Christmas On The Move

It has, for want of a better phrase, been a mad-dash Christmas week. Those of a pedantic disposition could argue it was nine days rather than a week, but I for one am not counting the days, just the season. However I did do a lot of driving.

And so it began on December 23rd.

Sunrise was almost two hours away as we set off from Somerset at 6.35am. By the time we reached this road up to the village of Slaley in Northumberland it was half an hour to sunset and getting dark.  Not only dark but wet and quite windy. That wind would accompany our week in this remote cottage, all of which added to the atmosphere of festive escapism.

Our home for the week sat in splendid rural isolation hard by Slaley Forest. So rural at one point a flock of crossbill flew over the garden and on Christmas Day the sad remnants of a woodcock slain by a passing vehicle interrupted our visit to Tyneside with the fatted goose. Located on a hill farm of suckler cattle and sheep (plus four alpaca) the landscape was alive with wildlife, even in December. Rook roosted in the Scots pine shelter-belt, with the usual garden species on the feeders. A kestrel was a daily visitor but due to the volatile weather proper observation was tricky, however over the woods a regular scrap took place between a buzzard and carrion crow. Fieldfare, redwing and a single mistle thrush added variety to the huge gull flocks heading to roost each evening to what I assumed was to Derwent Reservoir about four miles away. 

Not everything involved wildlife. We managed to stagger down to Hexham a couple of times taking in and enjoying the Christmas atmosphere of the Abbey and catching up with friends.

We were fortunate to be staying during a full moon period. This is dark skies country and on Boxing Day morning at 4am I couldn't resist a short walk in the moonlight, moonlight which was strong enough to read a book by. It made for quite atmospheric walking too. Of course what this image does not show is the wind. Without exception every day provided strong winds, on a couple of days gales with sustained windspeed nudging 50mph, gusting higher. It simply never stopped blowing and as the farmer said they'd had three weeks of what the weather forecasters called volatile, I'd call it stormy, and rain, the rain was a frequent accompanying phenomenon with occasional breaks often at night. The last time I'd been in such relentless wind was on Orkney, very similar.

We also had snow. Admittedly this was wet snow, not enough to make a snowman but as with the Met Office's definition of a white Christmas, on our cottage one snowflake fell confirming a white holiday stay. How we realised it was snowing came by chance. Mrs Wessex-Reiver was looking out the bedroom window while it was still dark. I looked to where she was and thought the light coming in looked odd but then the moment passed. It wasn't until half an hour later when some daylight had appeared that we realised snow had fallen. Not crisp and even sadly as by mid morning it had mostly turned to rain.

It was the same day as the snow fell that we headed to Tyneside to see my father for a second day, the first being Christmas Day. On the North Sea coast by Whitburn we still had the wind, the sea was rough, however it was 11oC (7oC by the time we'd returned to the cottage). Quite a contrast to the morning.

All too soon our week was over, possibly as we'd had enough of the weather and returned south a day early. Not before another visit to Hexham where we not only discovered a fantastic independent bookshop where we could have spent hours perusing their stock but quirky little asides such as this advertisement for a clock restorer - these clocks are all broken but used in an alleyway display. And, as in many places these days the post box had a knitted hat. Hexham is a lovely market town.

By Saturday the 30th we were back in Somerset and after the eight hour drive the day before a quiet morning was required. We stayed local in Weston Super Mare having brunch at the Revo Kitchen which now occupies the former Sealife Centre. A bustling place a million miles from the remote area around Slaley and remarkably in the garden we have three daffodils in flower and a snowdrop almost about to open. Springtime in December.

Which all neatly brings me to New Year's Eve. We needed to stretch our legs so where better to head to than the Hawk and Owl Trust reserve on the Avalon Marshes. I'd heard short eared owl were here before Christmas, though on this visit despite there being plenty of other activity, no SEO's were to be seen. I'm fond of this reserve having watched it develop from arable farmland and peat workings. On our short four mile walk I realised I'd not been here for about a year, and therefore witnessed many changes including the maturity of the dragonfly pond which I'd last seen newly dug. Some nice hedge laying going on too. And the sun was out.

