Blurrds!

The woodpecker above is a regular visitor to our new garden (I'm not sure how long I can keep referring to it as new, but there are just so many changes on a daily basis that makes it feel as if we only moved in yesterday) and I've tried to capture it on camera for a while now. It hasn't been at all easy and this part of photography has always proved to be problematic for me.

A Buzzard in The Highlands

I've been attempting to photograph birds for many, many years. The results have been less than stunning. I'm never close enough, never patient enough and certainly not technical enough to produce some of the results that my colleagues on Pike&Preditors Photography forum do. As you can see from the diversity of quality on this post, my results have been very hit and miss.

Just occassionally though, as with the buzzard photo, a lucky shot comes along and the result looks marginally impressive. Obviously with the bigger birds, the problem of nearness to the lens is reduced slightly, but most big birds are just as shy as their smaller brethren and they tend to stay even further away.


The garden shots here show that we do have a diversity of species to watch; nuthatches, tits including the willow tit two pictures above, pheasants, jackdaws, tree creepers, robins, chaffinches, jays, woodpeckers and the ubiquitous blackbird. There are so many to see that I'm hoping to improve my patience and thus, my portfolio of unblurred birds.

Wonderful

Black faced lambs

We went out for a long walk yesterday in persistent rain and found a few new trails as well as rescuing a silly sheep that had got its head stuck in a fence. So today as the weather was mostly dry, but chilly and windy, we walked those trails again and made a few wonderful discoveries. Well, I say wonderful - they are for us. We're loving living here and each new discovery fills us with amazement.

We found more wild garlic, some more wild apples and acres of bluebell glades, but amongst all those I spotted the dryad's saddle fungus on a tree and was so intent with focusing the camera on it that I hardly heard Franc's excited voice. She had found a wood full of wild orchids, the early purple and there were dozens of them in among the bluebells, wonderful to see. They could easily be confused as off colour bluebells, or a variagation of them, but the leaves are very different, and on much closer inspection, the flowers are so intricately patterned as to be nothing like the bluebell.

Early Purple Orchid

The rain stayed away, although by the time we got back home we were windswept - several squalls had come close to giving us a serious soaking - and sat down to a welcome cup of tea and a bowl of home made Butternut squash soup, with wild garlic sprinkled in. Mmmm. Then, as an added bonus, two fallow deer graced the back edge of our garden, dissolving into the woods before I could get my camera. A wonderful day.

Dryad's Saddle - inedible, but pretty.

Wild Garlic Soup

This is the time of year when the foraging starts in earnest and it starts with either wild nettles or, today wild garlic or ramsons. A water loving member of the alium family, these wonderful plants can be found in deep, shady glades from March until the end of May. Their leaves are used mostly, but the amazingly aromatic flowers can be used to decorate salads to startling effect. I use Wild Garlic in many recipes this time of year and I always pick it fresh as it cannot be kept for longer than 24 hours.  The best recipe, though in the early season is a nice heart-warming soup.

Most soups, certainly the vegetable variety, start with the base - the more delicate the main ingredient, the later it is added in the cooking process. The base for most of my soups starts with frying some finely chopped onion until it's soft but not very brown. You can use oil or butter - I use a combination of both to stop the butter from burning. Then I add any other ingredients that need frying off; garlic sometimes, though not this time, leeks, ginger or chilli. This time though it's just the onion and then I add a litre of vegetable stock, some chopped potato, chopped carrot, celery and parsley. At this stage I also add the seasoning. I use vegetable stock because my wife is vegetarian, but I still prefer it over chicken stock in this delecate dish anyway.

After the soup has simmered for 20 minutes or so I add the chopped wild garlic leaves and cook for another ten minutes or so. Then I liquidise the broth to form a nice thick soup. To keep the green colour, add some cooked peas at the food processor stage, a vibrant green is maintained.

Serve with some drizzled cream and some chopped raw wild garlic if you wish. A crusty loaf is almost certainly a must.

Green

To some, this is a magical time of year, to me it's the second prettiest season, but magical - definitely! One day we walk along a certain path and the beech buds are brown and drab; the next day the lush green leaves have crowded out the bud cases which litter the floor, a precursor to the footfall softening piles of beech mast to come later in the year.

The hawthorn, well behind the blackthorn blossom, is suddenly set to flower any day and the bluebells, green for so long, now carpet the glades and clearings with a purple carpet of hazy hue. It truly is a magical time of year.

We've seen deer through the woods and the first Canada Goose waddled across in front of us as we walked past the castle yesterday evening, waiting for his flock to turn up and fill the estate with their raucous hooping calls. He looked magnificent, his black head so glossy as to catch the last rays of the evening sun.

There's a lot of blossom around and it will be interesting to see what fruit grows from the myriad flowers that surround our cottage. Some of them are known, some can be guessed at, but some are going to be a surprise. We think damson, maybe plum and wild cherry, but as this is a very old estate we could be in for a missed guess or two. There is a wonderfully old walnut tree and the horse chestnut not 100 yards from the cottage is already weighed down with the spikes of hundreds of thousands of flowers.

We know there is also hazel, elderflower and elderberry, the ubiquitous bramble, and sweet chestnut, but we've also discovered a bed of wild currants down by the stream and a possible crab apple or two. It's too early for 'shrooms to show themselves, but we remain very hopeful of a bumper crop this year.

Presages Of Spring

Having moved house in the middle of all the snow in early January, we are now starting to see the arrival of spring and every day we experience a child-like excitement at every new discovery, every green shoot and every new wildlife sighting.

