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.