Lower Forms of Life

On Blacka we have numerous groups of wildlife and regular visits from humanity, allegedly a 'higher' form of life. It's hard sometimes to see humanity as a higher form when we see the behaviour of some who claim to belong to it. This morning we found the severed head of a beautiful young stag in a carefully chosen place at Stony Ridge car park . The question to be asked is whether this is ‘just’ poachers or something more. The significance of the place could be that it was next to a notice that had been posted there publicising a meeting this Thursday of Friends of Blacka Moor. At the same time that the dead deer's head had been placed there, the FoBM notice had been torn down and removed. The content of that notice could be relevant: it invited people to come along and discuss whether Blacka Moor should be considered to be wilder land and for wild animals rather than farmland managed using sheep and cattle. The conclusion is hard to avoid - that somebody, possibly with a farming connection, resents this message and also dislikes to an unbalanced degree the fact that local people love the deer.
In that case it’s likely that this blog has contributed to the motivation of the perpetrators of this atrocity in that here we have challenged the constantly voiced orthodoxy of those who say that all land must be managed with farm animals and that any wild animals must be ruthlessly controlled, be they badgers, or foxes or in this case deer. We may see these people as descendants of the gamekeepers who would string up foxes, crows and birds of prey on wire fences.

Collective Punishment

The wooded area below Cowsick can be idyllic on a sunny morning. In the mist today and yesterday there was a spooky atmosphere. Suitable perhaps as several of the trees can be classed as among the Undead. Several years ago a huge number of trees in this area were the object of a mass murder plot perpetrated by Sheffield Wildlife Trust. They were poisoned and left standing to be a lesson to all trees that did not know their place. One or two refused to die and remain almost healed from the effects of the attack, and now heroically contribute to the natural beauty that draws us here. That episode of collective punishment is unprecedented and so far unrepeated on this scale since then on Blacka. I try to repeat this story every so often lest we forget just what kind of institution we are dealing with in SWT. Anyone starting with an expectation of sound judgement and a love of wild nature from a wildlife trust should beware that the word trust may be in their name but should not transfer to those who have dealings with them.
Many of the trees vandalised were fine mature trees of the birch family whose Latin name is Betula - another link with punishment, as it comes from the Latin for beat, birch twigs having been used for punishment in days now gone.
Happier birches, neither punished nor punishing, are presently decorating the woodland along the route down from Devil's Elbow, though this too would have been a jollier spot if the sun had broken through earlier.

'The Stuff Wot Cows Do'

We don't usually talk about it and we write about it even less. Sometimes I think it's because we find it hard to decide which words to use about it. But we certainly see plenty of it.


Choose what word you will, cowpats, or s**t , or manure, or a favourite euphemism of your own, wherever the cows go, there goes it. Just for once let's consider it. The first thing to be said is there's a hell of a lot of it. Next, that produced by cattle is even worse to behold than that dropped by sheep and far worse than that left behind by wild animals like deer. Yes, there's some sort of almost aesthetic appreciation going on here. The droppings of the wild deer on Blacka are small, formed and always the same. They also are usually found off the paths. Sheep faecies is quite similar to that of the deer; it's just that there's so much of it and they are like cattle in the sense that they are not at all particular where they leave it. But cattle are not just larger and fatter, their waste suggests they are in a perpetual state of having dined on something unsuitably rich or have a distressingly weak digestion.

Earlier this year we were lucky that there was no farm grazing on the pasture land for several months. Not only did this allow many wild flowers to occupy the grassy slopes but for once the area was free from livestock faeces. It felt like a place for people, for families with children and, rarely around here, a place removed from the industrialised grazing of our countryside. Now the livestock are back, both sheep and cattle and the dung is everywhere but especially on the paths. Perhaps it's something about domestic livestock that they just do it everywhere. Least tastefully they also seem addicted to lying in it and elegantly walking about with it still sticking to them. Maybe this is a legacy of them being kept enclosed for at least part of their lives. During last winter there were extended areas where the ground was obscured for many yards alongside walls where livestock had gathered to shelter. Only coarse weeds grew there in spring.