Our old house was huge and situated in the middle of town; we've swopped it for a tiny cottage in the middle of the country set in 780 acres of mixed woodland and parkland. With Bewl Bridge just a mile away as the trout flies, we seem to be in the middle of a world bereft of human interference.

It's absolutely marvelous.

So the year moves on apace and the bracken is starting to raise its head through the leftover leaves in a green halo of furled hairiness. Cock pheasants are calling to their wives with a flurry of blurred wings and the nettles are already taking over the wooded dales and marching through the undergrowth. Soon the bluebells will all be open - a deep purple carpet through the woods, the anemonies and primroses a forgotten memory as April makes way for May.

The Marmalade has been jarred for later in the year and this week both nettle and wild garlic soups will be made and frozen to be remembered later in the season; a starter for late Autumn lamb or November's Herring dishes.

We've already had the wild garlic in our breakfast omlette and found a cauliflower fungus in the wooods. We've seen deer, woodpeckers and most nights our sleep is ushered in by the hoots and shrieks of the Tawny Owls.

In the garden we have spotted tree creepers, nuthatches, lesser spotted woodpeckers, several variety of tit, fallow deer, pheasants and all the usual suspects. It's been wonderful to sit out among the bats as the sun drops over Bewl and Venus and Mercury sit above the sunset for an hour or so after dark.

What has also amazed me is the surprise we feel when we identify the trees around us by the buds that burst into being almost before our eyes. Horse Chestnut and Wayfarer Tree. Hazel, Sweet Chestnut, Wild Cherry and Crab Apple - all within 100 yards of our back door!

Then of course there is the availabilty all around us of firewood, the future anticipation of blackberries, rosehips, rowan berries and a multitude of mycelium (that's mushrooms to the uninitiated), not to mention elederberries, hazel nuts, sweet chestnut or Sloes.

It's going to be a good year.

A Day To Be Forgotten

Before the squalls came, the sun shine was blinding.

Since my last entry, the weather has been unrelenting. Rain has swept across the country on a daily basis accompanied by strong to gale force winds which have wreaked havoc. Overnight, here in the South East, the winds reached 50 - 60 miles per hour and rain fell out of the sky.

Paradoxically, this morning dawned bright and clear, the wind now just a stiff breeze and so I met Harry once again at Bewl Bridge for another attempt at pike fishing on this, my nemesis water. The levels were so low that it was difficult to believe that so much rain had fallen over the last 10 days that the rivers all over the country had spread across fields and roads causing mayhem and heartbreak to all those who were flooded, some for the third time in four years.

And the sun shone blindingly, the breeze causing a courderoy ripple on the reservoir. It was to be another bad day. No-one caught anything to our knowledge. We trolled and cast our way up the usual arm and spent almost the entire day there exploring some wonderful features and trying a vast array of lures. In an attempt to fish as close to the bottom as possible, I was using about 5 ounces of lead on the trace and eventually I got snagged, good and proper. I hauled and hauled while Harry moved the boat into various positions in an attempt to free the tackle.

Eventually I pulled whatever it was virtually to the surface - I could see my trace, but not the spoon which was down the side of the boat and hidden from my sight. The boat moved, the rod spun in my hand, my finger slipped off the trigger guard and the rod was gone! It sank quickly and with no line out we had little hope of retrieving it although we tried, Harry losing a spoon and trace in the process. Whatever was down there had claimed my rod for good!

The sun stopped shining, lightning lit the western bank and thunder drowned my naughty words. The second nasty squall of the day blew through like a non-stop express train through a village station blowing leaves, birds and hoods all over the place.

Harry hates hoods.

They hit you in the back of the head when you don't need them and blow off your head when you do.

I hate Bewl. Still, Lumby will be happy, I suppose - I need a new rod!

After the squall

A Touch of Wind and The Gripes

Finally - a days fishing booked!

Unfortunately, the wind strength was such that the lads at Bewl couldn't allow us off today. We've had 50 - 60 mile an hour gales, with trees down and debris all over the roads. Our annual sortie after Bewl's pike would have to wait at least a week.

So...Little Chef then.

After a hearty (read 'pricey for what it was') breakfast we decided to head towards Maidstone and a lake we hoped might throw up the odd jack and keep us at least a little sheltered from the hurricane that was sweeping across the South East.

We settled in side by side in a large swim and set out our pike fishing stall. Fortunately for me, everything still seemed to work after a hibernation of fourteen months or so, but oh! did it feel good to be back!

Due to the effects of the wind, we cast out legered baits; mine were about 10 yards or so out to the right, just about under an overhanging willow, and about forty yards straight out in front; Harry cast similar distances. The weather, although wet and windy, is still very mild with temperatures well into double figures - warm for the winter end of November.

Harry and I then had our conversation about this blog and Harry feels somewhat hard done by as I seem to demene his captures, even calling the only pike we caught at Rutland 'tatty'. But to put the record staight Harry has caught a nice upper double and lower double at Bewl - I caught Rainbow Trout. Harry always catches at Rutland - I don't. Harry catches more than me at our Sussex Reservoir even with his bait hanging in mid air! Harry is tidier than me, more technical, his reels don't look like they've just been dug out one of my compost bins and he experiments more than me.

But today, I caught the fin perfect, olive skin backed, creamy buttery bellied, ONLY fish of the day.


It took the herring fished close in and forgot to fight until it hit the net.

Oh, and I brought nicer cake than Harry.