Puffin on the Edge

Spreading his wings to stabilise himself, the persistent wind tries to prise their bold black tips from the cliff-face. Wrenching grass from the ledge on this sheer drop, the gannet collects precious nesting material.

For another, it’s time to go. Pushing off from the rock, wings spread, she seems to have no fear of falling as she slides through the snowstorm of seabirds without hitting a drop.

The puffin perches nearby. Her wings must beat 400 times per minute to fly. Goodness knows how she got up here, but here she stands in her orange wellies. Her nearest companions are two razorbills who converse loudly, seeming not to have noticed her. With no other puffins to chat with, she calmly surveys the ruckus, preening a silky black wing with her striking beak.

A less respectful razorbill flies up to land on her narrow ledge. Her five minutes of peace are over, and she launches down into the wind, as the newcomer makes himself at home.

A slightly larger puffin spots a friend on an exposed outcrop and decides to join them. Waddle, waddle, hop. Over the shrubbery. He stabilises himself above her and they both look out to sea. She leans forward, just a fraction, then springboards away from the cliff-city. Flap, flap, flapping over the waves. Unperturbed, he stays where he is. His colourful beak stands out amongst the razorbills. In a few minutes she returns, landing with her feet flat against the rock. It was a lot of effort just to land a little higher up, but her flat feet aren’t well designed for scaling a cliff face.

Happier now with her position, she begins to preen. Head nuzzling under her wing, she curves her neck impossibly back to reach her tail feathers. She raises her wings up and gives them a quick shake before resuming the plump puffin on a rock position. It suits her well, and there she stays as a squadron of gannets flies past the abandoned site of RAF Bempton.

Chiffchaff

The path is empty as I leave the village. Walking away from ‘the virus’, socially distancing myself, searching for the sanity of nature.

Great tits cover feeders, undisturbed by visitors in the carless castle carpark. Standing in the stillness, I breathe. Surrounded by branches draped in lime lichens, anxiety sinks into the mud with my boots.

“Chiff chaff, chiff chaff, chiff chaff!”

There it is! The world stops as spring completes its arrival. No matter that crinkled leaves still cling to the stubborn oak, unbothered by our increasingly mild winters. I catch a glimpse of the bird in question as its silhouette flits above. Its needlepoint beak stands out against the steamy sky. It leaves me here alone. The year is moving on.

As first published in: Writes of Spring

Wildcat

I saw a human today. He must have been at least a deer and a half tall. I don’t think he was carrying a Bang, but I couldn’t be sure. I don’t trust them either way. I remember a story my brother told me, about the time he watched one take down a stag. We were still kittens. His pale eyes widened as his breath warmed my ear against the night chill. He told me not to tell mum, as he’d snuck out further than the fallen tree. It was out of sight of the den, something we weren’t to do until we’d grown up enough to hunt for ourselves. He may have made it up completely, but I believed him. I knew he’d be a powerful cat when we were older. I haven’t seen him for a while. Watching the human rummage in his pack took me back to the den. Memories of family security crept out of my present anxieties. It ended with us both being washed, forcibly, with mum ignoring my insistence that I prefer my ears dirty.

It makes you think though. Humans fight without a struggle. They just lift up the Bang and with a bone-jolting crack, they win. You never see them hungry, but you never see them eat their catch either. In all the seasons I’ve pawed this land, I’ve never seen a human wet his canines with a kill. They must have a cache of uneaten remains to come back to later. They surely wouldn’t waste anything. I’ve seen skinny ones, but never one that is starving or sick. They’re always in their prime, even the old ones. It defies all natural logic.

The one I saw this evening wasn’t hunting. He was sat on a rock at the forest’s edge, doing nothing useful. He wasn’t asleep, but almost stationary. In his hand was pre-packaged prey, but it had halted half-way to his mouth. He seemed distracted, his eyes not quite focussed, gazing back towards the mountain. He’d left it behind earlier in the day, like most of them do when they visit these parts. But unlike the others, there was no urgency to leave, despite dusk falling. Most vanish before this hour, I assume heading back to the warmth of their dens. A pang of hunger shot through my belly as the breeze carried teasing particles of the pseudo-hunt’s prize, which landed all around me, tickling the inside of my nose. Or it may have been the midges. It’s hard to tell some days.

He couldn’t see me from where I crouched. Fur on end, rock still, muscles taut. He showed no interest in anything nearby, myself included. But although I sensed the danger was low, I remained ready to dart at the first sign of trouble. The evening was progressing, and although I ached to hunt for myself, I daren’t risk being spotted. I had to wait him out. I’ve never been noticed, and I intend to keep it that way. I had considered patrolling the other side of my range tonight, and I cursed myself for coming this way. There’s good rabbiting over to the east, towards the loch. It’s never as fruitful here, amongst the trees.

