Quantock Easter 2 of 3 : Somerset Wildlife Trust's Holford Kelting Nature Reserve

Less than 48 hours had passed since we had enjoyed romping up and down Hodder's Combe in the Quantocks, before we found ourselves back in this lovely part of the World on Easter Monday, poised like mountain goats for a second walk. Actually this walk was followed by a third walk later in the day, details on that in the next post.

Roll back a day or so. After returning home on Easter Saturday I found myself flicking through a walking guide of the area when I stumbled across the name Holford Kelting, which as it turns out is a Somerset Wildlife Trust nature reserve. 5 hectares of a steep sided valley in the Holford Glen.

Strange name I thought. I looked up Kelting - not much on-line but it is either a)  a surname of Germanic origin meaning field or place by a field, or more likely in my imagination b)  the ability when two (or more) people are able to communicate via Telepathy. The mind boggles, I've led a sheltered life, I had to visit.

By 11am we were off walking through the lanes of Holford Village and into the Glen itself. In all the years I've visited this area, I have never walked in this direction. Today, even with the car park full, no one else walked in this direction either it seemed. It was bliss. Soon we walked through a gate and into another world as we descended on a steep path through the most wonderful woodland. The woodland floor was awash with ferns, celandine, wood anemone and wild garlic. Mosses covered the buttress trunks of trees. Overhead woodland birds called. It was magical and we were not even in the Nature Reserve, this was just the aperitif. My notes I'd jotted down said - walk half a mile into the woodland and then enter the reserve, taking care on the steep sides which may be slippy if wet. Duly noted. 

We kept walking, the path became steeply descending and we were in heaven walking into somewhere new where way down below we could hear the unseen river gushing and cascading through the understory. It is a long time since I've seen a woodland floor this covered in spring flowers - primroses, violets, and wonderful carpets of anemone rising up the valley side.  And that was just what we could see while walking.

All the while I was looking for a sign or notice that we were at the reserve. We'd now been walking about twenty minutes and nothing was obvious by the time we came to a gate into a field. We went through and suddenly the landscape opened out. To our right and ahead of us a huge grass field littered with celandines. To our left a tree line crowning the lip of a steep valley. Maybe there's a gate into this valley further into the field. 

This was magical, aside from a large flock of jackdaws noisily flying around some mature beech trees, we were the only other moving thing. No sheep, no cattle, just the jackdaws and us. The once well defined path up to the gate now became barely visible in the field. We were actually on a bridleway as seen by recent horse shoe indentations in the sward. But everywhere there were celandines and ad hoc clumps of primrose.

Mid field a really fresh badger set was being worked, it looked like the winter bedding had been evicted for a new spring mattress. 

Eventually though we came to another gate. Mrs Wessex-Reiver checked her fitness app. We'd walked 0.8 miles. Where on earth was this entrance to the nature reserve then? We had not passed anything obvious at all. That said it didn't matter as we were thoroughly enjoying this walk into an unknown land, and ahead lay what looked like a wonderful piece of ancient woodland. I half expected to find Baldmoney, Cloudberry, Dodder or Sneezewort guarding this gate and their woodland home to BB's Little Grey Men. We stood by the gate for a while listening to the silence other than the chorus of the natural world. We then ventured in.

And what a woodland. The first flowers of wild garlic were just emerging, their scent was subtle but in a few weeks it will be overpowering. Aside from the pathway not an inch of land remained bare earth. What had been we thought wonderful woodland at the start of our walk, was now surpassed by this hidden gem of modest size.

Five more minutes walking and we reached another gate. We'd done 0.94 miles. As we'd missed the entrance to the reserve we needed to turn back, but before that we spent a few minutes enjoying the view towards Kilve and the Bristol Channel a mile or two further on. A new hedge and gates have been installed in this field which was interesting and I'm still not sure why there and then continuing up the hill, the distance between hedges slowly becoming narrower. Overhead a buzzard mewed while being noisily mobbed by a carrion crow. More jackdaws, the yaffle of a green woodpecker and a few other woodland birds completed the soundscape.

Reluctantly we turned and retraced our steps back through that magical woodland copse, through the gate and once more onto the wide fields rolling down the ridge to the tree line standing sentry to the valley below. 

