Glorious
day for a walk on CommonsNATURE NOTES BY STEWART
BEER
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A fine moss-footed beech. |
ON a glorious December day I
spent three and a half hours walking across Torrington Commons – from Quiet
Possession – through Furzebeam Wood and beside the old Rolle Canal, to Beam
Weir and back.
At midday Quiet Possession was catching every ray from
the low-slung sun. In the rare brightness hawthorn trees, densely laden with fruit,
appeared like fiery furnaces. With lustrous wings, birds were plucking at the
haws; redwings, with eyes stripes clearly seen, and blackbirds and song thrushes.
Old man’s beard, spindleberries and knapweed. From high overhead, a pair
of ravens, heading eastward toward their natal pine-copse, uttered deep ‘cronk-cronks’
in turn before performing impromptu aerial acrobatics.
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THE gardener's friend. |
The rasping shrieks from three
jays accompanied part of my way along Barmaid’s Walk. The notes also from
robin, blackbird and wren. In the tops of the alders, lining the stream, a charm
of goldfinches were feeding on the ‘cones’ dangling from the branchlets.
Two queen wasps were spotted on an ivy bush and then two goldcrests also. Harvesting
the small insects attracted to the bush the (intermittently raised ) crests of
the birds fairly gleamed in the brightness. Gleaming also were the berries on
a guelder rose. Field roses were sporting blooms!
In Furzebeam Wood, alongside
the River Torridge, a great tit was heard singing. A green woodpecker flew across
the river and a tree creeper in typical feeding style flew from the top of one
tree to the base of another nearby and again working upwards to the top.
Two
beech trees growing side by side illustrate the differences age makes in the condition
of the bark – one bole was smooth the other deeply furrowed. And in the wood
the banded bracket fungus was noted both for its fresh-looking colour and abundance.
From
Beam Weir back to my starting point three song thrushes performed their customary
evening songs atop favoured tree. A fitting end to a rewarding walk. •
Stewart’s anthology An Exaltation of Skylarks, now with four
colour plates added, is published by SMH Books ISBN 0 9512619 7 5. It can be ordered
from all good bookshops. |