‘Normality is an
illusion. What is normal for the spider is chaos for the fly’
- Charles Addams
Happy
New Year! We are now well and truly into
2016 and the festive feasting seems like a distant memory.
Jack
Frost has finally put in an appearance this winter and has been dancing across
the land spreading his icy affection and giving us a much needed cold snap in
this otherwise remarkably mild season.
We have missed out on the snow this far south – the more inland counties
have had the sledging fun whilst we remain snowless but chilly, with
breathtakingly cold, clear nights resulting in everyone rooting around their
trucks hunting for their long abandoned ice scrapers first thing in the
morning.
These kinds of days are the
best of winter days, the Frosty Blue days I call them, when the sky is clear
and blue and the winter sun blazes, causing the silvery frost to glisten and
sparkle. At Hamble the other day the
reed beds were all intricately adorned with frost on their feathery flower
heads, whilst their stems glowed gold in the sun creating as fine and pretty a
picture as I have seen anywhere. I
stepped out onto my favourite vantage point of this site, along the stem of one
of the large oaks that had fallen into the river and, standing among its fallen
branches over the estuary, I could look up and down stream at the peaceful
view. Snow white Little Egrets stood hunched on
skeleton trees on the far side of the river, basking in the winter sun; the
reed beds whispered and rustled secrets to each other and the tide was creeping
out on its journey to visit the sea, under an endless blue sky…unfortunately I was
startled out of my dreamy reverie a few minutes later when I put my hand in dog
crap as I worked on the boardwalk here – and the crisp, fine air was, for a few
seconds, filled with expletives and horrified yelps as I ran to the water’s
edge to wash it off.
 |
| Frosted Reeds |
 |
| Glowing reed beds |
Dressed
in more layers than an onion, I find myself waddling slightly these days due to
the sheer mass of clothing I have on – makes climbing over gates a bit more
challenging but my reptile like nature does not approve of being too cold. And talking of waddling, our sheep flock have
spent a month here at Mottisfont plumping up on the lush grass and allowing us
to keep an easy eye on them over the festive period when staff numbers were
fewer. Having gorged themselves on the
Mottisfont Menu, the time came last week to get them moved back up to
Stockbridge where they belong and so once again I entered the Battle Royale
ring and played the game of getting them penned up. A few days of training them to enter a self-made
pen of hurdles proved enough for most of them, but as usual 6 remained on the
outside looking in and so the games of woman vs flock began. In the end human evolution prevailed (just)
and the final 6 fell prey to my many tricks of luring them in to the pen, tricks
which included shaking the nut bucket and looking the other way so they think I’m
not watching, scattering a nut trail into the pen, feeding the already penned
up sheep to make the others jealous and shaking the nut bucket near an
individual, luring them close enough to grab and wrestle into the pen (the
latter being the only one that worked and had to be repeated for all 6
sheep). Gareth our tenant farmer then
arrived with his livestock trailer and we proceeded to shoo them in, pushing
their fat, woolly behinds in an effort to get them to move forward and into the
trailer, before locking them in and taking them on their journey to the Down
and home.
They
are now all safely back on the Down, doing their important habitat work of
eating – which they fell to straight away, no slackers in this flock; they
flooded out the trailer and threw themselves on the grass as if they had been
half starved! They seemed chuffed to be
back on their Kingdom; they were soon trotting along their old scrub trails and
standing nobly on top of the hills asserting their authority. They will remain on this Leckford slope into
spring before we move them back through to the NT side of the slope, thus
giving each area a chance to rest and flower.
And if the sheep are returned, then that also means the wonderful sheep
lookers are now back at their daily duties of checking the flock – and are
enjoying the tattoos on their fleeces which make individuals more easily
identifiable – especially the troublemakers! (Holly Leaf sheep was particularly
naughty when trying to be penned up).
 |
| Back home! |
Over
the festive rota period, when the weather was still wet and mild, Neil and I
were doing the rounds on the rivers and opening the sluice gates across the
estate, in order to allow some of the excess water to drain out of the main
channels and into the side ditches, thus reducing the risk of flooding. The torrents of water that were flushing
through these sluices was tremendous, like a mini version of Niagara Falls, and
woe betide any beastie that got sucked in – they were in for a rapid ride!
 |
| The swan family taking a organized paddle up the river |
 |
| The river Dun overflowing through the woods... |
We
also came across an otter kill on one of the river banks, of a huge salmon with
the most impressive set of jaws I’ve seen on any fish that wasn’t a shark. Neil said it is the male salmon that have
these big hook like mouths but this was the biggest teeth he’d seen on one….and
so how could I resist? I donned
disposable gloves (I actually had a pair in my coat pocket left over from a
first aid course), Neil handed me a bin bag and, retching and gagging at the
stench, I wrapped the squishy, gooey, carcass in the bag and we took it back to
the farmyard and my Pet Cemetery rot pile, where I put skulls to rot down and
lose their flesh, ready for cleaning and for taking their final place on the
Shelf of Death (kind of like the Disney theme of taking their place in the
Great Circle of Life…). Got to admit
though, the smell of rotting fish was almost too much even for me and I was
glad to relinquish it to the pile and leave it for the next few months for
nature to do her thing….I shall just claim ignorance when I see people
wandering around that corner of the carpark wondering just what the hell that
smell is!
 |
| Looks like a crocodile! |
 |
| On the Rot Pile |
The
previous mild weather has also meant that we have been seeing things emerging
that should have long stayed hidden.