And so we reached the end of our walk, and the end of the year. A year in which many wildlife watching trips were curtailed due to other commitments, something I plan to rectify in 2024. How on earth we got to the year 2024 is beyond me. I'll be sixty in April and so need to rekindle the childlike naturalist spirit of encounter as I become Wessex-Reiver the sexagenarian. In fact it's starting tomorrow in earnest as I'm off to Slimbridge to kick start the birding year with some friends, I can't wait.

Happy New Year.

 

Excluding Christmas at Steart

 

Last weekend in a serious attempt to avoid the Christmas melee in town centres, Mrs Wessex-Reiver and I opted instead for some nature inspired walking led spirituality. For this, our chosen destination was the fairly recently opened Steart Marshes abutting the internationally important Bridgwater Bay. In September 2014 the sea wall was breached here and since then this landscape has gradually changed from farmland to estuarine grazing and extensive wetlands.  Only at the very highest tides does the whole landscape flood with the incoming water, however for the rest of the time it is a magnate for water and wildfowl in particular making use of the various new wet areas that have been created.

I used to occasionally come here well before the creation of this super-reserve was conceived.  Then you'd simply park on the roadside and having wandered down to the beach scan Bridgwater Bay for passing birds, or turning 180 degrees observe the fields for the more typical farmland species such as skylark, linnet and of course corvids. It is a site that is best visited at high tide.

It is also an odd place to get to from our humble abode. If I wandered out from the house and over the fields to Sand Point I can see it, about 10 miles away as the curlew flies, but by car, it is a 45 minute drive south down the M5, passing Steart when we're level at Burnham-on-Sea then at Bridgwater we do a loop to Cannington before heading back north until we reach the carpark.  And that is what I like about headland landscapes jutting into the sea, they take on an other-worldliness I find fascinating, bit by bit as the road narrows towards the inevitable dead end the sense of isolation grows. 

What I also find fascinating about Steart is I never see any birds here. Of course I do notice the robins by the carpark, the skylarks, meadow pipit and linnet on the banks, I hear the Cetti's warbler and curlew, and observe a passing mallard or egret, but I never seem to be here when large numbers of birds are visible. Mostly this is down to operator error as I only seem to be able to visit when the tides are ebbing or low. We did once come here for high tide, and after waiting for the appointed hour, absolutely nothing happened other than Mrs Wessex-Reiver sketching some reeds around a hawthorn to pass the time.

However it is also the sheer scale of the place which makes it troublesome for the casual observer. As Britain's third largest super nature reserve covering some 6,140ha none of the reserve, other than the perimeter path, has public access. Viewing is from raised screens off these perimeter paths or from a few hides overlooking lagoons, but in essence the birdlife is buried deep within the vegetation. And for me that is vital. If this is to be an internationally important reserve for species like curlew, then what it doesn't need are legions for day-tripping tourists wandering aimlessly about disturbing everything. Observing from half a kilometre away is near enough.

It was why on this Saturday, as we went simply for a walk, I didn't even take my binoculars. Though I wish I'd taken my proper camera as the static weather was producing some astonishing cloud formations. These were dark non-rain-bearing clouds moving very slowly in the near still air, it suggested a menacing feel to them which in a way matched the bleak flat landscape on this December day. As someone commented on my earlier Facebook post at the time, from the images I took they were expecting Magwitch to appear from the mud and ask for a pork pie. I like this type of landscape, and at Steart it is made all the more austere given only a couple of kilometres away rising from the swamps is the construction site of Hinkley Point C Nuclear Reactor looming like a giants gravestone dominating the horizon.

