Introducing Lancaster

On Friday afternoon I took the opportunity to do a bit of exploring along the Canal and beside the River Lune in Lancaster, to see what was about. Although the walk did not turn up anything especially unusual, it was an excellent opportunity to explore my new ‘Local Patch.’ The canal is a green corridor not just for wildlife but also for students travelling between the Universities and the City Centre.  It flows through sheep-infested hills into the heart of the city, and onward into the Lune.  Mallards graze on its banks and Jackdaws squawk in the ancient oaks which dot its pastured banks.    While I was cycling along it I saw a Sparrowhawk,  pursuing small birds unidentified at hedgerow height and over the water.  A pair of Ravens, unfamiliar birds I tend to associate with places far more remote and weather beaten than this, could also be seen in the distance. Ravens! A ten minute ride from my new home!

The River Lune runs through Lancaster, and separates it from its seaside neighbour Morecambe.  Negotiating the awkward Lancaster one way system on my bike, I eventually made it to the Lune near the large metal supports of the pedestrian Millenium Bridge, and turned left, following the riverside path past construction sites, and some of Lancaster’s decaying industrial heritage, the river front lined for the first half mile or so with derelict factories. As I pass under an arched railway bridge, the city passed behind me and I was in the wild. A fence separated me from fields in which cows and horses grazed.  The sky was grey and drizzle fell intermittently, which negated any possibility of seeing any butterflies or dragonflies about, but there were plenty of gulls on the bank of the Lune, as well as the occasional handsome Cormorant drying his wings, or a fishing Grey Heron.

I followed the path beside the muddy tidal river to Freemans’ Pools, a patch of land managed by the Lancashire Wildlife Trust for the benefit of wildlife, and took the opportunity to sit by the river for a while.  There were cormorants fishing, curlews probing in the mud, and Black-headed and Lesser Black Backed Gulls, fishing actively in the water or roosting beside it. A couple of noisy skeins of geese flew over my head, presumably transiting between some farmers field in which they graze, or mudflats lost under rising tide, and their roosting site. Their harsh calls suggested they were probably Greylags. They flew in loose V formations at height and circled about above me before flying on in the direction of Lancaster and the Universities.   At the time it was being used apparently by no more than a few gulls and a pair of Mute Swans. Access directly onto the reserve was not possible but I was able to get a good view from the fence. With winter approaching it seemed likely that these ponds would soon be well used by wintering wildfowl.  The footpath continued toward Aldcliffe and I followed it, passing a few arable fields, before entering a patch of farmland, which the path crossed. Many of the fields had been flooded and the sheep stood on islands they shared with Lapwings, Curlew and Black Headed Gulls, while Mallards swam about between them.  The floodwaters had also taken over the main bridleway, but fortunately a raised path on top of a muddy bank ran parallel to it, and I did not have to face the awkward choice between turning back and riding my bike through deep water.

I saw a couple of swallows, surely among the last of the year here, and a charm of Goldfinch flew over, chirping. Eventually I reached the main road at the Village of Aldcliffe, up a steep slope. I looked around at the tree-lined hills. The sun was beginning to set and had found a gap between the clouds, the evening light illuminating the hillsides, and the leaves which, around here, are already beginning to turn gold, brown and red, and I thought that I could get into local birding here.

The same evening I headed down to Bolton to listen to a couple of Punk bands in a bar down there, before going on to Manchester and visiting Martin Mere- more on that to follow- but on the way I had another moment. Driving in the near-darkness along one of the small B-roads, I was lucky enough to see a handsome, attractively mottled and downy-looking Tawny Owl fly through my view.

Yes. This place will be good for birding.

A Tale of Two Owls

Gialova, Greece, Sometime in Early August 2011

I’m casting my mind back now to my first encounter with a wild Barn Owl. It was last year, and I was volunteering in Greece, enjoying the summer of my life.  It was July, or early August, and I was with three or four people, young volunteers like me, and we’d been cycling between point counts on our circuit of the Gialova Lagoon.  I’d met and photographed my first Kentish Plover, or “Alexandrinus,” pronounced with a Spanish accent,  as it was known among ourselves, and seen the little fluffy chicks wandering about on the cracked mud on their oversized feet. I remember Cleopatra’s Brimstone butterflies, and Scarce Swallowtails being almost everywhere, and the wide muddy lagoon, never blue like in the postcards, always with the sound of the ripples lapping on the shore. We made our way to a disused fish farm which stood beside the beach, and represented our last point count of the day. I’d already been informed that “Tyto,” as he was known in our quasi-scientific idiom, lived here, and Estela, the HOS Ornithologist, had shown me their wonderfully messy former nest site, in an apparently filthy room upstairs in the old fish farm, with owl pellets and droppings over the wall, and a filthy space in which the owls had raised their chicks a year or two before. But it had been a while since the owls had been seen, apparently, having been familiar to Estela in the months and years previously.  I was at the back of the crowd, scanning the rafters of the old fish farm, happy to have seen a little Athene noctua, which we all enjoyed, when a white shape appeared to drop from the rafters and fly across the hugely spacious room that would have been the main floor of the factory.  It paused on one of the crossbars which held up the roof and, in what was intended as a combination of a whisper and a shout, and futilely, I tried to call back my colleagues to see the owl. White, a little ghostly, utterly silent, and incredibly beautiful, the owl appeared to hear me and was off through a space in the wall.