I kept looking as we walked but the fence on top of the valley lip contained no obvious entry points, until that is when we reached the felled tree. Next to this I saw a small wooden stile which we'd missed on the way out. But this can't be the entrance, it was covered in brambles and no obvious pathway lead from it.   It felt right that the reserve was below us, we just didn't know how to get into it. Oh well we've had a lovely walk and on our next visit we can try again with better directions.

And then, just as we went through a five bar gate and re-entered the first piece of woodland we'd walked through I saw what looked like a path, one I'd not observed on the way through. A rarely used path indeed which ignited memories of exploring woodland as a child. I looked at Mrs Wessex-Reiver and said "shall we" and she nodded - and so we headed down this leaf strewn path as if descending into a primeval forest no human has entered before. It wasn't easy, with the leaf cover it was slippy in places but not obvious until our legs slid from under us. Hidden branches provided a trip hazard and fallen trees a head injury opportunity. But this was great, I was eight again and exploring the landscape of Rothbury in Northumberland. If this is the reserve entrance, the reserve itself must be superb.

And boy were we not disappointed. Suddenly the path emerged at the river we'd heard earlier. A rubble strewn shallow river which threw me back all those years to making dams and looking for caddis on the underside of stones. Water flowed over the pebbly bottom providing a chorus of liquid music into the otherwise silent valley. We stood at the water's edge, just taking it in, silent not talking. This is exactly what a river should be, meandering, semi blocked by fallen trees, little pools, shallow rapids, swirling eddies, chaotic.

And this is what being in the natural world is all about, nature quietly doing its thing and we as observers leave it well alone, and that was why we never went any further into the reserve, our path ended at the river which meanders to the sea, just as it should. 

I can't recall how long we spent there, it felt like hours but probably a quarter of an hour.  A mental note was made to return with a picnic and just sit and do absolutely nothing, nothing other than sit and watch the croziers unfurl from the many ferns down in the valley floor, or watch the sunlight dancing off the surface of the water. Of course like Brigadoon we may never find this place again, but I'll know where it is, it felt like home, and we will be back.

Quantock Easter 1 of 3 : These Boots Aren't Made For Walking

Over the weekend, three contrasting walks were taken by myself and Mrs Wessex-Reiver. The first of these, which I'll write up as a Trichotomous Saga, began on Easter Saturday before dawn.....

An insipid light irradiated the curtains from outside, curtains still closed tight against the now rapidly receding nightfall. I lay in bed identifying the birdsong, blackbird, robin, dunnock and jackdaw dominated, some herring gull way off. All the while I struggled to rouse myself for a planned early start, though to be honest by the time we were on the M5 the sun was well over the horizon and its solar light dazzling the now awake landscape. 

All my life if I plan an earlier than normal morning start I can never sleep properly the night before. Easter Saturday was such a day where after waking at 2am, I lay in the darkness until just after six, before a mad scramble out of the door before 8am. There was a long walk ahead of us, I needed breakfast. After 20 minutes on the road I swung the car beside a Greggs on an industrial estate in Bridgwater, leaving minutes later bearing one bacon butty (three slices and tomato sauce), a large sausage roll and a hot chocolate for my companion for the day, Mrs Wessex Reiver. A bargain indeed at £3.80. Fifteen minutes later I switched off the engine at Holford Green Car Park to begin our walk after that very welcome breakfast, a breakfast accompanied by the harsh loud caws of the rooks in the rookery above our heads. I like it here. I'll take the sausage roll with me for my elevenses.

Spring is really gathering pace in Somerset as field and dale turns green by the hour, yet here at Holford nestling in the Quantock Hills winter still had a firm grip on the landscape. The lack of leaves in April is an illusion of course. The territorial  birdsong as we began our walk was phenomenal, song thrush, green woodpecker, robin, dunnock, great, blue and long tailed tit, blackbird and above most of this and ostensibly everywhere, nuthatch. We come here a lot.

