the primrose, the cowslip and the oxslip

The meadow in front of Madingley Hall near Cambridge was sprinkled with cowslips and primroses this weekend, basking in April sunshine.

But they have been promiscuous…


Primrose (Primula vulgaris), left

Cowslip (Primula veris), below

….. and this is their offspring: a beautiful hybrid which is actually not uncommon, and for obvious reasons known as false oxlip.




But this is what the true oxslip looks like, photographed in Shadwell Wood last spring.
Oxslip (Primula elatior) right, and below

Endless forms most beautiful….

Charles Darwin

the first spring flowers

The first celandines I've seen this year, pictured at Playford in Suffolk at the beginning of March. Its local names include golden guineas, golden stars, and starflower. Wordsworth knew it as a barometer:



There is a flower, the lesser celandine
That shrinks, like  many more, from cold and rain,
And, the first moment that the sun doth shine,
Bright as the sun himself, tis out again.

And a single daisy,  one of John Clare's favourite flowers:

The daisy is a happy flower,

And comes at early spring,

And brings with it the sunny hour

When bees are on the wing….

He loved the violet, too, calling it a 'lone dweller in the pathless shade', coming into flower when 'watery skies are full/ Of streaming dappled clouds so pale.'

The 6th century poet Fortunatus, when he sent violets to St Rhadegund, wrote ‘Of all the fragrant herbs, none I send can compare with the nobleness of the purple violets; they shine in royal purple, and perfume and beauty unite in their petals. May you show forth in your life the peace they represent.’

Suppose a river or a drop of water, an apple or a sand, an ear of corn, or an herb: God knoweth infinite excellencies in it more than we. He seeth how it relateth to angels and men….
Thomas Traherne

a reservoir

Here is where I escape to sit, and find solitude, stillness, and often silence. A pair of herons circle low, a moorhen squawks from the reeds. Pike patrol these waters, and a family of reed warblers return each April to nest in the phragmites. In summer, the pond is carpeted with waterlilies, and the surrounding bank is tunnelled by badgers.


I came here on a clear day of warm sunshine in mid-March when the trees were full of chaffinches chortling, great tits calling and a wren singing. A pheasant croaked from the fields beyond. The weeping willow was cloaked in a film of gold, a young ash tree stark against the evening sky.

Not in the midst of life's tumult nor in the world of pleasure's round does God show himself, but in the inspiration of nature: grace, light as a breath of fresh air in a still small voice.
Saint Jerome

hares in the snow

Deep snow shrouded the village overnight, white and silent, covering the fields – where several hares were running through the cold morning







– the snowfall striped branches of a beech tree – a hungry kestrel perched alone on a treetop, frost-puffed, waiting for lunch – the path across the top of the hill was deserted –

– frosted ivy berries shivered in the cold –  in the garden the bird feeders were busy all day long with blackbirds, the resident robin, longtailed tits, blue and great tits, sparrrows – and a goldfinch

– the corner of the garden under the yew tree was smothered in white, even as never before in the place of deepest shade – and the east wind had drifted a bank of snow against the front door….

In his In the Country,  Edward Thomas writes of the ‘majestic quiet, of the destiny which binds us to infinity and eternity

the coldest day of the year

walking into the winter wood on this bitterly cold day a jay screeches and flutters off into the trees – a little owl hoots – the east wind roars into the treetops and wood pigeons scatter

nobody is about – the cold sun glares out

of a deep blue sky – casting shadows on the

tall thin trunks of Scots pine – and hazel catkins 

dangle pale gold in the bright light 

   the grass is crisp beneath my feet – the dead leaves frosted – I hear the mewing of a buzzard over the treetops – and the thin tseep of goldcrests in the fir trees

a close up view of moss on dead wood is to enter a forest, a green world

– my oak tree is blacker than ever against the blue blue sky –


as a half moon rises – and my spirits are restored

Far too much of civilised mankind today is alienated from nature. Most people seldom encounter anything but lifeless, manmade things in their daily lives and have lost the capacity to understand living things or to interact with them. That loss helps explain why mankind as a whole exhibits such vandalism towards the living world of nature that surrounds us and makes our way of life possible.....[Restoring that lost contact] will determine whether or not mankind destroys itself along with all the other human beings on earth.

Konrad Lorenz: The Year of the Greylag Goose, 1979

Fen Drayton on a mild January afternoon. Short-eared owls had been seen the previous evening quartering one of the marshes, and three bitterns had been jostling for position on Holywell lake.


I wasn't quite so lucky: but I had a stunning sighting of a male hen harrier hunting, flurrying a group of gulls on a spit of land in Ferry Lagoon, descending on its kill then disappearing from view, hovering up again and dropping down.

Distant as it was, I could see what a fabulous bird the hen harrier is: whitish underneath with a pale grey hawk-head and black wing-tips, wide-winged, as graceful as it is ferocious.

Lapwings gusted and swirled overhead, a short-eared owl flew in, and for a while I didn't know where to look, so much was happening.

Later, there were chevrons of geese flying, corvids gathering to roost, and scattered over the various lakes gadwall, tufted duck, grebes, goldeneye, wigeon, swan – and mallard drakes with brilliant emerald heads, in prime winter plumage. And, ubiquitously, coots: Fen Drayton attracts the largest population of coots anywhere in the UK, apparently.

I missed the bitterns. though: I stood and watched for three-quarters of an hour, with no luck. They probably emerged as soon as I'd gone: that's birdwatching.


Great peace is found in little busyness
Chaucer

winter woods

the beauty of a winter tree in silhouette – the lungs of the planet naked to the sky

leaf-litter on the woodland floor – and underwater on a stream bed – beautiful mulch – food and shelter for tiny creatures and microscopic activity

and the path home – to a pot of white hyacinths by the windowsill in front of my desk

The great German painter Gerhard Richter compels us to question the act of looking – he balances longing for something behind what is represented, with an insistence that we can never know what is there.