Will They Get It - One Day ?

It was suggested, at SWT's RAG meeting last week, that the wildlife trust still do not understand what regular users of Blacka Moor value about the place. As they do not spend a great deal of time on the site themselves it's perhaps not surprising. To them it must be a matter of bread and butter. It enables them to set up projects which draw down grants from bureaucratic organisations to finance work and hence jobs. Those of us who have no economic need to be here are simply here because we like it. But the reason we like it is precisely because, as a place, it defies the criteria set up by those grant dispensers. It's a place defined by nature, not by man. It goes its own way, often untidily but characterful. It's wild, as far as that's possible under the recent pressures of conservation dogma and intrusive management. SWT and Natural England want to 'manage' for their own list of approved wildlife in order to be able to show that what they've done is useful. They want the wildlife to be prescribed and predicatable because they've managed for it. We prefer to leave it to nature and be surprised by the unpredictable. Their approach brings in farm animals, barbed wire, poisons and chain saws. Ours steps back and trusts to nature. A lady from Natural England explained that red deer would not do the same job as cattle. Was she incapable of seeing that her top-down prescriptive vision of Blacka left us feeling utterly depressed?

"Du Suspicious Caracteres..."

Du pain, du vin........... etc.

World on the Move

There really are many hundreds of migrating birds over Blacka these days. Most I suspect are thrushes from Scandinavia and Russia moving east to west in groups of as many as a hundred at a time. For the observer below there's something very touching about this singleness of purpose, but also much to enjoy visually in the variety of groupings and constant movement within the groups. Last year this phenomenon was far less evident whereas two years ago it was very marked. It probably has much to do with recent weather in northern Europe.

Meagre Rations

The same stag seen yesterday and in the same place. He was standing still for a long time his mind on other things than eating. It is apparently common for stags to eat well during the summer building their strength up , then during the month or so of the rut itself they may eat very little expending so much energy that they can become quite weak. The behaviour observed in this one seems to bear this out. For nearly ten minutes he stood just so.

Bellowing

The stag here was feeding a little on the grass at the edge of the track. But he was mainly concerned to be watching carefully over nearby hinds of which there were at least two.





He was in good voice. But one of the bellows seemed to come from another direction, less than a hundred yards away.

Autumn Falls

Trees look great in the Autumn after a spell of calm clear weather before all the leaves fall. Unlike the Oak above, Scots Pines don't take part in the annual falling of leaves, being evergreen, so it takes a wilful act of vandalism to bring them to heel. I counted two that have been destroyed here in the last few days. I've enjoyed watching these pines growing most days over the years, admiring their resilience and appreciating their rightness in the landscape. Few things illustrate better the folly of letting immature people loose with chain saws.

R.A.G. Meeting

A Blacka Moor RAG meeting is being held tomorrow, Tuesday 14th October at Totley All Saints church hall at 7 pm. RAG means Reserve Advisory Group a term which has become fairly meaningless. Those of us who have been attending these meetings since they were first established worked out long ago that SWT have no intention of doing anything that local people ask them to do unless it's something they've already decided to do themselves. Built into their expectations is the belief that anyone with an independent view will very soon get tired of attending and cease to go any more. In fact the only reason for attending then becomes the need to ensure that SWT cannot present their wishes as the overwhelming view of local people.

Tomorrow's meeting is apparently to be focused on the anodyne subject of 'Interpretation'. The hope will be that so much time will be taken up in talking round in circles that there won't be time to discuss more important items with the potential to embarrass SWT.

The idea was originally that these meetings would be public meeting and as late as April this year SWT's director (Chief Executive) told a council meeting that they were always advertised in well in advance on Blacka and various public sites. This no longer happens, doubtless because they would prefer local people to stay at home.