Tor Falcon: Diary of a Wild Place

March, Melbreak.

In amongst the complicated folds and ridges of the Cumbrian Fells sits Melbreak. Separate and dark. An armoured insect, legs pulled up under it. It’s flimsy carapace of peat drips into a lake on it’s eastern side while to the west it trails orchids in the summer.

To Chris, it’s grazing. His livelihood. He was born with it in his blood. To the never ending tourists who cut deep gashes down to it’s bones, it’s a day out. A conquest. To my eighty four year old father-in-law it was an unexpected triumph. To the falcons who nest in it’s needles, it’s the perfect place for a high speed ambush. To the ewe with the herbage map of generations in her blank head, it’s everything. To me, today, it’s a set of shapes within a set of shapes. It’s dark against light, solid in air. I’m trying to condense one hundred million years of geology through my eyes and into the fat chalk in my hand making marks on a small bit of paper in front of me

The Mysterious Sex Life of Ash Trees

I’m confused by ash trees. I know that some are male and some are female. I know that they can change sex. I know that some can be both sexes at the same time. In early March I look forward to the great, big, black buds of what I thought were the female trees. The way they burst open into perfect little corals of translucent green tinged with purple. I imagine their sweet taste as I watch pigeons going to ungainly leangths to eat them. But I’m completely stumped by the fact that while some ash trees are covered in flowers, some are still dormant. Not even a flicker of green. I supposed that the seemingly dormant trees were males, but that wouldn’t make sense. It would be a waste of time being female and going to so much trouble to produce your flowers if the male trees didn’t play the game too. Aren’t they meant to provide the pollen?

To clear up my uncertainty I asked a forester. I had two particular trees in mind. One each side of a gate into the wood. One bedecked in all her flowering glory and one fast asleep, unmoved by his neighbour. The forrester shruged his shoulders and said, “ probably doesn’t fancy her.”

So I consulted my tree book. Which tells me there are male and female flowers, distingushable by size. Well, that explains it to a certain extent but hasn’t completely cleared things up. Could it be that I should add to my list of male, female, transexual and bisexual; no sex at all. Or could it be, that infact, the annoying forester was right?

April, Wild Cherry Blossom

To get to the cherry blossom, I have to walk along the track past the log jumbled pit hole full of tar black, silent water. A moor hen makes a floating nest in the middle every year. I’ve never seen her hatch a chick but I admire her sense of aesthetic, her building skill and her determination. She’s there again, silently diving into the pollen smeared soupy depths as I walk past.. Only a faint wobble of water giving her away.

As I come out of the tunnel of willow and hazel and onto the big field I can see the cherry blossom in the distance, it’s clean, fleshy, paleness beckoning from behind the dark, bare, bones of alder trees. I pass loops of brambles beginning to throw up new shoots and listen to the strange whirring of wrens from inside the tangle. I crunch over the mare’s tails, kicking out little clouds of pollen as I go. The smell of mint is next, bruised beneath my feet. Two green woodpeckers fly off in alarm. Crows caw from the poplars to my left. A pair of swans are busy making a nest by the lakes. And as I round the end of the hedge into the far field the ground seems to shimmer as a kindergarten of baby rabbits disappears into the ground under the enormous gorse bushes. Sitting drawing the wild cherry blossom I imagine there are hundreds of little pairs of eyes staring unblinkingly at me. Waiting, willing, longing for me to be gone.

April, Mare’s Tails

Life is full of anticipation at this time of year. Looking forward to the natural progression of things. The quiet reassurance of all being well when things arrive in their allotted order and place.

The swallows returning is a big mile stone. They swoop in, sleek and so well dressed after their long journey. Chattering their news in their foreign sun drenched accents. I feel light headed and can’t help a twinge of jealousy as I listen to their tales. My life is so small and rooted compared with their truly wild and free existence.

The arrival of the strangely prehistoric mare’s tail is another big moment on the field, even if it is rather small and rather brown. It heralds the beginning of the race to mid summers day. It’s a very confusing plant. It comes in two bits; one now, brown and asparagus like and one later, all green and branching. They appear to be different species and have caused much discussion and confusion here. They carpet the middle of the field like an exotic skin, gold and dark brown. Spots and stripes. Rattling out puffs of pollen when you kick

February, Looking for Rooks

Nellie lent me her copy of Crow Country by Mark Cocker. She said I’d love it and then began to talk about rooks…….for longer than is perhaps normal. Well, I’ve just finished it and, be warned, I’m about to do the same…..

I’ve become obsessed. I make sure I walk the dogs to places where I know there are rooks. I loose concentration when driving past fields of rooks or if I hear rooks. And then I did something I had sworn to myself I’d never do. I actually went out rook watching. Bitter experience of balancing up trees in the dark waiting for non existent badgers or crawling around in the wet mud to watch an old pipe which Andrew had mistaken for an eel and of course all the black dots which might or might not be an interesting bird seemed to count for little as I set off at 4.30pm exactly to learn more about local rook roosting habits. I’d seen black rivers of rooks heading north west over the house and over the wood every night at 5. So I made sure I was on the open and higher ground the other side of the wood to see where they were heading to roost.

 Two hours later, freezing cold and not a rook to be seen from my carefully chosen vantage point, I stumbled home in the dark. Feeling foolish, I told Nellie. She laughed and showed me a lovely picture she had just finished of a row of poplars. She said all week they had been full of rooks but when she parked nearby to paint them, they all flew away! So she painted the trees anyway.

February, Everything’s Brown

This week has been almost completely brown. Earth, flora, fauna, sky, my car (covered in mud) even my honey sandwich for lunch today was brown. I’ve been very prolific this week and finished three paintings - all brown. Help, I hope this doesn’t go on too long.

January, Long Tailed Tits

Most mornings, as I sleepily stumble along the edge of the wood with the dogs, I pass a little group of long tailed tits squeaking and jumping about in a blackthorn thicket. Later in the day they flit past my studio, one by one on their way to the nuts hanging outside the kitchen window. They completely take over all the feeders, smothering them so they look like a couple of porcupines hanging in the bush, tails sticking out all over the place. All the other birds sit around and watch this wild, hairy,raucous group of little bandits ravenously tuck in for ten minutes or so. And then all of a sudden they head off again. In single file and in diving swoops towards the scots pines.