Local patch 34

Autumn creeps on!
We ran up the drove road across Aller Moor this morning. The just-rising sun was beginning to paint ice cream colours in the sky but night was reluctant to let go. Big flocks of starlings were arrowing low across the meadows, half a thousand at a time. They had risen in clouds from their reedy roosts and were now hungry. Rooks, flying higher, were heading for their feeding grounds too. They need soft pasture where they can plunge those great beaks deep into the ground. The croak of raven was tossed on the breeze and the trumpet bray of the cranes echoed across the top of the heavens as they launched themselves from their secret strongholds. 

Ahead of us, along the rhynes, the willows and thorns were full of bright thrushes. The fieldfares, winter visitors from the North, are back! They are beautiful: cinnamon and slate with white underparts. Their chuckling cry is a true herald of autumn.

Local patch 33

Happy new year! September always feels like a time for fresh starts, new resolve and good intentions, shiny shoes and shiny conkers. There used to be the pleasure of crisp, new notepads and exercise books. Sadness that the summer was over was always tempered by the thrill of the new. What did you do during the summer? Which classroom have we got, which teachers? It is a long time since I was a schoolgirl, but my life continues to be ruled by the rhythms of the academic year and I spend more time than I should in stationery shops, picking pens and pencils, getting organised and preparing for the year ahead. The clamour of the playground reminds me of standing in line and waiting for my own tousled headed boys to burst through the door at the end of the day, clutching drippy art work and usually wearing mismatched shoes and all the wrong clothes. Our walk to school in the morning took far too long as we stopped to examine all the signs of autumn. We gathered beech mast, old man's beard and conkers in their prickly cases. Shiny rook feathers and clusters of hips and haws were carefully transported to the nature corner, or taken home to be copydexed on to shoe boxes or toilet roll tubes in precious compositions.

With their schooldays long behind them, I gradually morphed into a teacher.  And this year I am a new girl all over again, with a new job in a new school. As I dragged my brand new books and pads and pens from the car and opened the classroom door, I carefully found a place for the bunch of hedgerow berries and leaves. And I pinned the rook feathers onto the noticeboard. Let the new year begin!

Local patch 32

It is a hushed, waiting time on the tracks and trails now. The shifting Gulf Stream finally brought a return to recognisable weather and it has rained. 'Usable rain', I heard it called on the radio. The grass has greened but it will take a long time before the great cracks across the land are healed. Levels on our Somerset reserves and waterways remain low. The garden has suffered in the brittle, dry heat. I tipped the contents of several old hanging baskets into the chicken run and they rushed to scratch through it, breaking up the roots and scavenging the bugs and mini beasts inside. Lettuces have gone to seed and the large white butterflies (pieris brassicae) have devastated the cabbages. There are so many this year and their yellow and black caterpillars have feasted.

We went into the mothy night to listen for owls. There was no moon and our dark, Somerset sky was full of stars. The last of the Perseid meteors, debris from an ancient comet, fireworked across the sky. Bilbo started an urgent, familiar dance and under the hedge we found his spiky prey. He is good at leaving them alone, but would so love to investigate! We have seen several hedgehogs in the garden, including a couple of young ones. How lovely that they have bred here this year. Get fat now guys, feed up before the long sleep.

The hedgerows and reserves are quiet. The swifts have disappeared from our skies. Suddenly they are gone, screaming south before the wind changes. There are still swallows and martens in good numbers. House martens are visiting the eaves of the old farmhouse opposite, perhaps there is a (too) late brood in there? The warblers are quiet and even the rooks have cackled off to feeding grounds afar. Robin and blackbird are silent.

Along the canal, moorhen families fuss quietly in the reeds and young coots practise flexing their long, green toes. The kingfishers continue to patrol their stretch of water. They fly low and sit still and it is easy to miss them.

Hedgerow harvests are looking rich and full already. Dark clusters of elderberries are bending the branches low. Hips and haws are shining with the fire of autumn. Sloes glow fierce and blue, but they are small this year. The lime globes of mistletoe are looking fat and plentiful. And on the path behind the church, a tangle of hazel and hawthorn is draped with soft, frilly hop bines (humulus lupulus). Brambles are loaded. We picked them for a hedgerow crumble, with windfall apples scrumped from next door. Today, I found a plump pair of green hazlenuts (Corylus avellana) on the tow-path. They will be ripe when the soft leaves of the trees turn colour. But by then they will have been gathered up by the squirrels, wood mice, jays, wood pigeons and nuthatches, providing a high calorie feast at the changing of the season.

