Moon Rise

Call it corporeal, fey even (though to be sure even Morgan herself may have been up there last night, what sorceress wouldn’t want to have been?) – the strident barrelling wind at the summit where the Cotswold escarpment bleeds its rock from the golf course and signalling position replete with transmission towers and the party line etched in the noise of fighter planes – where that lone Buzzard is mobbed in extremis by a gang of crows until it can finally trace it’s way out and away on the line of strong thermals a hundred yards out, head dipped, body tipped ever so slightly into the wind – carcasses of caddy trolleys and Victorian mangles, dark brown with rust, emerge half gorged by grasses, clambering zombie-like from the earthy basins at the foot of the escarpment face, itself orangey-red where exposed, pitted with the entrance holes of summer residents nests and other sources of primal erosion – the bleak woodland at the margins (lovely promise in the word ‘margin’) holds a million secrets fading with the light, the rustling and call of unseen creatures stirring or coming to rest for the night, fleeting motion in the shades; and the whole capped with an etched line, the sinewy forms of the newly naked branches (though further in, where less exposed, there are still trees bearing the effervescent gold and brown autumnal markings, a bloom of colour within) – the damp floor is littered with russet leaves or else scarred with fallen timber, silver grey, elephantine – a lone Fieldfare sits in a Hawthorn bush, his chest puffed out under his scowling stare, picking occasionally at the seedy red pods – finally, breaking the high horizon line above where the silhouettes of the land (and walkers) are strongest, the moon shows itself, smoky at first, a bright smudge –

Cleeve Hill, Gloucestershire 21/11/07

Sightings

Whimbrel – 1 Hobby – 2
Little Egret – 3 Grey Heron – 7
Lapwing – 40+ Mute Swan – 4
Ruff – 3 Green Sandpiper – 2
Wood Sandpiper – 1 Curlew Sandpiper – 1
Water Rail – 1 Whinchat – 1
Kestrel – 1

Rainham Marshes, RSPB Reserve 9/9/07

Sightings

Buzzard - 11 Kestrel - 4
Oystercatcher - 30+ Gannet - 11
Robin - 3 Peregrine Falcon - 4
Sparrowhawk - 4 Fulmar - 2 (adult & chick)
Linnet - 1 Wheatear - 5
Meadow Pipit -3 Rock Pipit - 2
Little Egret - 3 Whimbrel - 3
Redshank - 1

Cornwall 20 -25th August 2007

Thames Tide

Lunch break - the tide turns and the exposed mud and shale banks are rapidly disappearing - blink and you'll miss them - stranded artefacts there: the pipes and shells of another life and time stuck in the algae and muddy bottom.

And then an arrogant cormorant takes to the water with little effort, allowing the tide to lap its legs, belly, plumage for a moment before taking to the water and gently drawn upstream.

A gathering of Mute Swans hide their heads in the muddy shallows filtering out favourites, ambling in the heat. Then suddenly they attempt to take flight all together - eight or so swans running on the river's surface and flapping their wings trying to gain speed and lift and surprisingly sounding like horses cantering on hard earth - it's an amazing moment.

But what attracts me most of all is the frenetic pair of Grey Wagtails that twitch on the mud and at the edges of the tidal pools, constantly fluting and twittering to each other, always registering where the other is, never stopping, like some melodic sonar. Occassionally they unite on a lamp post or a barrier on the nearby riverside office development; only to part a moment later and return to their pitchy communication. It's a beautiful sound, and carries way above any nearby industrial and motor hum.

