Wild Hares and Hummingbirds (7 page)

This may look like an act of wanton vandalism, but the process is vital both for the continued survival of the trees themselves and to the ecology of the area. Willow trees need pollarding every two or three years to retain their shape. In a month or two the cut bark will have darkened, the new twigs begun to sprout, and the trees will once again merge back into their ancestral landscape.

Widely used in folk medicine, both to staunch bleeding and to reduce fever, the willow was once an important local crop, making a range of products from baskets to cricket bats. Most of the larger rhynes have a row of willows along their banks, and the sound of the wind blowing through their foliage may have given rise to the belief that a willow tree will follow a lone walker on a dark night, muttering to itself.

Two examples reveal the central place of willow in local culture. First the creation, in 2001, of a giant sculpture – the Willow Man – which stands in a field alongside the western side of the M5 near Bridgwater. Created by local artist Serena de la Hey, this huge, iconic figure is one of the most striking examples of public art in Britain: Somerset’s very own Angel of the North. Holidaymakers caught in bank holiday traffic jams have plenty of time to admire this extraordinary figure, whose scale only becomes clear
when
a crow or buzzard perches on his head, revealing his true size. He is known locally, and rather irreverently, either as the Wicker Man, or simply ‘Alan’, after the TV presenter Alan W(h)icker.

The other unusual use of willow relates to the untimely death, in 2003, of pop star and actor Adam Faith. His wife had heard about a Somerset firm which makes wicker coffins, and arranged for Faith to be buried in one. Her unusual choice hit the headlines, and led to a surge in demand for this environmentally friendly means of interment. Today, like Somerset cider, willow is being marketed as a ‘green’ product, perfectly in tune with our modern, ecologically aware age.

F
ROM THE CROSSROADS
on Mark Moor, the long, straight line of River Road runs southwards to the River Brue, the farthest boundary of the parish from my home. The view here is all sky and open fields, and as befits this more intensively farmed landscape there is not a lot of winter wildlife: just a few gulls loafing around in a muddy field, with a couple of crows and a buzzard.

By the junction with Tile House Road, heading westwards to Brent Knoll, a bright green sign informs me I am standing next to Brickhouse Sluice. This crosses one of the widest rhynes in the parish, New Rhyne. The metal structure of the sluice gate once again reminds me that this whole
landscape
was, not so very long ago, beneath the waves.

As I gaze down the length of the rhyne, a dozen or so teal catch sight of me and take off, flying 100 yards or so away from me until they feel safe. They land again on the water and look around warily, constantly alert to the possibility of danger.

The teal is our smallest duck, barely half the length of a mallard, and only a quarter of its weight. The male is a neat little bird, especially in his newly acquired breeding plumage: his green head offset by a chestnut eyepatch, mottled greyish flanks, and a narrow yellow line running down the side of his body as if carefully painted there by a human hand. The female, as with most ducks, is rather dull – or if you prefer, subtle – her buffs and browns enabling her to stay camouflaged when on the nest.

A flock of teal is, rather appropriately, known as a ‘spring’; and if you have ever flushed these diminutive ducks as you walk across the boggy fields, you’ll know why. Panicked into flight, they fly up into the air as if shot from a catapult, and so are coveted by wildfowlers for their speed and agility.

Further along the rhyne I notice two smaller birds, diving down into the murky water, then bobbing up again like animated corks. Even tinier than a moorhen or teal, these are our smallest waterbird, the little grebe or dabchick.

Dabchicks, as their name suggests, look rather like the offspring of a duck or moorhen; so tiny you cannot believe they are indeed full-grown. At this time of year they are
greyish-brown
with a fluffy white rear-end. But in a month or so they will moult into their handsome breeding garb: richer and darker, with a deep chestnut-brown neck, and the tiniest lime-green spot behind their bill, as if someone has daubed on a dash of luminous paint. This is a colour rarely seen in nature, and all the more striking for that.

At the end of River Road, by a sharp left turn towards Burtle and Glastonbury, there is a bridge over the Brue where I once disturbed a flock of goosander, our largest freshwater duck. The turning is next to a small but imposing house, which flies the Union flag, as if marking a border; which in a sense it does.

On the side of the bridge, out of sight to anyone but the curious pedestrian, a dull metal plate is fastened to the stonework by rusty screws. It reads:

The ragged capital letters and random punctuation suggest the plaque was made by a friend, perhaps, rather than an experienced signwriter; lending the memorial a greater degree of poignancy.