In 2009, for work, I spent a week at Dungeness recording sounds and sights of the shifting gravels of that part of Kent. I stayed in the Bird Observatory observing their work as well as capturing some of the sounds of this unique landscape for the Natural History Unit's sound library. During the day there was a constant hum from the Dungeness Nuclear Reactor, greatly enhanced at night by an orange glow, a glow so bright that we could walk about without torches. Such a fascinating experience to be there, but I'd not wish to live there. The same with Steart, it is beautiful in an austere way, but I could imagine it would take a certain mindset to wish to live here.    

Steart isn't quite as bleak as Dungeness, it reminds me more of being near the Wash in East Anglia. These flat landscapes, with their far reaching views, are creatively inspiring which today meant I had an inkling to take black and white photographs to reflect the mood well suited to this half-light near monochrome world we found ourselves walking through.

Quantock Hills to the left and Hinkley Point C to the right on the horizon. The latter is much closer in real life.

Light bursting through the thick cloud over the reserve. This happened frequently and provided some stunning eruptions of brightness in the half light of this December's day.

Which way now, winter route, or summer route?

Eventually after about 3 kilometres we arrived at The Breach viewing platform. During the highest tides the Bristol Channel rushes into this landscape, swallowing up the pools and water filled ditches and in doing so flushes waterfowl and waders to higher ground. That said from chatting to WWT staff here previously nothing is ever guaranteed, as we found last year sitting waiting for something to happen. Even if the sea does come in through the breach, how far it travels depends on the weather, pressure and windspeed. It will be nice to witness a full avian spectacle here one day.

But for today we were simply happy with the walk and a ten minute rest before the 3 kilometres walk back to the car, after a refreshment too of course. By the time we returned it was 2.30pm and starting to get dark, these dark days before Christmas really are short. Despite pretty much walking continuously we did observe some interesting birds along the way, a number of curlews calling, as were the redshank, Cetti's warbler and interestingly great tit with their 'teacher teacher' call. At some distance a skein of geese flew along the river. An obliging kestrel hovered over the path as we walked underneath him, a sizeable number of little and great white egret, mute swans, grey heron, coot, mallard everywhere, and a single little grebe yaffling away, but there would have been a lot more out there if I'd sat longer (and had a scope). 

By the farm on the way back, and around one field only, the hedgerows and trees were covered in starlings, noisy black snow chattering away to themselves ahead of going to their roost. As I watched them I'd failed to notice about the same number of starling in the grassland who suddenly lifted en-masse and flopped lazily over into the next field. Another good day then of not setting out to observe anything but just enveloping ourselves in the landscape for a few hours and we didn't see more than a half dozen people during this three hour visit. I just need to return when there is a high tide I feel.

Little Orchard Alpacas

This story actually began around twelve months ago. Wondering what to buy Mrs Wessex-Reiver for Christmas last year I stumbled across a lovely small alpaca setup near Axminster in Devon. The package I bought as a gift was a walking morning with their alpacas through woodland. To cut a long story short by the time we visited this July the woodland walking was permanently closed off to this enterprise so we and half a dozen other people on that day walked through the small fields and the orchard of the aptly named Little Orchard Alpacas. As a result Mrs Wessex-Reiver and I are completely hooked on these wonderful animals. I especially bonded with the alpha male Yorvik. Roll on five months then to last Tuesday when we visited again.

Mrs Wessex-Reiver and I had come to take part in an alpaca keeping session. There is a full day session, we however opted for the half day, four hours, and just the two of us this time. We learnt on the day the keeper course is mostly for those wishing to, you guessed it, keep alpacas. A kind of taster day before they buy if you will. I'm not sure what Vic the owner made of two people paying her for the privilege of picking up alpaca 'berries' on a winter's day. But we absolutely loved it and I caught up with my old friend Yorvik too.