Holford is a small village off the A39 that has so much to offer the walker and naturalist. The poets Wordsworth and Coleridge knew this landscape intimately as Wordsworth and his sister Dorothy lived for nearly a year at Alfroxton House less than a mile away.  The duo would ramble over this landscape at all hours of the day and night, composing poetry, conversing with each other though above all integrating themselves in and as part of nature.  I'm currently reading a fascinating 2020 biography; Radical Wordsworth by Jonathan Bate, to better understand the man and how this west Somerset landscape inspired his writing. As a prodigious walker, Wordsworth in his lifetime is estimated to have travelled 175,000 miles on foot. We'll not do quite that distance today, just five miles, though a walk of lovely contrasts.

We began at the lower end of Hodder's Combe where the deep valley sides cut by the stream over millennia  hold extensive areas of sessile oak. At this low elevation the birdsong is very much of a woodland mix. In a few weeks time the summer migrants will add to the native chorus, willow warbler, wood warbler, cuckoo, spotted flycatcher or if we're lucky a rare native here, a lesser spotted woodpecker. My favourite of these woods is the the pied flycatcher which I've seen and recorded its call here a number of times. Today though it was the the chiff - chaff call of the onomatopoetic chiffchaff adding a little finesse to our steady climb up the combe.

We'd been travelling for about fifteen minutes when Mrs W-R, pointed to a space ahead of her and called out yellow wagtail - initially it was by the side of the stream, before flying up into the tree. Honestly it is in that tree above, as you can see from this terrible photograph below, I only had my mobile. Oh well we saw it, just the one bird in fabulous condition and I would not be surprised if this bird had literally just arrived in the last 24 hours as it wasn't fidgety as wagtails usually are, and sat obligingly on the branch for a considerable time preening. I've seen them here most years, with a handful taking up territories in the fields along the streamside by the ford we now crossed. [ed. probably grey wagtail in this shot - thanks Stewart]

We climbed higher. Subtly the tree cover begins to open out. The valley widens and sunlight floods the ground. Once this was an industrial area with tanneries and weaving mills utilising the bark and water from the stream. At the time of Wordsworth this was a busy semi-rural-industrial landscape full of activity. Today the air is clear and lichen covers virtually every tree trunk

Occasionally one can see a relic of the past in a tree, such as this 'wire cut' which denotes a long lost fence the oak tree will have grown into and around producing this tell tale growth.. 

We'd been walking about forty five minutes now and the heat was beginning to build bringing out the first butterflies. I've not seen many butterflies this season, yet today we saw a number of peacock and speckled wood in the higher parts of the woodland here. Up on the ridge it is possibly too windy for them but down here is a microclimate they seem to enjoy, evident as I watched a pair of speckled wood twist and turn like a vortex on the wing.

While the Lepidoptera may be few, everywhere there is the sound of water from miniature waterfalls and cascades. At this point we were nearly through the trees and about to climb up onto the open ridge via a path through an area known as Lady's Edge.

One of the many natural aspects these woods are famous for are the polypodium ferns which grow here on the trunks of the sessile oak. While not unusual to do this, these ferns tend to exhibit this epiphytic behaviour in western woods where there is a constant and high level of humidity.  Looking around today I noticed a lot of these ferns have vanished leaving just a hair like wiry stalk sticking out of the moss. Last year was a severe drought season, we're still technically in drought after all these wet winter months. I'm assuming then despite being a fern that can tolerate a modicum of dry weather, the many months of dry weather last year hasn't been beneficial. Anecdotally there is less fern cover on trees here than when I first visited twenty odd years ago, which is worrying. Climate change is playing funny games in ways we'd not expect.  

This woodland is also managed to leave standing dead timber unfelled, allowing the passing observer sights like these turkey tail polypores [Trametes versicolor] to enrich a walk.

By now we were up onto the open moorland and scrub, where the birdsong changed. A few robin and wren remained vocal but with the silencing of the woodland species the predominant bird now was the stonechat. I counted around six pairs along this path - males resplendent in their black and red-sand plumage with a vicars dog collar, the mottled grey-brown females always close by. I do like stonechats, they just add vibrancy to a landscape, and are easy to see too.

As were the lambs and ewes. We'd almost made it to the top, and a wooden marker known as Bicknoller Post. It was absolutely stunning up here, the sun was now strong and the heat was building in the earth beneath our feet. Time for a well earned rest and to take in the view.

