A bit of a different post today. The photo above is of my wife, Carole, sitting overlooking Byron's Pool in Grantchester, near Cambridge, where Lord Byron used to swim. We spent today at
The Orchard, where Rupert Brooke and his famous gang of '
Neo-Pagans' used to eat, drink, converse and dream together, and where Cambridge University students today still gather. It was Virginia Woolf who coined the phrase
Neo-pagan and the group also included such luminaries as E.M.Forster, Bertrand Russell, Ludwig Wittgenstein & Maynard Keynes. This was in the years preceding the First World War when, shortly before his death, Brooke wrote his oft-quoted poem,
The Soldier.
After a jacket potato lunch we wandered through the Grantchester Meadows to Cambridge alongside the Granta River where various yellow composites were in glorious bloom: Lesser Celandine, Dandelion and Coltsfoot. The Lesser Celandine yielded my first hoverfly of the year - an unidentified
Cheilosia. As we made our way back to The Orchard, a Blackcap was singing away in the hedgerow. Later we enjoyed a speciality afternoon cream tea, sitting in our deckchairs under the trees (see photo above) before wandering down to the pool past Brookes' Old Vicarage, now home of the celebrated author, Jeffrey Archer.
I'm really looking forward to visiting this special place again soon, when the orchard trees are in bloom and when we can listen to the bees and explore the flora as we enjoy our tea. In the BBC documentary clip
here, broadcaster David Dimbleby rows along the river here, the film footage anticipating the lushness of the meadows in the weeks to come!
Dimbleby quotes a few lines from Rupert Brooke's famous poem -
The Old Vicarage, Grantchester - written during a spell in Germany when he was homesick, and really evoking powerful memories of his beloved English countryside. He loved the natural world - here are a few excerpts:
Just now the lilac is in bloom,
All before my little room;
And in my flower-beds, I think,
Smile the carnation and the pink;
And down the borders, well I know,
The poppy and the pansy blow . . .
Oh! there the chestnuts, summer through,
Beside the river make for you
A tunnel of green gloom, and sleep
Deeply above; and green and deep
The stream mysterious glides beneath,
Green as a dream and deep as death.
— Oh, damn! I know it! and I know
How the May fields all golden show,
And when the day is young and sweet,
Gild gloriously the bare feet
That run to bathe . . .
'Du lieber Gott!'Here am I, sweating, sick, and hot,
And there the shadowed waters fresh
Lean up to embrace the naked flesh.
Temperamentvoll German Jews
Drink beer around; — and THERE the dews
Are soft beneath a morn of gold.
Here tulips bloom as they are told;
Unkempt about those hedges blows
An English unofficial rose;
And there the unregulated sun
Slopes down to rest when day is done,
And wakes a vague unpunctual star...
ειθε γενοιμην . . . would I were
In Grantchester, in Grantchester! —
Some, it may be, can get in touch
With Nature there, or Earth, or such.
And clever modern men have seen
A Faun a-peeping through the green,
And felt the Classics were not dead,
To glimpse a Naiad's reedy head,
Or hear the Goat-foot piping low: . . .
But these are things I do not know.
I only know that you may lie
Day long and watch the Cambridge sky,
And, flower-lulled in sleepy grass,
Hear the cool lapse of hours pass,
Until the centuries blend and blur
In Grantchester, in Grantchester. . . .
Still in the dawnlit waters cool
His ghostly Lordship swims his pool...
Ah God! to see the branches stir
Across the moon at Grantchester!
To smell the thrilling-sweet and rotten
Unforgettable, unforgotten
River-smell, and hear the breeze
Sobbing in the little trees.
Say, do the elm-clumps greatly stand
Still guardians of that holy land?
The chestnuts shade, in reverend dream,
The yet unacademic stream?
Is dawn a secret shy and cold
Anadyomene, silver-gold?
And sunset still a golden sea
From Haslingfield to Madingley?
And after, ere the night is born,
Do hares come out about the corn?
Oh, is the water sweet and cool,
Gentle and brown, above the pool?
And laughs the immortal river still
Under the mill, under the mill?
Say, is there Beauty yet to find?
And Certainty? and Quiet kind?
Deep meadows yet, for to forget
The lies, and truths, and pain? . . . oh! yet
Stands the Church clock at ten to three?
And is there honey still for tea?
Common Shrew - "Cheese!!"
Pygmy Shrew - "If I crouch right down, they might not notice me!"
Bank Vole - "This would make a nice conservatory for the burrow!"
Wood Mouse - "Make sure you get my good side!"