A couple of days later, on a cool morning before the Mediterranean heat began to beat down, I returned to the old fish farm, a little against the advice of others who warned it could be dangerous. I should stress looking for owls in abandoned buildings in the small hours of the morning, and alone, is not something this blogger recommends. I sat down on a pile of rubble in the main body of the building and waited for “Tyto.” It was about six in the morning, the same time we carried out our bird monitoring at the lagoon. It will come as no surprise, that, any paranoia about homeless drug dealers chasing conservation volunteers out of the fish farm in the morning quickly abated, and I fell asleep.
I woke up what must have been about an hour later and already the sun was high and the air was beginning to get quite warm. I rose to my feet and looked about. “Tyto” was only a few metres away, and when he saw me move, he took to the wing in a second, but, perhaps curious about me, he alighted in the far corner of the room. I approached him a little, inching forward, and I raised my camera and extended my lens. In the dim light of the fish factory, I needed a steady hand, but I managed to take a single record shot before he moved off, his broad, white wings carrying him silently through his gap between wall and ceiling, and away out of sight.

Tyto alba, Gialova Lagoon, August 2011

4^th June 2012

I’d been trying to shake an inexplicable feeling of immense mild awkwardness and irritation all day. It was the evening, and I decided to throw my bike around Pages Wood, part of the Millennium Community woodlands project, operated by the Forestry Commission, and set between Upminster and Harold Wood, beside the busy Southend Arterial Road.  Young trees have been planted on former farmland, with a few old trees dominating as standards. The river Ingrebourne flows through it, lined with just such oak standards. As it reaches the side of the dual carriageway, a small network of hedges with a few standards spreads out, a bridge crosses the Ingrebourne and the path continues across meadows in which Horses are periodically grazed.  I rode laps of the track, I wasn’t birding, merely having a bit of a ride to blow out the cobwebs on a pleasant, sunny evening. I paused beside the river to watch the swallows picking off insects from the little living clouds which danced above it. I saw a couple of green woodpeckers, pecking about in the grass, the flowery meadows which line what will one day become, when the trees are more mature, the woodland rides, and I heard the Jackdaws alarm calling each time a dog passed them.

The light had begun to fade and I decided to cross the Ingrebourne and head back up the A127 to get home. As I did so, between the mature oak trees, I saw a white bird, very briefly, and I wondered what it was. The view was brief, it could even have been a white pigeon, but I moved forward a little to get a closer look. As the bird reappeared, its identity became clear. It had long, broad wings, was bigger than a pigeon, and its shape was unmistakeable. The flat faces of owls, honed by evolution to channel sound to their remarkable ears, give them a unique appearance in profile. It was a white lady, of medieval superstition, a barn owl, white and angelic against the fading light! I moved on a little, as the owl flew out of sight. I positioned myself on the path with a good vista of the dark green oaks and the buttercup infested meadow, and waited. I didn’t have to wait long. The owl reappeared, making another hunting pass low in front of the trees, eyes fixed on the ground, in search of the mice and voles on which they feed. She rounded a small Hawthorn on the meadow and, for a moment, was flying straight at me. She turned and I attempted to reel off a couple of shots with the DSLR, but as I raised it she saw me and turned tail, drifting silently over the trees and away to the East, where more woodland stood, before the trees gave way to urban parkland and sprawl. She was gone, and I had only blurry long shots on the camera, but she was beautiful, and my first British barn owl.  The experience was almost spiritual, the barn owl, a childhood favourite and ghostly beauty, floating over these woods and meadows on the cusp of London’s metropolis, something so wild, so beautiful, so revered and feared over the years for her unique colour and crepuscular habits. It was with a much less heavy heart that I made my way home in the fading light of a beautiful June evening, across the community woodland past the dog walkers, and the rubbish strewn bridge over the Arterial Road.

Barn Owl, Pages Wood, near Upminster, Essex, England, June 4th 2012

Wild flower Meadows at Pages Wood.

The Mature Trees into which she disappeared, Pages Wood.