Local patch 31

We don't often need to seek out the shade in a British summer. Sun-starved, we move our chairs out of the shadows; we walk on the sunny side of the street; we throw open the shutters and let the light in. It is noticeable that our garden plants do better in sunny spots, unless they are shade specialists. It is an overlooked gardening lesson: get the soil right, get the moisture right, get the light right too. Generally, we feel better in the sunshine and warmth. To sit long into the soft night - as the moths sip from night scented flowers, the bats hawk and twist in the purple air and the family of tawny owls chuckle and chatter from the barn - is one of life's rare pleasures. We know we must protect our skin too. 'Any suntan is skin damage', I read years ago in a beauty magazine and so we cover up when we travel to the sun and acknowledge that perhaps a youthful complexion is one benefit of living in our cool, green climate.

Perhaps we don't think very much about the need for shade until we go on holiday and notice those heavy shutters which are used to protect interiors from the heat of the day. And those colourful, striped awnings over shop fronts really do make sense when we feel the heat of the midday sun. Suddenly, siesta seems very sensible. We appreciate the landscaping that makes towns and cities bearable. In the desert climate of  north western Argentina's city of Mendoza, channels of cool flowing water (acequias) from the snowmelt in the Andes, irrigate the shade trees and keep the temperature comfortable. It is hard to imagine the Alhambra Palace in Granada, without the sound of running water and the cooling influence of its cascades, fountains and symbolic pools. Water, and the power of reflection in its mirrored surfaces, is one of the key elements of Islamic paradise gardens. Dubai, that city where there really shouldn't be a city, is surprisingly green and well irrigated. And yet in the fierce heat of the desert summer, it is still too hot for humans to linger in the sun. Even the bus stops are air conditioned.

This year, the gulf stream has looped far to the north of Europe - and there it has stayed, bringing us sustained periods of hot, dry weather. It doesn't feel like Britain. It doesn't look much like it either; gardens, parks and hedgerows are the colour of straw and plants have gone to seed. Harvest is starting early. At least there is dry weather to bring it safely in, even if the late and cold spring has reduced yields. Here, on the misty, green Somerset Levels, the rivers are low and the ditches and rhynes are all dried up. Our wildlife pond could do with a top up too. In this land of rain, we don't always regard water as precious. A summer such as this makes us think carefully about how we use it and save it and guard it. 

However, our wonderful, gleaming wetlands are still teeming with life. At Ham Wall it is a good year for butterflies, dragons, damsels and frogs. Like us, the creatures have learned to hide during the heat of the day, but early in the day and later in the afternoon there is plenty to see. They need to go about their essential business: feeding their young and building up fat reserves.

On an early run this morning, I hugged the line of the hedge. As I ran up the hill past the cemetery, I was grateful for the deep, dark shade. Somerset has a rich network of species-rich hedgerows and field boundaries. Many, around the village are steeply banked, suggesting ancient trackways carved into the land. And I noticed the importance of shade and the ability to get out of the sun. We don't usually hide from it in this country but how nice, just sometimes, to have the choice!

Local patch 30

Last month it was all about the birdsong. The birds are still loud but they are busy too. They are hunting and scavenging, using all the daylight to feed their nestlings and fledglings. Some are raising a second or third brood. The young rooks are insistent at sunrise, their immature caws and cackles playing a constant soundtrack to the morning.

This month it is the fragrance that assaults the senses from the hedgerows. On warm evenings, honeysuckle stops me in my tracks. It casts a spell. The warm, sweet spice sends me checking for its twirling, twisting stems and peaches and cream flowers. We can choose big and blowsy strains for our gardens in a variety of colours but our beautiful native lonicera periclymenum is perfect for our hedges. It is pollinated by moths and long tongued bees, its perfume sending a chemical message throughout the countryside. Dormice eat the flowers and use its bark for nesting and in the autumn it provides a feast of bright berries for thrushes and finches.

Wild privet (ligustrum vulgare) produces creamy flowers with a clean, bold scent. Sweet dog rose (rosa canina) uses her long thorns to scramble and twine. Her scent is faint and exotic. Buddleia, rampant and invasive, has a honey scent which draws the butterflies to her like a flickering, animated cloak. If you are lucky enough to walk beneath lime trees (tilia) in flower the perfume is intoxicating and lingers long in the memory. Also known as linden trees, limes occur in fairy groves and ancient tales. Their flowers can be used to make a palatable, protective tea; they produce drippy, sticky sap, but no limes!

However, the queen of the hedgerow is definitely the elder tree (sambucus). Her tightly packed, lacy flowers produce waves of bright, fresh, citrus scent, announcing the arrival of summer.

I pushed open the door of the pharmacy and walked into the dark shop, searching for citric acid. 'Don't worry', called a voice from the back, 'I ordered extra this month'. 

It is cordial season. 

