Genuine and Wild

It should be emphasised again and again that the experience of seeing animals in the wild on Blacka and elsewhere is completely different to seeing them in the park of a stately home. The deer on Blacka are truly wild and easily frightened off. They keep largely hidden by day and you can search for weeks without seeing one. Usually they are off into the woods as soon as they spot you. This brings with it a treasurable sense of being in a genuinely wild place. There is a world here that is beyond the control and concerns of man and you tread more carefully, knowing as you do that you are in the realm where wild animals have set up their home. I do not sense this on a grouse moor, nor on a place where heather is managed by wildlife trusts for ground nesting birds nor where scrapes are specially dug for waders. That is bird-gardening and the occupation of our wildlife bureaucracies. The vegetation where this hind was seen is a glorious birch and scrub area transformed by the early morning autumn sun. Let us hope it is not destroyed by the birch bashers of SWT in a week's time. If the SSSI designations of Natural England had existed in the 1930s when this land was given to the public by J G Graves there would be none of this natural beauty here. It would be all boring heather with never a tree to be seen.

Compensation

Wednesday and Thursday were both damp and gloomy mornings and failed to show the autumn colours to advantage but compensated with other wildlife. On Wednesday two stags were seen seperately browsing on Blacka Hill, soon moving off when we arrived. Today a group of hinds leapt over the path above Blacka Dyke and were quickly off through trees to the stream below. A little later a large white shape was seen flying a little further west. My only thought was a barn owl but didn't see enough of it to comfirm.


Photo below taken Tuesday afternoon.

Barrier

The land to the east has gone splendidly wild, a tangled area of natural regeneration. To the right is Blacka, now called a Nature Reserve though still disputed by the die hards. In between lies the fence, once intended to be barbed wire but changed instructions at the last minute responded to the amazed dismay of local people at the appearance of the barbed wire elsewhere on the site. The official story is that the fence is to keep the cattle in. But the preferred version is that it's to keep true natural wildness out. Some say it amounts to the same thing.

Untouched

There are still scenes to be enjoyed where what you see has been untouched and largely untainted by the arch controllers of the conservation world even after nine years of nominal management by a wildlife trust. What can they be doing we may ask? The pile of paper gets higher at the side of their desks.

Let it continue to do so as long as it keeps them away from here. Please God, no more of their crazed day-trip scrub bashings.

Hallelujah!

Praise be that the conservationists were not around or even dreamed of in the days when Blacka was rescued from its life sentence as a grouse moor. The years since then spared hundreds of beautiful trees that now grace the whole area giving delight to the eye in autumn. You never see a conservationist whether from wildlife trust or other bureaucracy in the early morning. They are all heading for their desks and their darling paperwork. If they were here on sunny October mornings they might see something that broke their resolve to oil their chain saws ready for the annual brutality festival. Which of the trees here will survive to see another spring and which will be left as a severed limb?

Herdwick

I am no lover of sheep nor of sheep farming on the hills of England where they are used to kill off any saplings before they can mature into fine native trees. And the overgrazing of recent years has meant that they have been everywhere leading to intrusive notices telling us that it's lambing season and we must "Get A Grip"! And the general attitude of many (if not all) hill farmers in South Yorks and North Derbyshire is that they stick the beasts on the moors and then leave them for weeks without much in the way of pastoral care. It has been commonplace to see sick and ailing animals and also many wandering on major roads with apparently no effort being made to retrieve them.


Lowland sheep are usually another story, getting much better treatment. But if there's one sheep in the hills that I do have a soft spot for it's the Herdwick more often found in the Lake District. Currently the farmer who grazes the sheep on the pasture land of Blacka has introduced a number of Herdwick sheep and lambs amongst the more common Derbyshire blackfaced animals. The Herdwicks are amusing to watch over a period of time. The ewes are white faced with a grey coat while the lambs start very dark almost black all over; over the weeks their faces turn white starting around the eyes with white spectacles. They also have a more attractive character than the others, less likely to complain and stamp feet but still curious.

Over all a more welcome addition. If we must have sheep let's have less of them but let them be Herdwicks.

The pure white fungi pushing up through the grass at this time have always been a puzzle to me being a very poor scholar of mycological matters. Could they be the Ivory Waxcap or could they be the Ivory Clitocybe? If your mind is on breakfast much could depend on the judgement made as the former is classed as edible while the Clitocybe produces very nasty reactions sometimes fatal. My choice this morning is a poached egg.

Westwards

Once the cooler nights arrive the pattern is set for early morning bird traffic. Crows, mainly jackdaws and rooks move westwards to their daily feeding grounds having roosted in the woods to the east of Blacka. They fly in groups of every size, from individuals, small gangs of five or six and large parties sometimes over fifty.

Another feature these mornings is the flocks of smaller birds.

These look like the thrushes that spend winter over here having flown in from northern regions of Europe. Sometimes the sense of a world on the move is very strong.

One character showing no desire to move on is our persistent robin, singing for his breakfast at 9 a.m. in the contrast of deep shade and bright morning sun.