Organising thoughts and bones

Saturday morning, the girls are having a 'spa', the are boys doing 'kick club' and I can think about art for a micro-second before football club in the park. (*Similar to spending an hour and half standing on the Beardmore glacier). I have been organising my mouse and shrew bones late at night as I must get on with my new piece of work. Sold a piece of sculpture in London this week, which is a pleasant surprise, and I want to get a new piece to the gallery by Wednesday night. Planning a new wall based owl pellet ossuary and considering mounting mouse and vole teeth onto gold-leaf but haven't found enough yet so busy sifting about in my trays - panning for molars. On the wild-life front this week, there has clearly been a battle for territory or life around the bird table as there are feathers on the floor and one of the feeders, with hook, has been knocked to the ground. I suspect a sparrowhawk assault on a feeding small bird. Also I have it on good advice, from a friend at work who takes wonderful photographs, that there are short eared owls to be seen locally on a piece of moorland and that the best time to see them flying low over the fields is at about 2pm. I am going to plan a visit to try to take some photographs. Note to self: I still need to deal with the badger which is in the trailer.

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Badger

On the Kings Lane on Saturday morning, as I cycled up to football with my son, we found a dead badger in the gateway by a field. It didn't look as if it had been hit by a car but was neatly laid out on the floor, dead. Perhaps it had a disease or died in the cold ? It certainly had astonishingly long claws and a perfect coat, all bristling silver hairs with black underneath. I remember my Father had a badger hair shaving brush, incredibly soft strong bristles and this begs the question - Where do shaving brush manufacturers get badger hair? Badgers are protected and I don't believe that they are farmed for fur and I doubt if teams of Gillette road kill collectors scour the lanes ? I took the badger home, having collected my trailer as it was surprisingly heavy, and laid it out to photograph and draw. It was a bit cold drawing and I got distracted by talking to my neighbour Mike over the fence and I'm not 'allowed' to take big dead things in the house, so I will have to settle for photographs. I think it's a bit big for me to deal with as a novice taxidermist and my 'special' freezer is full already so I will hide it away outside for nature to 'do it's business' and then perhaps retrieve the bones so that I can reconstruct the skeleton, watch this space.

A slow start

It's been a strange new year. Mild temperatures and high winds seem to be disrupting normal patterns. I saw the first snowdrops of the year yesterday, which is 11 days earlier than last year. There have some large gatherings of birds including these lapwings. I've only ever seen handfuls of these birds, but I understand that historically large flocks were common over local fields, so it's great to see this sight. Getting up close, we could hear the fantastic noise of their 'pee-wit' calls as they wheeled and bobbed over the wintry fields.

Pembrokshire for New Year

Great New Year weekend on the Pembrokeshire coast in West Wales. Staying in the wonderful cliff top Pwll Deri youth hostel with friends and family. Incredibly windy and bleak but beautiful stunning scenery and we clambered down to the top of the sea cliffs each day to see the seal pup and its Mum sheltering from the weather below the cliffs. A lone seal could be seen in the surf and it was tempting to imagine that this was Dad but I'm not sure seals live in family groups and was probably another female. In between the banks of sea fog we caught glimpses of other wildlife over the weekend, the most notable of which was a lone lesser spotted woodpecker on a telegraph pole, only about the size of a large sparrow with its distinctive black and white barred back, hopping up and down the pole. Oyster catchers running up and down the tide-line on the beach as we collected large edible crab claws cast off by the fishermen and lying strewn in the seaweed.

Christmas Rail Kill

Great Christmas day walk with Dougal, 1 hour along the Buckingham crossing section of the track with all trains stopped for the holiday and a bright winter sun. The once a year rare opportunity to explore the trackside without the risk of being mown down by a train. Found the time for a quick walk between morning stockings and afternoon Christmas tree presents and while the children distracted by chocolate and lego.

Evidence of dead creatures with every step, we checked, and a dead pheasant every 5 meters or so on average, either 'fresh' and to be avoided or mature to be considered or clean bones to be collected. A selective collection of finds are now laid out on my father-in-laws conservatory table and include many pheasant and rabbit bones, two partridge skulls, many train shattered pheasant skulls, 8 rabbit skulls and a grey squirrel skull. In this 500 meter section of track alone, and we only picked up a small percentage of the bones, so imagine the shear volume replicated across the country's rail system. Briticsh Rail, the seasonal gift that just keeps on giving, Q: What is the true cost to wildlife, if you combined road and rail ?

A pause and then...

As Dunc mentioned in his last post, it's an odd time of year. Last winter, our first since returning to Norfolk, was notable for a harsh December, which imparted a barren, dead feel to the land. I thought that this was due to the ice and snow, but this last few weeks, though lacking the biting temperatures, I have noticed this same feel; it is as if the world is holding its breath, after the incredible energy of spring has dissipated across summer and autumn, finally running out of steam in late November.

Bare trees aside, I cannot quite ascribe this to particular events; there are still plenty of birds to be seen (though other than the doughty robin they sing not) including exotic migrants, there are non-hibernating mammals and even stray insects, drowsy though they be, with evergreens and flowers like cyclamen still providing bursts of colour. No, it is just a feeling that I have, of stasis, of a caesura, a pause, as though the world was waiting for some unheard clarion call, a far-off bugle on the edge of hearing that will signal the start of next year's fecund roundabout of seasons and until then will wait, not breathing, not moving. It is as the moment when a wave has washed away from the beach and for the merest moment in time it holds itself unmoving, before tipping back on itself to accelerate once more towards the land. But in this pause, we enjoy such sights as the Redwing (Turdus iliacus) that alighted on the hedgerow, feasting on the last of the haws, providing a welcome burst of Christmas colour.

Its too dark to see.

Every morning I cycle to work in the dark, every evening I cycle back from work in the dark...I'm missing the daylight. Reading the wonderful 'Barley Bird' (Richard Mabey), thanks Ads, at the moment and I feel a genuine pining for summer evenings and spring mornings. Finding it hard to see creatures in the dark and difficult to make space between football practice, work, pantomimes, Christmas shopping and other seasonal commitments to get out and look at birds but plan to if I can tomorrow, while I can still see. The grim weather is of course as it should be in December, so I really can't complain, and a great deal of November has been unseasonably mild. The cold is now beginning to bite and the green shoots, hoodwinked by the warm spell are now paying the price for jumping the gun. My neighbour found her pet guinie pig and rabbit 'dismantled' across her doorstep last week and I assume it was the work of a fox, so its clearly not just me that's finding it hard to find wild life at the moment as I look out at my vulnerable chickens in the dim morning light.