Category Archives: Environment

Julia’s New Project

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Julia’s first project of the year was to make me fitter and thinner. I’m going along with it because it’s easier than becoming industrious and efficient.Two months in and I seem to have lost half a stone without inconveniencing myself too much. I can also walk significantly further than I could at Christmas, and my joints are feeling better.

So far it’s down to eating better, rather than eating less. The next stage is to start reducing portion sizes too. You will have to imagine the expression on my face as I type that last bit.

Storm Doris is currently whistling round the house so I’m cutting back on the walking today. I’m in the middle of an Amber Weather Warning at the moment, with gusts of wind of up to 80 mph. That’s the magic of the information age. When I was a lad “windy” would have been the only word I needed. I was certainly never on first name terms with the weather.

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Squirrel stealing bird food

Anyway, now that exercise I am (slightly) smaller and fitter she is transferring her attention to a new project.

The Danes have hygge and the Norwegians have Friluftsliv . Even the Germans have Gemütlichkeit, and they aren’t a famously cheerful nation.

Julia’s new project is to discover a suitable English equivalent. We have mindfulness, though I’m not sure it’s quite the same. I incline to morosity myself, which is about as opposite to hygge as you can get. Yes, it is a word. More than that, it’s a word I’ve never used before.

Looks like we need a new word for English-style happiness. I favour something with a Scandinavian twist, because they seem to be the leaders in the field.

Julia favours something more domestic, something along the lines of “middle aged man snoring in front of the TV, which sounds more like the basis of a haiku to me.

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Can you see it now?

I have translated  “middle aged man snoring in front of the TV” and my favourite (“ducks and sunshine”) into various Scandinavian languages.

English: Middle aged man snoring in front of TV – ducks and sunshine

Danish: Den midaldrende mand snorken foran TV –  ænder og solskin

Norwegian: Middelaldrende mann snorking fra foran TV – ender og solskinn

Swedish: En medelålders man snarkningar framför TV – ankor och solsken

Is there anything there we can use, do you think?

Julia doesn’t seem impressed; she’s just wandered off muttering “idiot with a laptop” and I don’t think it’s a suggestion for translation…

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Julia hiding in shrubbery

Photographs have been selected to show examples of things that make me happy. I don’t have a picture of ice cream.

 

Egrets and Egyptian Geese

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I’m glad to report that the telescope worked well. I’m not so happy with the tripod, but that is a different matter. Eventually it may become the subject of an entire post of its own.

When we arrived we noticed a couple of Egyptian Geese, though they pottered off before we unpacked the camera. There were also two Red Crested Pochard lurking round the entrance looking for handouts, which suggests they are escapees from a collection rather than wild birds from Europe.

The most memorable part of the day was climbing up to one of the hides using temporary scaffolding and stairs. They flexed a bit too much for my liking, and the experience wasn’t helped by having to carry the tripod. On the plus side, it’s better than having the hide closed.

The Hide with temporary steps
Gadwall
Domestic geese and Red-Crested Pochard

Using the telescope I did manage to pick out some Common Gulls I’d have missed with th

e binoculars, and at the next hide I had great views of a small flock of Goldeneye where the males were starting a bit of courtship, stretching their heads out and swimming round the females. It wasn’t the full courtship, as seen on this clip, but it’s getting there.

We finished with a Little Egret. Someone told us that there was a Great White Egret about on the side of the Trent, but this one was the best we could do. It looked like an abandoned plastic carrier bag at first, sitting hunched and immobile by the side of the path. I’d have preferred to see a Great White Egret, but we’ve seen a couple before so it’s not a tragedy.

Back at the visitor centre we found there were now five Egyptian Geese, and managed to photograph some, despite the poor light.

Little Egret
Egyptian Goose

Meanwhile, looking for a late lunch, we found that they stop cooking at 3.00 pm. I say cooking, but I mean toasting. The choice was therefore a sandwich (just the one) or big pieces of cake, or doughnuts. I’m supposed to be on a diet so we settled for pre-packed bakewell tarts. At £2.25 each they were distinguished more for their profit margin than their culinary excellence.