So what conclusion? This is a response to the oft repeated comment that "this is what the countryside is like - don't be squeamish." All I've ever said about Blacka is that we need some places free from farming and farm livestock, fences, farm priorities and all that comes with them. I've done my share of mucking out in my farming days and feel no squeamishness. That's not the same as wanting to find it everwhere I walk. Now the plan seems to be to put them back on the moor just at the muddiest season and we know already what that will mean for the paths.

White Rainbow

It's rare to have a morning when you see nothing unusual. But this morning's mist and low cloud was unpromising. Experienced hillwalkers would have spotted the signs that the bluish tints in the sky directly above could give us some of those special views you get with temperature inversion.

The thing to do was to get to the highest point as fast as possible even at the expense of wet boots being penetrated by the soaking grass on Thistle Hill. There we were greeted with a delightful sight: a white rainbow, or perhaps we should call it an albino rainbow. It's not easy to find out anything about this. Google is useless because it seems to be the title of a song or a group, so popular that references account for several pages. As one whose physics is lamentable, allowing me to just about understand the conventional rainbow, I suspect any scientific explanation would leave me far behind. So a simple description will have to do. A perfect arch, its whiteness was, as often with the colouring on the normal one, more dense nearer the ground; and at one end, after a while, it was just beginning to show a slight golden hue.

The cloud moved back after a time just allowing us some precious minutes warmed by the sun where it had penetrated, watching the progress of the burning back over nearby hillsides.

Other sights of the morning included a yellowish mushroom doubtless with only a Latin name; I suggest someone names it after some design of South American hat.

Blacka Moor Meeting

A meeting will be held next week on 14th October to discuss suggestions for the management of Blacka Moor.

A new management plan is due to be drawn up soon to begin in 2011 and therefore it is sensible for those of us who care about the place to have our say and put forward our ideas. If any of you who read these pages would like to take part in any discussions you are welcome to attend, whatever your point of view.

The meeting will be at 7 pm at Totley Library on Baslow Road on Thursday 14th October. If you are able let us know you will be coming through the email address at the side or just turn up.

Alternate

Rain, then sun, then rain again, the pattern for several days. This is preferable to constant grey. Afternoon sunlight after morning downpour brings special lighting, as it did today. Water racing down the track eventually reaches the stream creating enough noise to drown out any other disturbance. How could this stream ever have been a mere trickle?

It's How They Look

Looking at wild animals such as deer every so often you are freshly reminded just how beautiful they are. In the case of red deer I find it’s their coats that are so appealing, especially in summer and autumn. Of course in winter they put on extra layers of fluffy insulation which protect them from the cold and by early spring that starts to look scruffy as the extra layers moult. But even that is disarmingly attractive. By now, in October, they are at their peak, looking their best and ready for any opportunity like any young blade about town. By comparison much of the farm livestock that is 'utilised' (God, what an ugly word!) for conservation grazing is depressingly unattractive. You frequently see them looking pretty unhealthy and with excrement sticking to them in a way you never see with deer in the wild. I guess that’s why the more cunning managers like to use highland cattle, though so strong is the philistine tendency that sooner or later we’ll see them with numbers daubed on their backs. I can remember as a small child being taken to look at lambs frisking in the fields. Nowadays you could very well find they were all covered with lurid and untidy patches of coloured dye or even grotesque numbers. Soon there will be a generation which has never seen a sheep without these identification marks on them. Further than that my prediction is that farmers will in time be pressing for deer to be controlled and regulated, with marks on their backs and subjected to an annual dip. Already they are raising fears about ticks and it’s not hard to see they will blame the presence of deer. But the idea that such problems are the fault of the beautiful wild animals that we see on the moor when the farm animals often look so wretched - well, that seems hard to take.

This morning was a welcome respite after yesterday's downpour but the early walk was not yet bright and sunny. The sun was struggling to get through the mist and when approaching the hinds from downwind we were closer than usual giving rise to suspicious looks from the dominant stag further away.