After arriving our first job was feeding not only the alpacas, but two Vietnamese pot bellied pigs, and a couple of chickens (who kindly provided 5 eggs in return). And then as all good stock people do, we had a cup of tea and planned our chores. New bedding, poo pick (berries) the field shelters, clean out water buckets, body condition testing of the males, then the two key jobs, checking eyes for signs of worm infection and last but the most vital job, applying vitamins orally to the males out in the fields. More on that later.

It brought it all back to me, working outdoors with animals. I spend far too much time sitting Infront of a computer in my job. This session in the lovely Devonshire countryside was such a tonic and a perfect de-stress for a few hours. Of course if we did this every day of the year with wet snow running down our necks the novelty might wear off, but I doubt it. Berries cleaned up, water buckets thoroughly cleaned next it was to round the boys up for the testing.

Getting them in the pen was, while slow and like herding alpacas, relatively easy. Checking their eyes for signs of worm infections (pale or white membrane rather than bright pink) was something I found quite difficult. We did three tasks on one animal at a time. Eyes, fat, vitamins in that order. Firstly if you ever try pulling down the eye lid of an uncooperative alpaca you'll understand my trouble,  Actually Mrs Wessex-Reiver was far better at this than I. 

Next it was the body conditioning, much simpler, simply putting a hand over the back and gaugeing how fat or thin they are on a scale of 1-6 with 6 being tubby. Next the vitamins. Until recently Vic has injected vitamins but today she wanted to trial a vitamin gun, in essence a similar contraption to a grouting gun used in DIY. Each squeeze of the trigger dispensing 15ml of bright pink goo. Sounds simple. But trying to widely open an already lively alpacas mouth and getting the goo in the right place while the animal is wriggling was very entertaining. Vic had tried doing this herself before today and had more pink goo on her than in the animal. Even with two of us it was a bit of a hit and miss affair which is making Vic reconsider. But eventually we got all the boys checked and let them out into the field again, though what was funny was that each boy after treatment looked like they had pink lipstick on.

Main jobs completed, time then for a festive break, before we took three boys out for some much needed exercise around the orchard, where windfall apples were a welcome treat, with me taking Yorvik of course.

Walk over, the final task was to let the girls out of the barn for the afternoon. As Vic said often she'll let them out but after ten minutes they're back indoors where it's warm.

After four hours we'd finished. Actually we also made some alpaca fibre nesting material cages while having our hot chocolate. Those four hours passed in an instant and as Mrs Wessex-Reiver remarked we were smiling from arrival to departure. Alpaca have that effect I feel. They're very strong but very gentle and very inquisitive. I'm not thinking of having a smallholding just yet, but spending time with them down there is making me think about what's important in life. Yorvik is a great mentor for life, fascinating too and I recommend everyone should spend a few hours with these charming animals, I guarantee you'll not regret it.

The Unpredictable Draw of Nature

 As I prepared to upload the images for this posting a large flock of jackdaws has flown noisily past the back of the house. It happens every year. Every day during the winter months in the morning the daws flock noisily from their roost past our house at a very low level, so low I am at daw-level watching them from the bedroom window. Then in the afternoon they return in the reverse direction although they fly much higher over the fields at the back of the house heading to their roost, a roost that I've never actually discovered but suspect it's about 8 miles away in the woods near Clevedon.

I find winter a beautiful season, a season which if I'm truthful is the one time of the year when I have more of a craving to be outdoors observing nature than during the rest of the year.  Possibly this is to do with absorbing as much daylight as possible during these short autumnal days as they morph into the very dark days before Christmas. Or maybe it is the arrival of large winter flocks of birds to find food and shelter here away from their northern breeding grounds. Sometimes it is the sunlight light levels bursting through a crystal clear atmosphere such as I observed yesterday illuminating these reed feathers at the RSPB's Ham Wall nature reserve.