 

 

Under Fenland Skies

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We went for a trip into the Fens today. There’s not much to see apart from black soil and big skies with a few scattered houses (that always seem to need some paint or a repair to the fence).

Fenland skies
Fenland skies
Fenland skies

Actually that’s not really fair. They have large agricultural buildings, reeds growing in roadside ditches and a lot of history.

I would be happy to move back, as they are actually more interesting than any town in the Midlands. The Fens are an example of what we do to the world. First we drained them, then we watched them dry out and blow away. The ground level is currently around four metres lower than it was in 1850.

Mainly they have big skies. I’ll leave you with a few photos for now. They would have been better if there had been some foreground interest like wind turbines or pylons but there was nowhere to park so I took what I could. With long straight roads and thundering lorries you need to park safely.

Fenland skies
Fenland skies
Tree on the FEns

My Favourite Friday

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On Friday we planned to visit Sherwood Forest, photograph the oak trees and look for Robin Hood.

Sorry, I’m a bit late wth this – it’s so late on Saturday that it’s almost Sunday.

So much for my good intentions about being more organised and reliable. (And that’s before I reveal that I left my spare batteries at home and had to use the back-up camera).

Robin in Sherwood Forest
Wood pigeon viewing the bird food
Squirrel eating from a bird feeder

The plan was that we would get up early and make the best of the light, but there was no light, just a foggy murkiness. So we went back to sleep for another hour. By that time the light was a bit better so we set off for Sherwood Forest. It’s not quite as big as it once was. At one time it covered 115,000 acres: now the country park manages just 450 acres. Royal Forests once covered a third of southern England, including 100% of the counties of Essex and Huntingdonshire.

Fortunately a Royal Forest wasn’t full of trees, which would have made it very awkward for living and farming, they were just areas where Forest Laws took precedence over normal laws. This made life difficult, but still allowed for fields, grazing, marshes and other land without trees.

Strapping to hold an oak together
Ancient oak in Sherwood Forest
Sherwood in Winter

Anyway, in today’s country park there are around 1,000 ancient oaks, all looking to be on their last legs. Despite this they keep coming back year after year.  The most famous is the Major Oak, around 800 – 1,000 years old and held up by a cradle of wood and iron. It was supposedly a hideout used by Robin Hood, but if it’s only 800 years old it would have only been an acorn at the time.

Major Oak
Holding up the Major Oak

This is just a selection of photos – as usual  have managed to take too many!

 

 

 

Thoughts about renewable energy

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I watched The Apprentice last night.

At one time I used to watch in the hope that I might learn something about business. I’ve not learned anything I can use, though I do now know that every year proves there is a seemingly endless supply of idiots.

If I can find a way of converting idiots into electricity I may have found the next big thing in renewable energy.

Talking of which, we drove past another solar farm today.  It seems like every time we drive north from Nottingham we find another new field of black panels. Land use has changed considerably over the last ten years in North Nottinghamshire – first we had willow, then we had miscanthus. Currently we seem to have a small forest of wind turbines springing up and the latest fashion seems to be to cover acres in photovoltaic cells.

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Solar farm in north Nottinghamshire

When I see that I feel more comfortable about using electricity, but then start to worry that we won’t need it, because if we cover the land to generate electricity there will be no food to cook.

I’m a bit worried about food, after listening to a radio programme tonight. In order to halt global warming we need to scale back on meat production (mainly on account of the methane produced by cows) and would, they calculate, only have 19 grams of meat a day. That’s 133g a week, about the weight of two moderate burgers.

In the Second World War the bacon and ham ration ranged between 113 and 227 grams. However, there was also a meat ration, controlled by price – between 1 shilling and 1 shilling and two pence (5 – 6 pence in modern terms). I’m struggling to find a comparison of prices – one I found suggests that could be about £1.50. It’s not a lot, but compared to 19 grams a day it’s a positive feast.