Their trunks stood guard in the summer duskiness. It’s unusual to see a human at this hour. You can usually smell them before you see them, particularly after the sun’s peak, whilst they’re busy descending from that of the mountain. Their scent triggers something different inside me. It’s not like picking up a scat, an indicator of a friend or foe that I might know. In their case, the message is always to be wary. Their scent marking is at its weakest on the way up, and more pungent on the descent. Something must change in them, up there in the sky. Perhaps it’s the something that draws them upwards. There must be good hunting up there. But it’s not for me, there’s far too many open stretches.

The new generation’s opinions are split. There are some with their heads screwed on the right way around, who keep their distance from anything that lacks the appropriate number of legs. It’s the wisest way to be, if you ask me. Not that anyone often does. You can observe them to your heart’s content, but keep out of their way. There are rumours circulating that they are doing their best to bring civilisation to an end. As far as I’m concerned, if it’s just theirs, then it’s no problem. But leave the rest of us out of it. We’re doing just fine. I’ve seen the wreckage they leave behind when they’re left to do their own thing. Felled trees, debris that entangles the finest birds, and even intentional traps. Once seen, those images never leave you.

Other young cats can’t see the trees for their whiskers. I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve heard the stories. My mother’s sister had a litter of eight. There’s two we’ll never see again, but not from natural causes. It’s far worse than that. They’ve intentionally left us behind. They’re not fussy on that side of the family, not with prey or mates or, well, anything. The rumour is they’ve mixed with domestics. It won’t stop there though, the next thing you know, we’ll all be expected to curl up on rugs and and abide by their rules. I don’t know why they can’t see it. There are fewer of us now. I don’t know the numbers, but the old generation still purr of a time when we prowled through these mountain forests, leaving whole vole cities quaking as our paws shuddered the earth. Now they say we face extinction. It’s something I can’t comprehend. All I know, is that I rarely see anyone new in my territory. There’s no need for the legendary battles they used to talk about, whilst we lay curled together in the den. No fighting for the land. It’s all mine if I want it now, for what it’s worth. Even that won’t be much consolation if I don’t find a female to mate with soon. There are a few with a decent set of stripes on them, but bumping into them is getting harder and harder. It’s too late for me this year anyway. A kitten wouldn’t survive the winter. I’ll have to look again after the solstice.

Still, it doesn’t help to be gloomy. The human didn’t hurt me this evening. He didn’t even notice my presence, despite his very existence prickling all of my senses. It was all I could manage to stop my strong tail flicking as it wanted to. I fought the urge, so it wouldn’t give the game away. He finished staring at the midge-speckled sunset as his shadow grew across the fallen twigs. Hauling his home up onto his back, he left. As he did so, he raised one hand up to his ear. It stood out eerily, illuminated with a soft glow in the darkening wood. He mewed quietly to himself, as if he were talking to one of his kind, but he was alone. It will always baffle me how such strange creatures manage to do so well out here, whilst the most stealthy and intelligent of us dwindle on the foothills. I stretched my legs, and stepped out into the night, which was arriving as quickly as he departed.

First published by Scottish Mountaineer, Issue 86, Winter 2020

I will Definitely go for a Walk Tomorrow...

‘If I can just get to my days off, then I can get out and go for a walk.’

This is the lie I’ve been telling myself for several days. Each morning, rattling my way to work with an ever-increasing grumble from the driver’s side rear wheel, I’ve been one day closer to the weekend. The myth that keeps up its pretence is that once I reach these magical days off everything else on the to-do list will disappear and I can spend 48 unadulterated hours roaming in the countryside and writing the next nature writing masterpiece. I’ve always been an optimist.

This morning came without much warning. I was asleep, and then I wasn’t. The clock was ticking before my brain had caught up with my slowly focussing vision, and had a chance to re-join the real world in action. It was already starting to slip by, this precious and mysterious entity.

I thought it wouldn’t hurt to read a little before I got up. It would surely inspire me for my own work. I read for longer than I should have, and half the morning was no longer there. There was still plenty of time to go for a walk though, so I gathered up a bundle of orange, reds and black fabric and stuffed my work uniform into the washing machine. It wouldn’t hurt to clean the bathroom before I went out, so I did that too. Cleaning was thirsty work, so the kettle went on, emails were checked, and before I knew it lunchtime had arrived, expectantly.

One cheese sandwich later and rain lashed the windows, blurring my view of the outside world. It seemed like a good time to do a supermarket run. It would be sunny again by the time I got home, and I could finally put on my boots and get into nature.