We will pick bunches of the cream clusters of flowers, disturbing a buzzing, thrumming cloud of insects. Back home we will twist the flowers from the stalks and macerate them in sugar syrup along with thick curls of lemon peel. The perfume will fill the house and the next day we can strain it, stir in the citric acid, and decant into tall bottles. Summer is bottled.

In the pharmacy, the girl behind the counter said with reverence, 'did you know, you can get Elderflower Prosecco'? Summer in a glass, I'll drink to that!

Local patch 29

Suddenly, this week, there are more swallows. Along the drove road this morning, they are skimming low across the meadows in pairs and triplets. They surf the tops of the new grass, weaving between the cattle, between their legs and under their bellies, before peeling off and up high into the sky. Each swooping pass rewards them with beaks full of insects. They tip and turn, agile in the soft air, elegant tails flexing and shape-shifting. Extravagant joy.

Further along, I stop to watch a roe deer munching on the stems in the rhyne. This small, elegant native deer was extinct in England by the 1800s. Tree planting schemes brought it back and it is now widespread once more. I can see its distinctive black nose, large, dark-fringed ears and small white scut. We lock eyes and it doesn't twitch a whisker. Several heartbeats later it has melted into the dawn. Pure joy.

Unusually this spring, in the field at the end of our garden, young cattle have been turned out. For the first 24 hours they dashed around their new kingdom in a boisterous, sturdy gang. Everything was new and fresh. Heady with excitement, they huffed softly on the other side of the fence, pranced and danced, crazy with joy.

In the garden, the birds are busy. Great tits are again feeding young in the nest box in the ivy-covered plum tree. There are blue tits in and out of the new box in the old walnut tree. The reed buntings, who joined us last month when their reedy home was shuddering with snow, have decided they like it here and are still around. They seem to have joined forces with the city of sparrows that live in the bramble and nettle on the wall. Last into leaf, the walnut does now have a haze of fresh green and rusty leaves. A tree creeper has been examining its deeply cracked bark and mossy trunk this week - please stay! We haven't seen you here before. Rooks, with their great bony faces and funny, raggedy trousers, flap and dangle from the walnut's trembling twigs. One of the pack bashes the feeders, scattering the seed onto the ground where seven or eight others, together with a handful of bouncing jackdaws, quickly clean up. It's a rout!

Our mornings are loud with birds now. Three stood out against the crowd this week: chiff chaffs created a wall of sound; a grasshopper warbler added its whirring, churring call and finally, joyfully - the cuckoo shouted its confirmation that spring is underway.

At last.

Local patch 28

And now we can believe.

After the passion and pain of Holy Week, Easter ushered in a new month. Sick of winter, we have turned our backs on the old season and welcomed British Summer Time, enjoying softer, lighter evenings and the promise of life outdoors.

Finally, there are swallows above the garden. In this delayed Spring, they are so much later here than last year. Great tits are investigating the next boxes; in our new hedge the leaves have burst, showing tiny, perfect versions of hazel and hawthorn, spindle and maple. Blackthorn blossom blows like confetti in the lanes.  At home, in the pond, there are dozens of tiny water snails. The water plants are budding and blooming. 

The rooks are busy attending to their nests. Our walnut tree provides them with a good supply of brittle twigs. They crash around, cawing and flapping, busy. 

An occasional warmer spell brings out the butterflies: brimstone and peacock. And the pipistrelles have been hawking at dusk. Last week, Bilbo started his agitated dance on the night lawn. I swung my torch through the hedge at the back and found the first hedgehog. Tightly balled until we moved away, it made its snuffly way along the border.

Let the new season commence!

Local patch 27

March comes in like a lion and goes out like ... another lion. What a month this most unpredictable of months has been! Spring was stopped in her tracks by the weather from the East, suspended and forgotten. We stopped believing. We regrouped by the fire, forgetting tales of swallows and brimstones; we stoked the flames. It was tempting to retreat. But it was good to be outside too. Boots crunched in deep snow and the air was pristine and silent. The birds were caught out. We refilled the feeders several times each day, breaking the ice on their water, keeping them alive. Winter thrushes feasted in huge flocks; snipe came off the Levels and into the garden. That still and bright blanket of snow reminded us that nature is in charge. It does not take much to shut the roads and stop the trains. We listened to the silence and dreamed our dreams ... 

Local patch 26

Hunched over the keyboard all morning, I have to get outside to stretch my eyes and uncrack my spine. From Burrow Mump we take the Parrrett Trail. At 79ft above sea level, the Mump stands high above the surrounding levels and moors at the meeting of the Rivers Tone and Parrett.  Along the Parrett there are diggers again. Heaps of shining, slippery mud have been scooped out and the banks are being shored up, propped and packed. Four winters ago these precious defences were overcome. Even on this flood plain, which has been managed and ordered for a thousand years, there was too much water with nowhere to go. The moors became an ocean and for weeks the landscape was returned to its ancient ways. Crops and animals and livelihoods were lost. Roads disappeared. People used boats to move between the lake villages. Salt Moor and Curry Moor sank beneath the floodwaters of the Tone and the Parrett and they dried out only very slowly. Politicians, farmers, conservationists and the rivers authority were all blamed. Blamed each other. Fear has a long memory.