To add to the complexity of looking into the future it also seems that grass fed beef (as generally reared in the UK) is worse for the environment than intensively raised beef fed on maize and soya (as raised in USA). It’s not about the method or the food, it’s about the fact that grass fed beef takes longer to grow to full weight, and thus spends more time emitting methane.

Now, methane is the main component of natural gas, so is it just me, or are other people thinking that some sort of gas-collecting nappy on a cow might be an alternative to fracking? Ah, just me…

That’s not the end to it of course, there’s also milk to consider. If they were telling the truth (and I fear they are) we will only have enough milk for four cups of tea a day.

Four cups of tea a day?

I could see myself as a vegetarian, but I don’t see myself cutting down to four cups a day.

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Under threat – my cup of tea

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Monday Miscellany

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We’ve just had fruit and ice cream – fruit from the garden and ice cream from a local dairy. That’s some of the fruit in the picture – I’ve been trying out the macro facility on the camera. It’s not as good as the old camera for close-up work and though the super macro setting produces great results it isn’t that good with butterflies, which tend to fly off.

The lavender in the allotment area is dying back but I have made a start to the Big Butterfly Count. Small Tortoiseshell (5), Meadow Brown (3), Gatekeeper, Large Skipper (2), Large White (2), Small White. I’ve done better, but I’ve certainly done worse.

There are a couple of pictures from the Friday trip too – a herring gull perching on a lamp post which has had spikes fitted to stop gulls perching and a bug hotel/pollinator nest box from the Sainsbury’s at Bridlington.

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The final picture is of a jackdaw at Bempton Cliffs. Yes, a jackdaw. We spent two and a half hours travelling just over 100 miles. We braved idiot drivers, motorway roadworks and a fried breakfast, and at the first viewing platform someone was in raptures at the sight of jackdaws on the cliffs. I suppose it all depends what you are used to seeing; I thought the Tree Sparrows on the feeders were great at Bempton, but they didn’t rate a second glance from most of the people there.

Musings on Mortality and Muesli

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There’s a sort of league table in my mind regarding death.

There are people who have always been dead while I’ve been alive, so not only am I unmoved by Shakespeare’s death, I probably contain several molecules of the man himself.

There are icons from my youth, the people who always seem to have been famous, like the recently deceased Ronnie Corbett. When one of them dies it feels a bit like someone has chipped a bit of me away.

Then there are the others, people like Victoria Wood and Prince, who are uncomfortably close to my age. In the case of Prince, exactly my age.

When my mother reached her early 70s we had to stop here reading the obituaries in the local paper  because most of the people in there were her age or younger and it was starting to worry her.

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Anyway, back to Shakespeare, I suppose. I won’t add much to the pile of words, except to say that the best Shakespeare I remember reading was a comic strip of Macbeth in Look and Learn. I think many of them, at least the ones worth reading (by which I mean the ones without all that soppy romance) would benefit from the graphic novel treatment -“Dredd’s Tales from Shakespeare” anyone?

Some trivia for you – Shakespeare and Cervantes died on the same date (which is why it has been chosen as UNESCO World Book Day) but died 10 days apart. There is no prize for the answer, just the satisfaction of knowing.

As for Don Quixote,  voted the best book ever written by a panel of experts, I can only say  that having recently tried and failed to read it that it would be best served by severe pruning and a murder in the first chapter, preferably Sancho Panza. I’m not sure if I’ve mentioned this before – sorry if I have (it’s my age you know) but I’m a philistine and I like crime fiction. 😉

As for the rest of the day, I’ve taken a booking for two days of visits from a school (5-7 years old – my idea of purgatory as I’m not allowed to mention mummification, the Assize of Bread and Ale or eating guinea pigs). Nor am I allowed to mention Waterloo teeth, guano or CJD/kuru ( in relation to either cannibalism or modern farming practice). How am I supposed to teach with that sort of restriction hanging over me like the sword of Damocles? Which is probably something else I’m not allowed to mention.