As I rounded the first corner, my car reminded me it wasn’t happy. The creaking, clunky rattle from the back of the car couldn’t be heard any more. This would have been a good thing, if it wasn’t for the fact that the little Toyota was now roaring in pain as it produced a noise usually reserved for airport runways.

Having run out of cheese in the house, I insisted it got to the shop and back. Then made my jeans soggy as I knelt to inspect the damage in the rain. The exhaust pipe was now dangling in a theatrical manner and clearly needed attention from someone who knew what they were doing. The garage man said I could bring it straight over, so off we went.

As I caught a lift back home, the sun was preparing to go back to bed, as were the starlings flocking over the A351. They swirled and turned back on themselves, before lifting up and away from the roundabout, almost vanishing as they danced against the darkening sky. I’m sure that most of the rush-hour drivers in the drizzle wouldn’t have even noticed.

I will definitely go for a walk tomorrow.

International Orang-utan Day

The 19th August is International Orang-utan Day.

We all know, by now, that palm oil is in intensively farmed monocrop that is grown in the tropics. There are lots of people out there on social media calling for a boycott of this crop, as it rapidly increases in production in Borneo and Sumatra, the last refuges of orang-utans. Opinions are split, and the arguments on Twitter are heated and emotive. The only thing that seems certain is that it is a complex problem, without an easy solution. I've spent a lot of time reading the recent scientific papers, pondering, chatting to my colleagues and friends in the industry, and perusing the websites of organisations I trust. And the following is where I stand on the issue at the moment.

I think the best course of action for the consumer is to consider switching your products to those which include sustainable palm oil. I know some of you reading this would prefer to see a palm oil boycott, but the reality is that there is global demand for oil which will be met one way or another by the industry. Whilst we're waiting for the entire world to stop using oil crops(!), we might as well push to make what's currently in use as sustainable as possible.

As all of the alternative edible oilseed crops are less productive, a boycott would simply see a shift to an alternative which requires more land to produce.

The RSPO seem to be addressing several of the problems that have previously been highlighted with the initiative (I hear the phrases "sustainable palm oil doesn't mean anything" and "there are lots of problems with the RSPO" banded around in my line of work sometimes). It is also clear to me that a demand for sustainable palm oil (and I appreciate that a monoculture of any kind cannot be 100% sustainable) increases the motivation to improve the industry, which a boycott does not. Supporting initiatives such as the RSPO, whilst subjecting them to a healthy level of questioning and constructive criticism, pushes organisations to work together to find solutions that protect what we can whilst meeting the global demands for food and fuel.

I think it's great to make consumer choices that involve fewer processed products (which often contain oils such as palm), and choose locally sourced products for the good of the environment, and I'm in no way criticising anyone who is managing to sustain a palm-oil-free lifestyle, good on you! But I'm also supportive of any efforts to minimise the negative impacts of worldwide consumption on the environment, and aware that many of the alternative oils used in palm oil free products (and I'm talking here about something that contains an equivalent oil, not something like an apple!) are actually worse for our forests.

The Water Meadows

A lady stops me before I’ve even left the road.
“Just enough time to get a little walk in before it gets dark.”
She smiles as if I know her. How does she know I’m going for a walk? I’m dressed the same as if I were going to the shop or the train station. What is it that labels me as walking, rather than doing something normal? The train blares its horn where there used to be a foot crossing, the driver pointlessly obeying the command to whistle, despite there being nobody to whistle at. It might fulfil a childhood dream to blow the horn on his very own train, and he does so enthusiastically, making local residents jump in their kitchens all the way to Weymouth.

I take the footpath through the caravan site. Blackbirds, four of them, pick around the fallen leaves, hoping to surprise something tasty. Two of them leave, not pleased with my presence. The others don’t care as long as I don’t steal their dinner. I assure them I won’t. Most of the caravans are empty, but I startle an old man filling up his water container before it starts to rain. The sky has taken on the colour of dirty sheep. It’s not as grumpy as it was during last night’s storm, but the branches still have some energy in them. The real dirty sheep are over by Woolbridge Manor today, and alongside the path I want to follow across the water meadows. Heads bob up as the guards watch me pass, but after a second’s contemplation they return to their grass. They look up as my welly boot slides on the mud and I find myself apologising as I try to keep my balance. They scatter as my clumsy suction noises leave messy footprints along the river bank. It’s quiet on the water, but I manage to terrify a mallard whilst stopping to put on my hat. I feel like I’m messing up their evening with my nature walk.

I’m relieved for a moment to hear voices ahead, so at least it’s not only me disturbing the peace. We exchange polite hellos as they pass with a brown dog which I suspect started off white. They move on and I stop to scan the rushes on the other side of the river. Two tiny birds fly down into them before one re-emerges, fluttering up and down, slowly gaining height, then disappearing, the black spot erasing itself with increasing distance.