Today, the rivers look tame as they slide between their dredged and bunkered banks. We turn our backs on the Parrett and take the Shepherd's Drove, boots ringing on the ground. The mud is frozen and glitters. The skeleton hedges are bright with winter thrushes. They are snaffling the last of the berries and surround us in clucking, cackling groups. The redwings will soon depart and by next month the fieldfares will follow them north. There are still great clouds of lapwing on the watery meadows. How good it is to see them. Their numbers have declined by 80% since the 1960s and they are a species of conservation concern. But here on the Somerset Levels they overwinter in good numbers. Their cries carry on the breeze as they practise their tumbling, flipping displays in round-winged flight, flashing black and white.

Along the rhyne a bird explodes from beneath our feet and hauls itself into the sky in a sharp, steep trajectory. The snipe relies on its perfect camouflage-plumage to stay hidden, only revealing its bright belly and long, long bill as it shoots skywards.

We turn towards the village and the hedgerows are alive and chattering with tiny birds. Robins sing loud and long. Sparrows fuss and fidget deep within the blackthorn. There are buds and petals and catkins - and a haze of green at the base of the stems. Large clumps of snowdrops are well established in the bank and the first primroses are opening in the sun. Here is a sense of spring. She is zinging through the lanes, waiting to arrive. The beast from the East might be roaring across the land this week, but he won't stay for long. The birds know it.

Local patch 25

We ran across the Moor early on Friday. The sun had risen. It was light but it was a dull, resentful light. The pewter sky was reflected in the rhynes and flooded meadows. Some days the flood plain shimmers in a series of glittering pools and lakes, like silver and pearls. Today the landscape was lead and steel. The sky was endless and the wind nagged and tugged. Rain needled my face.

The birds were quiet, hiding from the wind. It seemed like a bleak and empty place. But ahead on the road there was a streak of fire. A stoat (mustela erminea) stopped and sat up, staring. During the BBC's Winterwatch last week there were stories and pictures of ermine, winter-white stoats, out of place in the warmer southern counties. They stand out in our landscape of mud and no one seems to know why they have broken their camouflage so completely. This animal, however, was brilliantly chestnut with a long, black-tipped tail. There was time to note its creamy bib, large dark eyes, neat ears and pointy chin before it hurried away towards the ditch. It flowed between the stems like a thick, furred snake.
Ssssinuoussss

Local patch 24

I think there was a streak of pearl in the sky on the way home from work this week, a slight lessening of the night. Perhaps it's the first hint that the shortest days are behind us. This morning I ran across Aller Moor, my boots skating on the black ice, dawn had definitely moved on. There was a raven, that great, raggedy bird of the high and wild places, cronking its hoarse song in the meadow. What are you doing down here in the flatlands? In the distance I could hear the cranes bugling as they rose from their roost. They circled and gathered before heading off to their feeding grounds, leaving their haunting cries on the wind. A thrush dashed ahead of me, chattering its alarm as it dipped and twisted away. And at intervals along the rhyne there were robins. Some sat high on lookout trees and others had settled deep in secret thickets. They were all singing their loud, rich songs.

Robins sing their loudest songs at this time of year. All robins sing, but the males are fiercely territorial and try to defend their local patch all year. Before the other birds join the dawn chorus, and late into the evenings, the robins are singing. There is one that sits high above the chicken coop and when I wade out through the mud to open up in the barely-there dawn, or hurry out late at night to lock up, he is singing. It is an extraordinarily powerful song for such a small bird. Short, sweet passages and trills are punctuated by silence as he listens for rivals or mates. I find it hypnotic and always stop to listen: a private moment shared on my local, local patch.

Local Patch Reporters

I am thrilled that this blog has been chosen as one of BBC Wildlife magazine's blogs of 2017! The Local Patch Reporters' forum is a sparkling place of wonder and marvel; there are so many great commentaries on the wildlife that we love and cherish, much of it close to home. It is a rich fund of brilliant words and amazing images.

So, many congratulations to the winner, Heather, for her fascinating close-up of Cornish rock pools (https://cornishrockpools.com/). It reminds me of so many hours spent slipping and sliding across the rocks with our boys when they were younger! And to all my fellow local patch reporters: thank you for sharing your amazing worlds with us.

Go on - leap in! You never know where your reading might take you.