Rowan

More rowan than hawthorn on Blacka but both play their part. Rowan is the queen of creams. But it feels like a long time since we were enjoying the white flowers of blackthorn in March.

Green Culmination

What you’re left with when you can argue no more is the simple fact the greatest contribution to the appeal of Blacka has been made by the absence of management over many years.

This week brings us the high point of the spring greening with trees at their very best,each leaf new minted with an extra edge of immediacy that you only find in May. Whatever the delights that suburban lilac and apple blossom bring they cannot beat the simple but vivid fresh growth on birch and rowan, oak and whitebeam self-determined in a natural setting with no gardeners in sight. The seductive artifice of Chelsea displays cannot compete with a newly greened wood and a blackbird’s leisurely improvising. This is the best of Blacka and the reason that people and variety of wildlife prefer it to Burbage and Houndkirk Moor. There are those strange old farming fundamentalists who claim to see the trees as all wrong because the land should be farmed and like a grouse moor, but their views are corrupted by a mix of self interest and warped conservation industry dogma, a lost philistine cause unworthy of attention except for those who no longer use their eyes.

It's worth looking back more than forty years to my first explorings of this region: The most striking thing about Houndkirk Road to me was always coming through the gates after walking over the sheep-grazed moor. With the acrid smell of sheep receding behind on the other side of the gate, I found myself abruptly among natural vegetation with wild flowers and it was as if the world had broken free of the chains of exploitation. Behind, on the managed side of the gate the grazed area stretched on remorselessly for a vast distance monocultured depressingly not by any quirk of nature but by carefully contrived and bureaucratically planned intervention with no free wildflowers blooming. We should never stop being astonished at this. People actually planned it. And we do need to remind ourselves just what people can do.

There are more beauties on Blacka, far more, than on all the local grouse moors put together, even in the depths of winter. But now in the splendour of May we see it clothed in youthful vegetation. Left alone for long enough this will change as a child changes into an adult. Hundreds of years create ancient woodland but it has to start somewhere. But now the mix of open and wooded areas created by succession and colonisation of native species is like a young child or immature wild animals with beauties of their own. The spread of trees across the old heather moor has an immense appeal to the deer and to the birdlife in spring. And visually it captivates, bringing swelling bilberry, cotton grass and young rowan and birch interspersed with older trees great playgrounds for cuckoos and warblers. The best of this is a testament to nature’s youthfulness, the young birch in the young woodland in the springtime and seen in the early hours of the day. All renewing one’s faith in regeneration; and that is needed.

The Eye

It is being watched from the moment the beak is stuffed with insects.

Going silently from one low tree to another the cuckoo is mapping out the nesting sites of small birds in the bilberry beds. It is the eye that captures the attention, surrounded by yellow colouring and visible from a distance as birders and twitchers watch the arch-twitcher itself planning its dubious domestic arrangements.

Treeing-Up!

The last I heard from the manager of the Eastern Moors was that he had no designs on this piece of Totley Moor to the west of the track that separates it from Blacka. He may have not wanted to get into a justification that could lead to another argument about grazing with cattle/sheep. He said intervention was not in his plans as this part was ‘not treeing-up’. Sounds like a children’s game from the middle ages. Well parts of the land are showing some spirit and young trees are growing and good for them say I.

Nothing could be more dull than the arboreally-deprived pasture land over the fence.

What happens from now on may have something to do with the deer. Four stags were there this morning. But then we keep getting told that they do different things to farm livestock. Not programmed properly I suppose.
And who programmes the managers?

Discriminations

I did speak with someone not long ago who said he couldn't tell the song of a willow warbler from that of a chaffinch. Once you know it inevitably you forget the process you yourself went through and the learner is going through now, so it's easy to scoff.
It's about discrimination of course but then there are those I've come across who don't understand the word discrimination itself; they think it means being unfair or prejudiced!

The more tricky identification problems may be about differences between the songs of garden warbler and blackcap.

And telling a linnet from a redpoll.

Shoddy

When stuck for something to talk about those of a certain age can always fall back on standards of workmanship being worse today than 'their day'. Those who don't want to be labelled curmudgeons may just stay quiet and not complain.

Poor standards are poor standards whatever year and date it is. And failing to speak up actually makes things worse.

When the contractors arrived to remove the power lines there was genuine cause for satisfaction. But I was surprised that so many men and resources were deemed to be necessary, especially because a lot of it was done in a very simple way with power tools cutting off the poles at ground level.

All the more annoyance that the job was not finished off in a way which might have been a source of pride. The poles were chain sawed from one side and then the other but left with a hard, sharp crest of splintery timber sticking up. An injury waiting to happen. If you add that to the poles left in the car park it's hard not to conclude that the managers responsible, who did not ensure a proper job was done, could not care one way or the other.

The answer is simple: when a contractor is brought in you simply assume that a rotten job will be done and at the very least that corners will be cut. So you supervise and check up immediately afterwards - and before they get paid. But then bureaucrats who spend little time on site have no pride themselves in the place. The dead hedge recently taken down after five years or so was not removed - I found it discarded partly hidden a few yards away. A similar thing happened when an old bench was replaced.

Food Supply

The last days have changed things dramatically for the birds. Just before temperatures rose the situation was desperate for some. My measure for this is the response when we get to the wall where each day we leave a few seeds. Only on Monday we were being mobbed by the resident finches, tits and robins not polite enough to queue at Bloggers Caff. And the grated cheddar was the most popular number on the menu.

Once the warmth arrived the story was different. Insects were around and all could relax. The robin, who had fed from the hand during the winter and early spring, even arrived with beak stuffed with flies as if to show me that I was no longer needed; in fact his real reason was to grab some cheddar and add it to the insect meal for a well blended dish. He then raced off into the shrubs triumphantly.

Suddenly flies, grubs and caterpillars abound.