We'd arrived at Ham Wall to watch the starlings come into roost. In preference I tend to avoid visits these hot spots of nature watching at weekends as there are too many people about to observe more than the regular incumbents.  I made an exception yesterday. After the first frost of the season had blanketed the countryside in an iced dusting, the clear blue sky and surprisingly warm sunshine for the noted 5 degree temperature suggested a good day to see a starling murmuration over at the Avalon Marshes. We'd been there recently and watched a good number of starlings fly in around ten days ago but it had been a very blustery day and the starlings were quick to settle with little of their famed aerial display taking place. I hoped then that the calm but cold weather on this visit might produce a fine murmuration display.

At this time of the year the starlings come in to roost from around 4 o'clock. We arrived at the car park at 2.30pm and it was almost full, high-viz clad carpark operatives waved us to park sideways on in the carpark - they were expecting it to be busy.  It was. Sometimes though the atmosphere of hundreds of people milling about makes for the experience. We began with beverages, Mrs Wessex-Reiver having a hot chocolate and I a filter coffee. We stood by a picnic table, taking in the atmosphere, when we were joined by a chatty lady who like us visits here regularly, but had just come today for a quick visit, though not to see the starlings. During the conversation as we sipped our drinks she and her husband mentioned a huge heronry near High Ham in Mid-Somerset which I'd not heard of before, a mental note was then made to visit there in the spring.

Saying our adieus we wandered off into the reserve, and as we did so a lady in front stopped and asked if we'd been here before. She and her husband had come from Oxford especially to see the starlings coming into roost. The Avalon Marshes cover a huge area and I can well understand someone on their first visit thinking "Where do we go". We had a good chat, I pointed out nothing is guaranteed as the birds can change where they roost each day,  but I suggested she would be best to stay by Viewing Platform 1 just ahead of where we were talking and she'd be okay, not least as nearer the time the RSPB send staff along there to help people understand this marvellous piece of co-ordinated behaviour. Chatty conversation number two over, we wandered further into the reserve towards where the starlings had come in to roost ten days ago. I spied a vacant bench with a view over the reedbed, and I made myself at home here, joined by a very obliging pair of male robins who devoured the little bits of bread Mrs Wessex-Reiver had with her.

With 45 minutes before the show began Mrs Wessex-Reiver headed off for a walk while I faffed about with my camera lens which looked a little dirty. Lost in my endeavours I heard "This chap looks like he knows what he's doing, shall we stay here?"  I looked up and a family of four plus dog were surrounding me. It turned out they were staying for the weekend in Somerton as the son had bought his father a 'starling weekend' for his father's birthday earlier in the year. They'd never been to Somerset before and thus had no idea what to do, so for the second time in half an hour I passed on what paltry knowledge I could muster. They were a nice family simply having a lovely time somewhere they'd looked forward to visiting for years. The draw of nature watching is strong. As we chatted a crowd began to develop around us so by the time the starlings arrived my once clear view over the reeds had become one of bobble hats, prams, children on shoulders and dogs looking bemused.

Thankfully for my new found friends the starlings gave a reasonable performance overhead. Not huge numbers of birds but a dozen or so largish flocks milling about in the sky, not murmurating exactly but very pleasant to watch as they drifted about and then into the reeds. Thinking that was the performance over we said our goodbyes and Mrs Wessex-Reiver and I began to wander slowly back to the carpark. We'd only gone a few hundred meters when we noticed a huge flock to our right in a different part of the reedbed. Sometimes the flocks of starlings converge into a single mass of activity, this evening however the various groups had formed and then split into roosting in three different areas of the reedbed. This often happens. This flock in front of us were very restless and were rising and falling into the reeds en masse. My new friends caught up with us and they saw and heard the commotion well. The chap's wife was mesmerised by what was happening and when I mentioned the noise of the wingbeats she couldn't believe it. Afterwards she thanked me for helping them have such a wonderful time.  I pointed out it was the birds not me bringing joy, but I can understand having some local knowledge maybe helped their experience.    