From this point and those nearby we can see all the way to Exmoor, with Minehead in the middle ground, then around to Wales and the North Somerset coast where Brean Down thrusts itself reptile like into the Bristol Channel. No wonder then Coleridge rehearsed and wrote his famous poem the Rime of the Ancient Mariner while walking this landscape. It is a landscape of contrasts that energises the soul. It did for us, for after a ten minute break we pushed on along one of the tracks. Just because it was there.

It was on this track, high up and importantly dry that I spied this pill millipede [Glomeris marginata]. Such a stunning arthropod though somewhat out of place on this high plateau, and in daylight. The track was being used by many cyclists and horse riders, so doing something I rarely do I intervened and placed it in a cooling bilberry thicket. Of course as I picked this little fellow up it instantly rolled itself into a beautiful ball, its colouring making it like a marble or jewel in my hand. 

We'd been on the go now for around two hours. I had hoped we may have seen a ring ouzel up here, they are reasonably common on migration, but not today, and so despite a wonderful skylark singing over our heads it was time to retrace our steps. 

We stopped at this point below to allow two cyclists to push their bikes up through the mud. I'm not against cyclists in the hills, and we had a nice chat to them about the red deer they'd just seen, but there is an ecological footprint that worries me - especially in a delicate landscape like this which is under increasing pressure to provide physical and mental solace to a growing population. I can't complain at all, after all we were two walkers ourselves adding to the disturbance and the erosion. I do wonder though sometimes what these places would be like if we excluded humans altogether - how quickly would nature take over? How much would return? There is a lot of research taking place into this as the world had a golden opportunity to re-set nature during the lockdown periods of the Covid-19 pandemic. I know personally of areas where pre Covid-19 there were just muddy paths, but a year later these paths had vegetated and become lush grass and often with abundant flowers. In just twelve short months.

We returned to the car just short of three hours walking - not fast, we only covered 5 miles but it was half uphill and half down, we'd had our exercise and near to the car I saw the first bee-fly of the season. A fitting end and a good workout at least. 

But why the title 'These Boots Aren't Made For Walking'? Well, in the rush to leave the house I couldn't find my normal hiking boots, instead I wore my lightweight summer boots which Mrs Wessex-Reiver bought for me last year. Sadly there's something not quite right about these boots - for me. Walking on the flat they're like wearing slippers. Walk uphill they are like wearing comfy shoes. Walk downhill though they pinch and buckle so much that by the time I got to the car I could hardly walk. I can't put my finger on what's wrong but it feels like the support needed to propel a late middle aged Wessex Reiver downhill is just not there. Note to self then, I must remember to take my proper hiking boots with me next time.... which actually turned out to be Easter Monday when we returned once again to Holford.... 

Revisiting The Rookeries of Wick St Lawrence

It has been under a month since I last did a count of the rook activity in the village, March the 14th to be precise, and much has changed. Some winners and oddly a strange loss.

Finally the weather in this part of Somerset has improved. We've had rain, more rain than I'd like to see again during spring. I think this may be the first year I've not experienced one of those dry early March days when there is dust billowing along the lanes, which for me is one of the signs of spring arriving, dry roads and dust on the car.  But we're in April now and after a Biblical deluge on Saturday morning it seems we're set fair for a few dry days. Perfect then for a pre supper amble to catch up on the rooks in the village on a Sunday evening.

A month is a long time in the natural world. On my last visit as I came home from work, it was around 6.30pm, bleak and almost dark. By my next visit last night at roughly the same time of day now the clocks have changed the sun was strong and the landscape was beginning to emerge - which is a good thing given that rooks begin to nest with an eye on their eggs hatching as the trees come into leaf (for a little protection for the young) while the ground is still moist but warming up nicely thus provisioning more invertebrates for the hungry chicks. 

Those chicks stay in the nest for about 30 days. Interestingly at the beginning of their life the male is the only provider of food, the female remains on the nest only getting involved once the chicks are around two weeks of age. It is all a little taxing for the adults as they can exhibit asynchronous hatching, in other words the eggs laid can be delayed somewhat and hatch at different times. This can mean that from the first egg hatching to the final fledging from the nest can take six or seven weeks. Exhausting for the adults who don't themselves feed well at this time and often lose a good percentage of their body condition. That's why this time of the year and into early summer the weather is important. A hot dry spring with baked earth is not good for rooks as the young fledge, or any other ground feeder for that matter. Hopefully then 2023 will be a good year if this cycle of damp wet days continues as the days lengthen. But I digress, the real issue as I walked the lane was to count the nests.

