That
Wordsworth was a romantic fellow: “I wandered lonely as a
cloud..” I mean, I ask you,
has anyone seen a lonely cloud in Cumbria? Ever? Had he been of a
more pragmatic turn of mind he may have come up with something like
this…
But
these are fair weather clouds so let us take a stroll together down
by the Derwent, starting
by its confluence with the Cocker
where
Jennings’ brewery nestles comfortably between. This
magnificent old tree, dominating the foreground, has a large
spherical growth larger than a football. This is a canker and is the
tree’s reaction to an invasion by small sac fungi, probably
Botryosphaeria
stevensii.
At
this point we must leave the river bank, climb a stile and take to
the fields where a group of Corvids are feeding. More
than a third of all birds in the family Corvidae are in the type
genus Corvus
which
includes the rooks, crows, jackdaws and ravens which can be difficult
to tell apart. Jackdaws have a grey nape, pale grey eyes and call
‘chack’; ravens are much bigger than the other three and call
‘cronk’; crows and rooks are all black and of similar size with a
similar cawing cry. The easiest way to tell them apart is from their
beaks: black:crow [bc] white: rook [wr] – [bc]
are together at the beginning of the alphabet, [wr] are towards the
end of the alphabet.
Here
in the hedgerows holly and hawthorn provide berries and haws for
birds such as this blue tit. There are also great tits, sparrows,
chaffinches and goldfinches around and that whirring, brindled body
that just scurried off in the field on the other side of the hedge
was either a partridge or a hen pheasant.
Back
by the riverside we have a welcome splash of yellow, the flowers of
an Ulex bush, commonly known as gorse, whin or furze. I wonder if it
has attracted any insects? In a word, no. Insects and other
creepy-crawlies are very thin on the ground still at the moment.
This
bit of ironmongery is a sluice gate and it has been here since at
least 1700 and was used twice a year to allow the gote, or ditch,
behind to be cleared. The gote was a fast running ditch, or race,
used to power the mills that were built along side it. Hence its
name; Gote Mills Race. Lurking behind the felled tree to the left is
a beautiful colony of bracket fungi.
For
those of you who have followed my blog regularly it will come as no
great surprise that at the end of a good morning’s walk I like to
suggest that we rest awhile at some local hostelry. Today is no
exception so I suggest that we adjourn to my favourite hostelry on
Cockermouth’s Main Street, The Bush.
Although
insects and other creepy-crawlies are very thin on the ground still
at the moment that’s no reason not to buy a book about them. Get to
know them before they arrive in all their varied forms.
Crete
Nature Catch-up
A nice stroll, thank you. I was always told a crow in a crowd is a rook - is that right? X
ReplyDeleteThe big london plane tree in a local park has those lumps, thanks for the knowledge
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