Angry hiccups from a moorhen float my way as I move into another field. I pick what may be my last blackberry this year, judging by the state of its friends. There’s a small bridge over the water that I want to investigate, but I’m not equipped to be out after dark today. I curse having to cut my loop short as the mud becomes tarmac again, edged with thatched cottages that nobody lives in all winter, reserved for holiday rather than home makers.

Two gunshots take me out of my thoughts. Is that the army practicing wargames on the range at Lulworth? Or is somebody hunting this evening? Neither thought is pleasant. I make one final diversion to look back over the river before going home. I’m glad I do as a kestrel hovers over the bank scanning for supper. The water is starting to lose its reflection as evening approaches and the first drops of rain merge with its surface. Just as I turn to leave something darts through the water, a tantalising splosh being the only evidence by the time my senses process the message to turn around and look. It seems the wildlife don’t want to be watched tonight.

Dogservations in Corsham

Following its canine inhabitants, writing student Rachel Henson explores Corsham on foot, and discovers parts of the village most tourists never get to see.

A wobbly dog and two ladies walk past the Deli. I jump up and follow them past Boots and left at Co-op. They enter a café that my cheese sandwich forbids me to enter. I’m in a graveyard waiting for another dog to come along. A stone cross declares it’s sacred to the memory of the Reverend William Green, died in 1904, aged 46. Now surrounded by flowers on a thoroughfare to the supermarket. The owners reappear with sandwiches and tea. The dog is invited to join in with neither and lies panting in the sunshine as they sit down to eat. I awkwardly try to feign an interest in the lone tree in the old churchyard, which I notice is fluttering unnaturally. A closer inspection reveals mesh ribbons and bows tied to its branches, and luggage tags twisting in the breeze. I stop one spinning:
“Be strong and never give up”.

The headstones haven’t been tended to in a long time. But there are other more recent additions besides the ribbons. High up on a wall, between a security light and the metal torture spikes set out for homeless birds, is a sign:
“Pigeons. Please don’t feed them. We love them but there are just too many and they do cause problems. We want to avoid culling.” I’d love to know what sort of problems pigeons can cause in a ruined churchyard between a carpark and a supermarket. The sign annoys me because it’s lying. I doubt that its composer really loves pigeons. I really love my nan, and she certainly knows how to cause problems, but I wouldn’t put spikes on her favourite chair or advise not feeding her as the only alternative to culling.

A man walks past carrying a sack of compost, and cigarette smoke drifts over from a chap staring at me from inside a hi-vis jacket. I feel despairingly dog-less and walk around to the rear of the café, noticing a fellow writer in a hedge as I do so. The gate is open to the rear of the café. There are gravestones here too, but sombre sounds of reflection and mourning have been replaced by a clattering of plates entering the dishwasher. Wiltshire Waste Recycling blue skips sit amongst the tombstones. A ladder lays painfully across a child’s last resting place. “Annie, beloved daughter of Arthur and Jane Holder who died September 1st 1890. Aged 14 years.”

I doubt they wanted her buried in a rubbish tip. I pick up a Fruit Shoot bottle tossed onto someone’s grave and put it in one of the skips, which is itself positioned without respect. The best I can do is tidy up a bit, then I remember I’m meant to be looking for dogs. Yellow lines on the road seem like a plausible thing to follow whilst lacking in dogs, but eight steps later they run out underneath a silver Transit van which is parked over both them and the pavement. They turn up again after an unexplained break where I suspect the painter gave up trying to work around a parked car. This new pair of lines is smattered with white paint, which somebody has driven through before also parking up on the double yellows. Corsham’s traffic warden must be on holiday this week.

A peacock yells at me from a wall on the far side of the car park in which I find myself. It peers haughtily from an elevated position above a Biffa bin, scratches its head with its foot then stares at me until I retreat from the carpark. Back on the high street I finally have one. A rat-sized dog attached by its lead to a mobility scooter. I can’t catch up. I speed up and the woman stops, without warning, to allow the dog to sniff some fallen leaves. I accidentally overtake and kick myself for ending up in front. I have to walk painstakingly slowly, whilst trying to look interested in in the parkland view, until correct order is restored and I’m behind my subject once more. The woman stops again, spinning her tiny buzzing motor around to glare at me over her glasses. I’ve been rumbled.

“This way, Peggy”, she demands, and scoops up the dog, depositing it into a basket before scooting off at a speed I can’t match. A corvid laughs at me from the tree above. I’m not sure whether it’s an angry crow or a grumpy rook, but they seem to find my inability to keep up with a pensioner in the sunshine most amusing.