I'd noticed while driving through the village that a number of new nests had appeared since my last visit. The three which were formerly at the pond corner, now numbered six - three in one tree, two in another and a singleton, though I'm not sure that the lone nest on the far left is active.  Possibly a dummy run nest which is common. 

The three nests on the right, and below were very much active which is good to see given the extensive tree work that happened here in January to open up the dew-pond, which is beginning to come to life after the dredging and chopping back. 

Standing guard in the warm sunlight above.

A single new nest has also appeared in trees by the old school building. This line of trees was once the main hub for the rookery in the village, then around ten years ago they stopped coming here. Disturbance probably, there's a resident herring gull pair here now, but for whatever reason they're back this year, or at least one nest is.

However more worrying is that the nests which were occupied in early March at this location above have disappeared. Did they naturally go or, as I hope has not happened, have they been removed? This location was where nests had remained from last season, and I noticed there is a ladder against one of the trees, trees which border a Farmstay touring caravan site which has recently changed hands. I'm going to be generous and say the rooks have literally 'upped sticks' and moved across the road, as there has been a more than doubling of nests here since my last visit.

On that last visit there were twelve nests in a single tree. On this latest visit that tree had nineteen nests. The trees either side of that had five and four nests respectively.  That's twenty eight nests. Which is not unsurprising as when doing a rough bird count on my last visit there were as many non-nesters as nesters based on the birds present and who flew off when I approached. Those non-nesters have presumably then caught up with delayed nesting activity. 

It was while taking these images that a family, with dog in tow, emerged from the caravan touring site and asked what I was doing. Newly arrived here for their Easter holidays they were interested to know I kept an eye on the rooks in the village. As like the rook I'm a resident myself, I forget sometimes I live in a tourist area.

Hard to count all of the nineteen nests in this image so one of a single bird and nest then.

It does make me wonder why this tree below has always been a favourite for the rook. It isn't particularly tall, not in a favourable location (to us humans) being right next to the road and a house, but the rook love it. They nest here every year and roost here in the winter. What that does show however is that an inconspicuous looking tree if  it were to be felled, could have catastrophic effect on this rook population. And that is always a risk of management taking place without local knowledge. This tree is not just a tree, it hosts a community. 

It was all looking promising then, six (or 5) nests by the pond, one nest by the old school, and twenty eight by the village, 35 nests, that is a minimum of seventy rook plus associated non-breeders. However all was not finished yet. Retracing my steps back home after a lovely forty five minutes bobbling about watching the rooks I noticed back at the farm by the River Banwell that there were some more nests. I'd not noticed these on the way out as they were behind me. These nests are around a quarter of a mile from the main site in the village, in trees by the farm buildings.

There is often winter activity here but I can't recall seeing nests, or maybe never noticed them. The question then in my mind is  - are these birds from the same social group as those in the village simply finding more suitable trees to nest in. Or given these nests are somewhat separate are these a social outlier, maybe newly paired birds beginning a new rookery some distance off from the main rookery, albeit of only three nests. I can't get any closer to these nests from the lane but may have a wander over there soon if I'm allowed by Roger the farmer.

So the count - where have I got to on the 2nd of April with the rooks of Wick St Lawrence?

6 x nests by pond (or 5 if one is inactive)

1 x nest by old school

28 x nests in the village itself

3 x nests by the farm a quarter of a mile distant

I make that thirty eight nests in the village, making the population here at least 76 individuals. Which is even higher than I'd got to during my last visit in mid March, then by estimating breeding and non breeding individuals I'd got to around sixty birds.

I'll leave the rooks of Wick St Lawrence alone now for the season, as I'm pretty sure the number of nests won't increase now. That's a good total of nests for the area, as while rook are not in serious threat nationally they are in a slow decline, like much of lowland farmland birdlife is. We need to let nature have a few raggedly and unkept places to live in - and spill a little more grain at harvest - and leave those trees standing. But that is for another day, especially if it stays warm, with a little rain, but mainly sunny in this corner of the West Country.