The last day of the year, and a kestrel flew out of 'my' oak tree as I came out of the wood to walk down the footpath. A superb sighting:  the salmon-rust back, the pointed wings, the slender tail, the hawk eye as it torpedoed across the field and up into a distant hedgerow.

It had been mild all day, one of those dull grey overcast, quiet days of the year's ending, and relatively birdless: yet I'd seen a great spotted woodpecker on my bird feeder, before it was outnumbered by a cluster of long-tailed tits (at one time I counted ten on the nuts and fatballs at one time). And as I walked back to my car, fieldfares flew out of the hedge chacking, fluttering nervously away for cover, tawny-winged, slate-backed, speckled-breasted, pale-fronted, these sturdy strong thrushes I love so much who keep me company on winter walks.

A post-Christmas thought:

We have a suffocating sense of luxury and no sense at all of liberty. All the pleasure-hunters seem to be themselves hunted. All the children of fortune seem to be chained to the wheel. There is very little that really even pretends to be happiness in all this sort of harassed hedonism.

G. K. Chesterton

Japanese white-eye

I spent a memorable couple of weeks in Japan in 2010, and my ambition was to see a Japanese white-eye, or Mejiro. I never did: plenty of black kites, but no Mejiro. It's a little song bird only about 4 inches long, it's often depicted in Japanese art, and used to be kept as a caged bird. Olive green back, a pale green underside, with a green forehead and yellow throat and the eponymous white eye-ring. This picture was taken by my English friend who's still living in Tokyo at the moment: as he opened his bedroom windows it was about a metre or two away on the tree outside and he managed to photograph it on his phone before it flew away moments later!

water and moonlight

The local pond, my 'Walden', in winter light and bitter cold one afternoon

and in Venice, whence I'd just returned, watery reflections and a full moon rising

and a sunset setting the waters of the lagoon near Torcello aflame 

Late have I loved you, Beauty ever ancient and ever new1 You called and shouted and broke through my deafness! behold, you were within me, while I was outside....

St Augustine, Confessions

in the suffolk woods: dunwich, westleton and snape

This pathway leads from Dunwich towards Eastbridge, into a network of open access walks across Dunwich and Westleton heaths: on this walk in late November, leaf-fall was late, the temperature mild, and reclining on a fallen pine tree as I took a break in the silver birch woods I listened to goldcrests and watched a  treecreeper.

What need to write of the low light, the late autumn colours? Bracken and silver birch create a special beauty. As I walked home, a single curlew flew over my head, low, surprisingly bulky of body with its downcurved beak, and lapwings called from a field where they had congregated with starlings and gulls, feeding before nightfall.




Endless forms most beautiful
Charles Darwin

funghi in the suffolk woods

 

The oldest living things in the countryside are the fungi inhabiting ancient woodlands. The mycelium that was there 10.000 years ago continues its winding way today, a tissue continuous in time and space stretching its unseen way underground around the roots of our forest trees and through minuscule cavities of the loam: a single co-operative organism. If we could weigh it it would weigh hundreds of tons.

above,  Fly Agaric, the poisonous Amanita muscaria












and left, Lepiota procera, the Parasol mushoom, thought to be useful as an umbrella by 5 year old Gus

I'm by no means an expert on identifying fungi, but is this on the right a species of Russula?

and this involuted specimen? ...

All the wonderful names of fungi in my field guide –  from Polyporus frondosus to Dryad's saddle – don't quite match these two beauties: but as an amateur I can revel in them without knowing what their names are....

I will lead the noble soul into a wilderness

and there I will speak unto her heart

Hosea 

some winter berries

Wild bullace – made into jams and jellies by country people in the past – and into bullace vodka in Russia – to warm the Siberian winters – made by soaking the fruit in the spirit with sugar for a year or more until the flavours of the fruit merge into the liquid

and sloes for sloe gin, made in much the same way – with the addition of some unpeeled almonds – until it turns a gorgeous magenta-pink – a traditional home-made liqueur for Christmas

and hawthorn berries for the birds….

Unless a grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains a single grain; but if it dies, it yields a rich harvest.
St John's Gospel 

fungi in the autumn woods

A damp afternoon near Ramsholt in Suffolk – parasol mushrooms everywhere – and late light filtering through the leaves

You come from some other forest
do you
little horse
think how long I have known these
deep dead leaves
without meeting you……

from Little Horse, by WSMerwin

studies of an oak tree in autumn mists

Along the edge of a field, the footpath leads past a lone oak into a small wood where I saw a pair of goldcrests one October afternoon

and inside the wood – leaves on fire

In the heart of this moment is eternity
Meister Eckhart

birdwatching on the last day in October

A day out in Norfolk with JP – to Roydon  first, where curlews flew startled out of the heathland scrub very close to us, calling their wistful call, giving us beautiful views of the downcurved beak and elegant wings and white back in flight – and a young shaggy inkcap fungus where new heather was sprouting

On to the coast, to Holme, where pink-footed geese were flying, and sea-purslane still in flower on the last day in October

we saw egrets, more curlews, grey plover, redshank, brent geese, a bar-tailed godwit, linnets – and a kestrel having a barny with a crow, and a variety of ducks –

 – and in the dunes, a sinister-looking agaric (?) mushroom

– and then the highlight of the day: a small flock of about 8 snow buntings flew in and landed on the shore, and started to feed –  one flew towards us and landed in the next dune – giving us a perfect close-up of its pearl-white front, white streak on the wings and handsome black and white primaries, the stubby beak – buntings are chubby little birds, always seem to be cheerful-looking

 Sea holly and sea buckthorn were growing in the dunes among the grasses

– and a late harebell shivering in the evening wind 

Our life, like a bird, has escaped the snare of the fowler

Psalm 123

October in the woods

Scales Park near Nuthampstead, on the day the clocks went back – no commentary needed – the colours speak for themselves

What I know of the Divine Sciences and Holy Scripture, I learnt in the woods and fields. I have had no other masters than the beeches and the oaks.... Listen to a man of experience: thou wilt learn more in the woods than in books. Trees and stones will teach thee more than thou canst acquire from the mouth of a magister.

St Bernard of Clairvaux