It’s not particularly that the subject matter is considered too gruesome (though that probably enters into it) but that I might ask the kids a question they can’t answer. This includes asking why Henry VIII didn’t eat chips of why the Romans didn’t have tomatoes on their pizza.  After all, we wouldn’t want to teach them something would we?

End of rant.

The pictures scattered through the post are taken with the new camera with new batteries. I’ve discovered that you can get 80x zoom sometimes – not sure how I did it but bird pics are bigger as a result. And shakier. If I read the manual (as many of you are probably about to suggest) it would  spoil the surprise of discovery.

The picnic area is next to a local lay-by which has a some interesting plants, interesting birds and an excellent catering van. It also, as you can see, plays hosts to some people who don’t deserve decent facilities.

The Jackdaw is at 80x zoom, and we just picked the first rhubarb of the year.

I had muesli for breakfast as I wanted something smallish in case I set my socket off. Well, actually it was fruit and fibre, but it’s similar and a title with fruit and fibre in it is a difficult beast to tame on the road to alliteration.

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In a queue to cue Kew

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I’m not entirely sure what sort of day I have had. It started with a bacon baguette from Greggs (tasted great but did the diet n favours) and moved on to the previously described birdsong. After that is plunged, also as detailed in the last post. After that, with a migraine (fortunately not mine), unplanned visitors, post-it notes (don’t you just hate it when someone puts a snide post-it on something and leaves you to find it?), rain, wind and a variety of small but time consuming triviality, I just don’t know what happened to the day.

All I know was that after the first post it was lunchtime and then the taxi arrived.

We have managed to plant the new wildflower bed, which is now the subject of a diary under the Projects tab.

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You might be able to get some idea of the wind from looking at the hair in the photos, after that it became even windier and we decided that it was time to see what happened when boiling water is poured on the dried leaves of camellia sinensis.

 

Rain, robins and roosters

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The Met Office misled me. I was expecting passing showers, but instead we had a prolonged hammering from hail.

Despite this we did manage to get some of the Kew seeds planted.

More lambs today, but no photos in case any of my you start to suffer from cuteness fatigue. I’ll post more on Wednesday. You will have to make do with a picture of a robin singing in the barn. No, I’ve never seen one singing inside either, but as the front is open it’s easy to get in and out.

The final batch of ewes were due to start lambing today, but let’s face it, when do sheep ever do what they are supposed to do? It doesn’t matter, because we’re still knee deep in lambs from the main group, and have plenty more still to come as some of them are showing no urgency about giving birth.

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The poultry emerged after the rain, as did the sun, so it ended on a positive note.

PS: Yes, I do realise that the title is both inaccurate (rain) and Americanised (rooster) but Hail, robins and cockerels just didn’t sound so good. Oh, and I just realised there was only one robin…

I like parcels

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It was busy on the lane today. First  we startled a charm of goldfinches, then we had to pull over for the farm telehandler and finally for a post office van as it left the farm.

We already had one parcel, which was delivered to the house on Friday, and there was another waiting for us in the centre. It’s just like Christmas, though I’m not sure that I’d have asked Santa for a pamphlet of sausage recipes or a large poster of pork joints.

It’s a very nice pamphlet, with some mouth-watering pictures and a foreword reminding us about British Sausage Week. I could remain lost in the pamphlet and website for ages – they even have a page on sausage etiquette. I don’t know about you, but my mind is going through a number of possibilities at this point…

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The other parcel has our wild flower kits from Kew, including guides, markers, seeds and bee houses. It’s a good scheme and we are going to be using it as one of our main activities – from preparing the beds to reporting on the flowers and the insects they attract. I’m making a new page for projects with a sub-page for Growing Wild. As usual, because I haven’t made a new page for some months, I’ve been struggling to remember how to do it. Fortunately it came back to me.

The group has had a busy morning helping with lambing, collecting eggs, recapturing one of the Light Sussex (which had escaped notice on Friday when we rounded up the other escapees) and looking at the Nottingham Peregrines via the web link.

This afternoon we will be putting new bedding in the poultry so they are clean and fresh for our visitors tomorrow, and planting seeds.