Bluebells leaves are poking their way up through the soil at Hamble and
Mottisfont, Daffodils are in bloom, Hazel is budding and I saw a Hawthorn with
fresh, newly opened leaves in Oakley Copse – all much too early! I also, when walking home the other night at
3am, heard a bird singing loud and clear in the middle of town – and this was
3am in January so there was no sign
of the dawn or first light, so I can only assume the birds are a little bit out
of sync also and are perhaps displaying their increased spring singing a bit
early? Any bird experts let me know if winter night singing is normal…I would
have recognised a nightingale but of course they are summer only.
 |
| Bluebells popping up at Hamble... |
I am hoping this cold spell will put things
back in cycle a little bit more as it would have a bad impact on flora and
fauna if they start blooming and nesting thinking spring was here and then get
caught out by a cold blast. Despite
these concerns, I also think that nature has a bit more of an idea of what it
is doing then we do and it will continue to adapt and evolve to suit the
current climate and play of the seasons – be they late, early, mild, extreme or
whatever the latest weather report calls them – let’s face it; just what do we
define as a ‘normal’ season anymore?
There isn’t a deadline date by which spring or summer or autumn or winter
should know to be in place. There is no
list of designated characteristics that nature can read to know that ‘oh ok,
winter should be this cold and autumn this wet, whilst summer wow! You’re meant
to be pretty warm – better start heating up!’
The only list is that which we have recorded and defined in previous
years and whilst there has undoubtedly been a global warming of temperatures –
I refuse to use the word ‘normal’ anymore when talking seasons because I just
don’t think there is a ‘normal’ season. They will come when they want and do
what they want and we must work with them the best we can (this would be a good
place to mention flood control policies, trees in upper river catchments,
preventing buildings on floodplains etc. but I fear it would turn into a bit of
a rant so I shall leave it to more educated people than I to comment on such
matters….but do read up about it. A lot
of the flooding we have in this country is not always due to ‘abnormal’
rainfall, but catchment mismanagement).
Back
to the frosty present and the Monday volunteers came to Hamble last week to
help coppice and pollard some of the Holly understorey on the site. The Holly has grown particularly thick in
some areas in this woodland and this blocks most of the light to the woodland
floor as well as prevents the Oaks putting on any epicormics growth on their
stems (epicormic shoots are the cluster of little side shoots that you
sometimes see growing out the main stem of species like Oak. They are usually dormant whilst the growth
hormones go to the main canopy but they help a tree to survive as, if the
canopy is damaged, i.e. ripped out in the wind, the epicormic growth will be
able to take over and grow and keep the tree alive. It is not great for a timber crop but Hamble
is not for timber production so the more we can do to keep the woodland here in
survival mode, the better. The
Mottisfont Oak, our 1000 year old specimen has superb examples of epicormic
growth). So by clearing back some of the
Holly understorey, we are allowing light to the floor for ground flora to
spring up and to the stems of the Oaks, thus improving the health of the canopy
trees. We left enough holly to continue
to provide shelter for birds such as Goldcrest and Firecrest which are both
found here and I look forward to seeing the floral results on our work come
springtime. Whilst we were there the
tide was peaking in the estuary and as we watched it, it crept in higher…and
higher…and still higher until it was higher than I’d ever seen it there, having
overtopped the platoon and had reached the first set of garden benches in the
pub garden area. According to one of the
local volunteers the winter tides are often reaching this height here now and
with the proposed housing development nearby likely to increase surface runoff,
there is a serious danger of high tides and spring tides flooding the pub and
the road.
 |
| High tide - see the handrail of the platoon? |
Finally,
I took a wander the other day to some Barn Owl boxes that myself and ornithologist
Alan Snook put up back in April 2014 (you can read about it on the blog post
for that month). We put up a nest box
and a roost box as once a Barn Owl pair have hatched owlets, the female likes
the male to be out of the nest box but stay nearby at her beck and call so by
putting up a roost box near to the nest box, the bloke has somewhere to
go! To my delight, for the first time
since we put them up, I found some owl pellets underneath the boxes which
implied a Barn Owl had used them recently – so we are keeping our eyes peeled
and our fingers crossed that a pair may choose these boxes to nest and rear
their young this year – but not quite yet – it’s not 'normal' spring time yet….
 |
| The barn owl pellets |
 |
| Another pellet I found on a fence post on Stockbridge - see the red teeth of the skull? That means it belonged to a shrew... |