Battersea 5/6/2007

Eagle

Eagle, Cumbria

all images copyright JGBellorini 2007

Shaheen

From a bus or car you’d not notice the Falcon – a carved stone Victorian decoration on the gate post of what was once a mansion house (probably for the railway manager of nearby Clapham Junction way back when). It sits now almost entirely shrouded in the foliage of the unruly trees around it, its squat, broad shoulders and details of the face etched away by rain and pollution. Even so, there it sits as a reminder of the proud heritage it surveys; the lane beyond retaining the name ‘Falcon Mews’. I notice it passing by at street level, a blackbird watching it gingerly from a nearby branch. Even this stone falcon, this representation of the Arab ‘shaheen’ retains some powerful aspect of a living original. It’s in the eyes still, those acute organs that even here, though grey and unmoving, seem to be able to spot the tiniest detail, to follow the multitude of living things passing on the street before it in their buses and cars and decide for itself which one shall be its prey. As if to prove my flight of fancy, the blackbird scurries off sounding its rapid alarm. The falcon of course remains unmoved. After all, it has all the time in the world.

NB 'shaheen' is an Arabic word for a falcon

London, 17/5/07

Cormorant Island

The River Thames at Battersea – brown and fast moving here, the current carrying lines of mucky rubbish and jetsam upstream: plastic bottles, Coke cans and a variety of driftwood and other matter hinting at the life downstream; from the sandbars of Southend or the pier walkers of Kent – who knows? Amid this tidal drift stands an old wooden wharf, lost now from the shore by decay, green with algae and weathered to a sheen, but still standing mid-stream, where Cormorants and a pair of Canada Geese pass the time, preening and watching the river traffic in the lee of the London Heliport. The birds may even have nested there, its hard to tell from my viewpoint on the shore; one of the Cormorants sits on the far lip of the wooden structure, its beak in the air, slightly arrogant in fact, whilst the others stand sentinel nearby airing their wings, stretching their lithe bodies and wagging their heads. Whilst I return to the daily grind of a computer screen their faces appear to be constantly smiling, a spark in their eyes and the sly upturn at the corner of their beaks, like they’ve been let in on some cosmic joke.

Battersea, London 16/5/07

Sightings

Heron – 5 Lapwing – 1
Great Crested Grebe – 4 Reed Bunting – 2
Redshank – 1 Little Ringed Plover – 1
Teal – 2 Chaffinch – 2
Reed Warbler – 2

Waterhay, Ashford Keynes, Wiltshire 18/4/07

Drover's Edge

Rising early, finding nothing out there at first but the bracken and the cold wind coming in from the west, howling between the granite and pushing my bones sideways into the landscape – catching tantalising calls, from where? – gone before any chance of a sighting – I am up here in the Dark Peaks looking for Ring Ouzel though I suspect it is too early still for them to be here yet – even so each squeak or chant from either side of me is an invitation to freeze, scan the broken heather and the weather-beaten rocks below Stanage Edge for any tell-tale sign of the secretive bird – when the wind changes direction I get some feeling back in my fingers and the silence is extreme, the constant rush in my ears now gone I feel closer to this place, one sense closer of course.

I angle my way crossways from the edge, where the rocks fall dramatically away toward the road below, where hikers are beginning to ruminate on their day’s trek and cheap mountaineers come up for practice (I note, disrupting the very habitats they’ve been asked not to on various signs in the area) - from the south, in the shallow vale behind the edge, gazing back toward the mirage of Sheffield I spot two forms moving low over the heather, weaving fast and their blemished blue-grey plumage is a giveaway – a pair of Peregrine Falcons beating down the wind headlong, head on (no other bird can fight it – grim, harsh - this morning, only these aerodynamic beauties) toward the furthest outcrop of rock that I can see; the lead male scoots himself up in an almost vertical climb, the wind pushing him back at an acute angle, he turns so that it is then tailing him and he plummets fast out of sight, closely followed by the female whose path is less accurate and she simply wings her way over the edge and disappears there. The air grows warmer – I chant into my solitude some awed thanks.

Stanage Edge, Derbyshire 9th March 2007

Drawing Hares

With sinew that might span bridges; the madness in the eyes you get to know well. Nothing stops in them. Ever. The report of a rifle, the sigh of December fog, they hear before it occurs, before even the thought of it. With one leg to stand on, one leg to divide the sun, one leg to fight, one leg to guide the night and hide.

Keswick, Cumbria 13/1/07