By now it was getting fairly dark so we sauntered further on to Viewing Platform 1 where we joined hundreds of people milling about, families, people on bicycles, couples, individuals unwrapping sandwiches and pouring tea from a flask, it was like a mass wildlife party, everyone enjoying the last of the light with the still restless starlings bobbing up and down in the reeds a few hundred meters away providing the entertainment. We watched this all for bit then I suggested to Mrs Wessex-Reiver we could walk out in the opposite direction onto the viewing platform at the end of the boardwalk and see what might be happening there. And I'm glad we did.

The noise from this third group of starlings deciding to roost here was astonishing. That noise came from the chattering of thousands of birds trying to settle for the night coupled with whoosh-wingbeats of those who couldn't find the right spot and were then agitatedly flying about between the reeds to find a new desirable piece of real estate. So low were some of these starling groups flying, and at quite a speed, that their passing was breaking the water surface and causing ripples and wavelets to form. By now the light was fading fast, seeing individual birds was impossible, it was simply a blur of activity. That didn't dampen the enthusiasm of the large number of people crammed into the viewing platform, no one was moving. It was now 4.45pm. 

Forty five minutes of entertainment by nature just doing what it does every day. As we walked back I noticed moonlight reflected on one of the pools. A moment of stillness in a landscape still chaotic with both visitors and nature on the move. Approaching the main path through the reserve those visitors were still ten deep still watching the starlings doing their thing. That's such a lovely thing to see as I suggest most people there were very much like the people we chatted to,  day visitors, some visiting for the first time, others regulars but maybe not hardened birdwatchers, families out for a bit of exercise, friends meeting up. Simply people coming out on a Saturday evening to watch nature's own unpredictable version of Strictly Come Dancing. 

A Plodge Around Frampton Cotterell's Nature

To Plodge - Verb (intransitive) - to wade in water, esp the sea. Northeast England dialect. 

Well, I found myself a long way away from the sea on this Remembrance Sunday, but I and my two companions were definitely plodging - such a great word PLODGE - a word I grew up with and a word which sounds like the very action it describes. And on this visit to Frampton Cotterell we did plodge with merry abandon. 

A friend of mine has recently become involved with her local nature group in the village of Frampton Cotterell. The village itself is a handful of miles north of Bristol in South Gloucestershire, and as such like many communities across the land which now find themselves hard by major cities, its countryside is under pressure to develop.  Partly due to this threat of development and partly to enhance the natural history value of the area back in 2021 a new nature group was formed Frampton Cotterell Nature, and my friend Sheena found herself on the committee.  Over the months she has mentioned snippets of news from this group while we've supped a coffee or I've read the updates on Facebook, but until yesterday I'd not visited any of the sites they oversee. We therefore arranged to pop up yesterday and as had happened with recent nature rambles this autumn it was raining. Mrs Wessex-Reiver joined me.

As Ovid said "Fortune and love favour the brave." Thus despite the predicted deluge with stout wellingtons now on our feet and a waterproof mackintosh on our backs we set off from Sheena's house, gaily splashing through the village before we joined the Frome Valley Walkway at the first of the sites now managed by the group. Sadly I've forgotten what this area was called but it followed the banks of the river, is open access to anyone and in recent months has seen tree planting and management take place to enhance nature here.

Not a long river, the Frome winds its 20 miles from a little further north at Dodington and eventually spills itself into the mighty River Avon at Bristol where it ends its days at the Bristol Channel flowing past the aptly named Avonmouth.  Here at Frampton Cotterell I was informed it was usually little more than a big stream, though today after a lot of rain recently it was a boiling coffee coloured river in full spate. Kingfishers are resident here though with the river in such force they'll not be able to fish, kingfishers can suffer high mortality at times of flooding for this reason.  Further upstream otters are found. A pleasant enough start to our walk though in November the wildflowers have sensibly disappeared for another year awaiting warmer days.