Thanks to Mick McCarrick for this photo. It's a Badger cub at Bedfordshire Wildlife Rescue that was found on Thursday, running to and fro from one field to another across a busy road, and obviously in some distress. It's about 8 weeks old and it's assumed that something must have happened to the mother.
It was John who spotted the Bank Vole scurrying around in the vegetation just to the right and forward of the brussel sprout stalk in the rear. That’s where the hole is.
We watched it for nearly 5 minutes or so as it constantly made its way up to a few feet from the hole before returning. Sometimes it was difficult to see what it was doing, but on one occasion we saw it drag a wad of old vegetation down into the hole. At other times it returned with a whole length of Red Deadnettle. In this photo you can see a number of the stems blocking up the hole!
This photo shows the stems removed with the hole on the left. The stem fragments are quite long.
A photo of the hole entrance reveals the presence of more stems jammed even further down the tunnel!!
This close-up reveals a few of the Red Dead-Nettle stems that have had sections gnawed off and removed. You can also see where a length of Chickweed has been removed, too, though there was no evidence of any Chickweed amongst the Red Deadnettle by the hole itself.
In this photo you can see the hole, filled with Red Deadnettle stems on the left-hand side. There is an obvious pathway running from left to right where the Bank Vole has removed the vegetation! The Bank Vole breeding season begins in March – I’m assuming that we witnessed a female animal collecting bedding and food material. If it is a ‘she’ and she’s about to give birth, maybe this food store jammed into the entrance of her home means that she won’t have to risk leaving the burrow for a few days?? I’ll keep an eye on it and see what happens!
On a summer's evening it's wonderful to watch the Pipistrelle bats flying to and fro in the local area...so it's a real treat to see them close up in the hand. This is a Common Pipistrelle bat rescued locally by Bob - a licensed handler - before being released yesterday evening. It was only in 2003 that the Common Pipistrelle (Pipistrellus pipistrellus) was officially separated from what became known as the Soprano Pipistrelle (Pipistrellus pygmaeus), chiefly on the differing frequency of their calls: the Common Pip averaging about 45 KHz and the Soprano Pip, a little higher at about 55 KHz.
There are subtle physical differences. The Common Pip tends to be a mite larger, and is sometimes referred to as the ‘Bandit Pipistrelle’ because of the ‘bandit mask’ on its face (better seen on the first image), though this isn’t always as obvious as it is on this individual and there is a lot of overlap.
You can’t see it very well on this photo, but one of the features of the Common Pipistrelle over against the Soprano Pipistrelle is that the fur tends to be darker towards the base of the hairs, whereas it is fairly uniform in the Soprano Pip. Other differences include the fact that Soprano Pips tend to be more rural, as opposed to urban, and like one another’s company: summer maternity roosts regularly comprise several hundred individuals!
After a jacket potato lunch we wandered through the Grantchester Meadows to Cambridge alongside the Granta River where various yellow composites were in glorious bloom: Lesser Celandine, Dandelion and Coltsfoot. The Lesser Celandine yielded my first hoverfly of the year - an unidentified Cheilosia. As we made our way back to The Orchard, a Blackcap was singing away in the hedgerow. Later we enjoyed a speciality afternoon cream tea, sitting in our deckchairs under the trees (see photo above) before wandering down to the pool past Brookes' Old Vicarage, now home of the celebrated author, Jeffrey Archer.
And love wasn't only 'in the air' as the song goes....it was 'in the pond' too! There were hundreds of Common Toads around the fringes of The Rezzy. The males wait for the larger females to arrive and then hitch a lift, holding on for dear life, aided by special pads that develop on the front feet which help them to cling on. I visited The Rezzy at night a few years ago and counted over 1500 Toads!
Males can often outnumber females by up to 10-1 and intricate wrestling matches ensue as they try to outmanoeuvre their rivals. This often leads to so-called 'mating balls' like the one in this photo. There was a lot of croaking going on, and it's reckoned that males which are trying to dislodge the rival that is currently in amplexus with the female can gauge whether he is bigger and stronger by the depth of his croak, and back off if need be!
This fungus was growing on a fallen tree trunk. I think it is the Oyster Mushroom (Pleurotus ostreatus). The largest cap is about 10cm across with decurrent gills. It smells traditionally 'mushroomy' and is fawn in colour. The edges of the caps are wavy with a number of splits. Hopefully, that description will help our Fungi Recorder, Alan, to confirm the id or otherwise. (31/4/2010 - I've just picked up the cap from my work surface to find a lilac-like coloured spore print, which seems good!).