A few weeks after noticing this, I learn the true story behind it, over a pint in the White Horse Inn with Steve, a local schoolteacher. I had assumed that the unfortunate
Albert
Watts had been killed while building, or perhaps repairing, the bridge; or had been the victim of an early hit-and-run accident. In one way he was: it turns out he was bashed over the head and thrown into the River Brue late one night, after a row with another villager. A young man was tried for the murder, but acquitted for lack of firm evidence. Steve tells me that years later a father and son were overheard in the midst of an intense argument, during which the son shouted at his father, ‘I almost swung for you once.’ Circumstantial evidence, but pretty convincing all the same.

I
TURN TO
head home, and my eye is caught by the rapid movement of a flock of birds over the big, wide field to the north of the river. Five hundred lapwings fly up into the air, along with a dozen smaller and more streamlined birds: golden plovers. Their high-pitched calls reach me on the chilly air; an evocative, whistling sound, reminding me of days spent in some of Britain’s wildest places.

Immediately something about these birds – their tautness, and close, almost uncomfortable proximity to one another – makes me guess the identity of the creature I am about to see. A moment later I pick up a dark grey shape heading off into the distance towards Glastonbury Tor, its stiff posture and shallow wingbeats belying its speed and agility. It is, as I had already guessed, a peregrine falcon,
utterly
ignoring the lapwings and golden plovers, and flying nonchalantly away.

It may have forgotten them, but the lapwings and plovers can still remember the peregrine. Panicked, they fly south, then back north again, hovering over the field where they have been feeding as if wondering whether to land or not. Behaving almost as a single organism, with one mind and an infinitely flexible body, the flock occasionally splits in two, before rapidly regrouping in a narrow, fluttering line. Some birds tentatively float down towards the dark earth; but the mob mentality still rules, and at the very last moment, within touching distance of the ground, they fly back up again to rejoin their companions.

This is a crucial decision. Missing out on half an hour’s feeding before dusk could make the difference between surviving the night or not. But leaving the safety of the flock could bring a much more rapid death in the predator’s talons.

Ten more minutes pass, and still the birds hang above the field, collectively wasting their precious energy reserves. Once again a few individuals fold their wings and begin to whiffle down; and once again they change their minds, as if they are attached to the flock by a piece of elastic, and being pulled back up against their will. I can sense their desperation to land, and spend those last few minutes of daylight feeding; but I can also feel their acute sense of fear.

I remember when peregrines first began to turn up in southern Britain in winter, and the sheer panic that ensued whenever one would appear. Only a few years later, sightings of these mighty predators had become so regular that other birds mostly ignored them. How strange birds’ minds must be: imprinted to instinctively recognise and fear something they rarely see, but which may bring sudden death.

Here in the parish, where peregrines are still not a regular sight, a healthy fear remains. Yet ironically, the peregrine is long gone by now; and the lapwings and golden plovers should be going to roost for the night. If they have any sense they will fly half a mile east to Tealham Moor, where they can sit on flooded fields, safe from the local foxes. But still they stay in the darkening sky, unwilling – or unable – to make landfall.

E
XPERIENCES SUCH AS
this – unexpected encounters where I gain a privileged insight into the lives of our fellow creatures – make me realise the advantages of spending time in one, small, bounded area. For as other naturalists have discovered before me, a single place can provide a multitude of experiences: from the commonplace to the unusual, and the whole spectrum in between.

Being in one place is also the best way to understand the passing of the seasons: not the great shifts between
winter
and spring, summer and autumn, which we all notice; but the tiny, subtle changes that occur almost imperceptibly, from week to week, and day to day, throughout the year.

Gilbert White, walking the lanes and footpaths of his Hampshire parish of Selborne, knew this; as did my greatest inspiration among naturalists, the poet John Clare. Clare’s story has been told often enough for me not to go into much detail here: his birth and upbringing in poverty, in a Northamptonshire village at the turn of the nineteenth century; his powers of observation that enabled him to document the wildlife of his parish; and of course his extraordinary poetical gift. The naturalist James Fisher famously described Clare as ‘the finest poet of Britain’s minor naturalists, and the finest naturalist of Britain’s major poets’.

Just as White did, and I am doing now, Clare made most of his observations in the fields, woods and byways within a mile or two of his home. When it came to natural heritage, Clare’s Helpston was pretty commonplace. But that is exactly the point: places like Selborne, Helpston and my own parish may be ordinary, but like any parish in the whole of the British Isles, extraordinary events are nevertheless taking place among the local wildlife.

My favourite of Clare’s many poems on nature is a modest little sonnet, entitled ‘Emmonsailes Heath in Winter’. The opening lines plunge the reader straight into the landscape, as if sharing the poet’s own experience:

I love to see the old heath’s withered brake

Mingle its crimpled leaves with furze and ling