October 3rd 2014 - Great Tit and W Percival Westell

 

Working at home as I often do on a Friday brings with it many advantages. And of course many distractions to overcome. However today my ability to overcome this particular distracting great tit at the feeders was weak. It is a long time since I've used sunflower hearts at the feeders but the change in species has while not dramatic, been noticeable. Mixed seed, peanuts and fat balls are in constant supply here for the 40 or so house sparrows that make my garden (and roof eaves) home. Their antics are a joy to behold. However last weekend I decided to fill one of the feeders with sunflower hearts. Since then a number of blue and great tits have come back into the garden, providing a welcome (and much quieter) avian distraction.

 

 

It was lucky I had the camera to hand to snap that image of a sunflower pinching great tit. A moment caught forever. At this time I was taking a photograph of this book, bought for me by Julie yesterday from Great Bedwyn Post Office second hand stall. It is a great little book, well used it has to be said,  but it reminds me how far we have come in terms of identification aids. This reference works to British Butterflies and Moths by W. Percival Westell was first published around 1925 (I've failed to find an exact date) and I love books from that era. Simple black and white line drawings of the moths and butterflies he describes in summary detail, a far cry from the HD photographic images we can all access in 2014. Yet 90 years after publication these books are as valuable now as they were to the budding naturalist then. True some of the information has been superseded and updated, but these books provide a historical bedrock to what was happening in the British countryside between the wars, when the second wave of amateur naturalists swished butterfly nets across a meadow tall.

 

I'd heard of W Percival Westell but knew very little about him. So, after some internet research, I discovered that he was born in 1874 and was the first curator of the Letchworth and District Museum and Art Gallery in Letchworth, Britain's first Garden City. This Museum housed the artefacts of and was dedicated to the natural history of North Hertfordshire, including the famous Black Squirrel. Westell was appointed Honorary Curator in 1914 and remained there until his death in 1943. Whilst there he became a prolific author of nature works and in total wrote 84 books and gave over 100 radio talks on the BBC mostly covering the natural world.

 

For such a prolific author and naturalist there is very little information out there. I have though found his autobiography on-line from 1918;

 

http://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/item/69328#page/20/mode/1up

 

I feel a winter project coming on to discover more about this Letchworth naturalist. It is amazing what happens following a £2 book purchase.

36 photos summarising my wonderful weekend....

It's been quite a hectic weekend this Bank Holiday. Not least because I worked on Saturday and Monday. Didn't stop me having fun though. Or.......... taking far far too many photographs. Instead of a wordy blog today, this weekend, I shall let the photos do the talking......

After days of dark, wet and miserable days, Friday evening developed such a glorious sunset over Bristol Channel, I had to photograph it from my bedroom window.

On Saturday I was at Corfe Mullen, just outside Poole in Dorset by 8.30am for their BioBlitz (see previous posting last Friday). It was a great day but by mid afternoon I'd finished work so headed home. En route home was the Stock Gaylard Oak Fair, North Dorset which I last went to in 2008. I love this Fair, and on Saturday I had time to have an hour and a half wandering about in fabulous sunshine before it closed.

Lots of toys to play with..........

................... things to burn !!

Things to buy............

........things to saw

and arty photographs to take......

And piles of wood.............

It's thirsty work wandering about taking photographs so I thought, I know, I'll pop over to the Greyhound pub at Sydling St Nicholas and have a refreshing cider shandy while reading the paper.

Before that though, I had to drive past Cerne Abbas. The light was stunning on the fields, but the only way to replicate it, due to the sun being in the wrong place, was to take this exposure driven photo from the car...and yes it did look like that.

Or if I looked the other way, it looked like this.

Or if I looked towards Cerne Abbas it looked.... well you're getting the picture now!

I did make it to the pub eventually, and quaffed a most welcome cider shandy, read the paper and hoofed it back home.

That was Saturday.

By 9am Sunday I was back in Wiltshire (via Dorset and Somerset) for my day off this weekend. I have to admit I was not the most energetic of people in the morning, absolutely nothing to do with the cider shandy, or bottle of red wine, followed by muesli when I got in. Anyway, we had a quiet morning, which involved doing something interesting with a plum tree. But in the afternoon went for a walk, to Bedwyn Brail.

Bedwyn Brail is adjacent to Great Bedwyn on the Wiltshire/Berkshire border and a walk I'd not done before. Setting off in glorious autumnal sunshine, the much beloved and self hoofed it up a hill.

Or let me rephrase this. We hoofed it half way up the hill until autumnal produce caught our eye........

Anyway we spent so long messing about, the blue skies of our walk were rapidly being overtaken my dark and brooding clouds.

But at least the views were stunning

Before the rain came, and boy did it come.

We tried to shelter under the trees, but eventually made a dash for a gamekeepers hut, where two other walkers were holed up.

But eventually the rains subsided and we continued our walk.

past sweet chestnut

and verdant foliage (just took this because of the composition)

By the time we got back to Great Bedwyn, the sun was out and the wonderful buildings in this village were at their best.

So homeward we drove for a well earned cup of tea, a Jaffa cake or two and a rest. But not for long. Being such a wonderful evening, we decided to go for another walk, this time to Avebury. In all the years I've lived down here I've never visited Avebury. Driven through it, but never stopped.

So we parked at the bottom of the Avenue and walked up it towards the circle

I took some arty photos......

of trees and stones

or stones and shadows

or texture of the rock

or atmospheric skies

or the setting sun through trees

Before walking back down the Avenue as the sun began to set..........

Now that's what I call a fabulous end to a day..........