - sorry!.....}

But birds don't.....

x

R

We look before and after,

And pine for what is not:

Our sincerest laughter

With some pain is fraught;

Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought.

P B Shelley

To a Skylark

Making new friends

 If only.....

Two jackdaws stare at me from their perch in a beautiful stand of spring-tipped silver birches.  They are suspicious of me, but I mean no harm.

A jay looks, slightly myopically, in my direction, not sure if I will pass by....

A red kite surveys me from the safety of his thermal, then zooms away, uninterested.

Geese - Canadas:

Greylags:

Brent:

And Egyptian:

Fly past in formations, oblivious to, or just unconcerned about, my insignificance. 

I walk, with my wife, quietly - with little conversation - every morning.  I carry a camera all the time.  One time I may see a Barn Owl dropping in on some busy rodent:

Another time I may glimpse an angle-poised heron cruising above the fish he will invite to dinner:

I use the camera to record the lives I witness, and also to help identify my fellow creatures.  Sometimes it is hard to distinguish one little bird from another, and only when I magnify the pixels can I be sure of who I have pictured.

Here, for example, are a few tiny souls whose paths I recently crossed:

Meadow Pipit

Linnet (f)

Chiff Chaff

Chaffinch (f)

Yellowhammer

Swallow

Wren

Stonechat (m)

But they have all kept their distance. I cannot reach out and touch them. Our friendship, if you can call it thus, is distanced. What does it take to make a friend? What is it that makes us all so detached? I mean them no harm. I have no axe, nor grinder. We breathe the same air, eat, if you like, pretty much the same organic produce, and certainly need to drink the same water. 

I am not bathed in an aura of loving everything and every body - for example, I have no desire to spend my time in the company of woodpigeons with their monotonous phone-dial croonings or their huge appetite for my broccoli. And if push came to something like a shove I could probably live without mallards.....  But, for God's sake, why is it so difficult to be friends with your neighbour?

Here are a few more snaps taken recently, from a distance, of beautiful things who really don't want to associate with me, or others like me.....

Yes, the world is full of life, for the moment..... And though we don't all speak the same language, we do all breathe the same air. 

I just wish we could be friends..... 

Especially as life is so short.  We must make the most of every ray of sunshine,

For tomorrow is another day, and some friends have already gone.....