A little further on we came to a small wooded area where a few weeks ago a working party had been invited to come and do some coppicing one morning. This little parcel of woodland had been coppiced before but not for a long time. On that coppicing day my friend turned up as did the organiser and that was it. However hard they tried two people can not do much coppicing over a morning and as we stood there our discussion ranged on how few people turn out to planned working days despite a lot of people showing interest and enthusiasm. That is a perennial problem with many nature organisations (and not just nature groups) where often it is just a few people who do many of the tasks and become the stalwarts of any group. But where are the rest of the volunteers, especially if as I learnt the nature group have 750 followers on social media? There's also an age issue, many work-party people are retired, which of course is due to working people not having time, so we discussed how the nature group could maybe encourage families, or school groups to come along. Or just anyone. It's a universal problem. Hopefully they'll get a few more helpers on the next coppicing date whenever that is.

Emerging from the coppicing woodland the valley opened up again with sodden remnants of flowers hinting at a beautiful wildflower area in the summer, an area which seamlessly transferred into a small orchard where anyone can come and pick the apples (a local jam maker is particularly fond of these).  This is exactly what a locally managed site should be, owned by the Parish Council, managed by locals, for locals with specific tasks and need targeted by those locally on the ground.  Oddly as we were walking along the river banks of the Frome, here at least the ground underfoot was quite dry, which lulled us into a false sense of security.

Crossing the main road and circumnavigating the boundary wall of St Peter's church we wandered down Mill Lane past some allotments through a kissing gate and into another Parish Council owned site, Centenary Fields. The nature group looks after a dozen or so sites, however this Centenary Fields,  which opened in 1994, is arguably the focal point of their operations as aside from its size, it is slap bang in the middle of the village. 

In the summer I was told a family music festival takes place here but for the rest of the year it is an open area for dog walkers, families, nature lovers and anyone who just wants to use the space. A lot of tree planting has happened here and on the day before we visited a working party had begun to dig out a wildlife pond (complete with a dead hedge) which despite not being complete was already filling up. 

Moving from the pond we were shown a newly planted woodland area. This resulted in an interesting discussion about plastic tree guards, something I have a particular loathing for. I spotted a mature tree close by that still sported its tree guard and discussing with my friend, try as we might it could not be removed with the bark now fused into the plastic. It is a true oversight of many a grant application that money is there for planting, often insisting on tree guards but no funds for aftercare or even the removal of the guards after a few years.  Not far away a native hedge had been planted by a private landowner without tree guards being used. As if to rub salt into the wound these unprotected hedge saplings looked really healthy.

The brilliant naturalist Chris Sperring has a much simpler, and bio-DNA-friendly way of regenerating trees in open public areas  - brambles. By encouraging brambles, themselves excellent for many wildlife species a native and locally adapted succession occurs. If left unmanaged he argues grassland first becomes brambles, eventually some shrubs develop both providing super habitat for many birds and mammals before the odd tree seedling from local trees naturally regenerating pokes its head up above the bramble tangle, a tangle which by its very thorniness is protecting the young tree from deer or other browsers thus doing the job of plastic tree guards for free. Eventually these saplings will grow, form a canopy and as they mature so the brambles' vigour is reduced due to reduced light levels reaching the understory and eventually many of the shrubs and bramble disappear leaving a young woodland. No need for planting, tree guards, or fencing, or money being spent, with a natural succession from open ground to woodland happening at a rate other species can adapt to. Sadly though this succession can take 30 years and humans being humans crave an instant hit, so we manage and plant and add tree guards.

As we walked on the countryside was beginning to open up into agricultural land. Passing through another kissing gate we came into a pony paddock which would be perfect for many species having shrubs here and rough grass areas there but I learnt it is possibly going to be offered up for development. We walked on towards a local well known spot called Black Rocks where the river Frome was hurling itself around a natural bend through a rock cutting. This is a well known spot in the summer used by people just to come and enjoy a bit of fresh air (and the odd fizzy drink!). 

Onwards we walked now heading into a lovely mature section of riparian woodland where the 'seep seep' of redwing could be heard overhead before crossing a new metal bridge over the raging Frome and onward to the other side where we emerged onto Somme-like agricultural land where maize had just been harvested. We were still following the Frome Valley Walkway and now found ourselves at approximately half way through our planned walk, with our initial plan to walk onto the village of Iron Acton and back to the warm dryness of Sheena's house. However we became bogged down in the quagmire that is the Great British countryside at winter. Welly sucking mud was followed by calf deep puddles, or both, most exciting in many ways but it made onward travel slow and laborious. The countryside around here however was lovely and as it adjoined the Frampton Cotterell nature sites a lovely example of that new thinking of joined up landscapes making for a larger habitat species can move about in. Of course if we stopped developing on land, or reduced the intensity of agriculture we'd not need these refugia areas.

Back to the mud. After I'd moved south thirty years ago my late mum was astonished on visiting Dorset many years ago over Christmas. Up until that point she had only ever visited in the summer when dust devils rose from the hot baked earth of Hardy's Wessex. As we three yesterday plodged along this Gloucester footpath I thought of mum all those years ago astonished at the rivers of water rushing down country lanes or spilling down tracks. The countryside is nothing if not muddy in winter.  

There is also increasing evidence that being close to mud is beneficial to our health. In her book 52 Ways To Walk, Annabel Streets discusses the benefits of mud, especially a microbiota  butyrate which is meant to be good for our gut fauna. Another substance geosmin is known to induce feelings of calm according to evolutionary psychologists. But that aside there is however something very satisfying in squelching through mud on a walk, though as we were concentrating so much on where our feet were treading spotting any of the limited wildlife on show was a challenge.  

Sheena pointed out she had done this route back in May while on a dawn chorus walk when it was a lot drier. The nature group itself have now counted over 80 species of birds in the area which is encouraging for a farmed landscape. On our visit in the flooded fields to our right gulls were afloat on the temporary lakes while rook, jackdaw and carrion crow circled about, and the chatter of smaller birds helped lift the spirits.

Eventually we reached Hoover's Lane and faced a choice - straight on took us to Iron Acton through more fields or turning right took us back to Frampton Cotterell along the very flooded looking lane.  We decided on the latter option, not least as we were tiring a little with all this plodging, had begun to resemble drowned rats plus we craved a light refreshment. The unmade lane back was easy to follow but badly flooded along most of it's length, at one point the water was almost up to the top of my wellingtons. This was becoming quite an adventure, maybe next time I'll wear some chest waders. 

The lane though was interesting, a lot of mature hedge trees and at one point I heard the pip pip contact call of a great spotted woodpecker just moments before it flew off, thankfully seen by both Sheena and Mrs Wessex-Reiver. I learnt that all the land to the right of us was under threat of development. Nothing decided yet but the pressure was on, and that is a worry for the nature group. But I can see why this land has potential for housing, large flat fields, next to an arterial road into Bristol, itself only half an hour's drive away as the advertising might say. In reality I discovered even now at rush-hour it can take an hour and a half to reach the centre of Bristol, just 8 miles away.

Onward we walked as the rain really did begin to intensify until finally arriving back in Frampton Cotterell, two hours after we set off and having walked 3.4 very wet miles. The hot chocolate and sausage roll in the village farm shop was most welcome after that.

Despite the rain, the flooding and the mud we had an excellent visit.  Admittedly not the best day to take onboard the results of what this local wildlife group are doing, or trying to do, but with those 750 members of the Facebook site onboard, even if just 1% turn their interest into action they'll build up a loyal following and I hope they succeed in improving nature abundance and biodiversity in and around their village. I will come back in the summer when it is hopefully a little drier and see what it looks like when the various shades of brown under a leaded sky have departed.

Frampton Cotterell Nature Blog - further reading;

 https://framptoncotterellnature.wordpress.com/about/