Devon

The Flat, 21.57.

I’m slowly starting to rebuild the life I left behind me. It’ll take a little while, but it’s starting to feel very familiar: the long walks, the eyes on swivel-stalks, the weight-training involved in swapping the zoom lens from one arm to the other. In a way, it’s like I never stopped – though it has been about fifteen years since I last did this sort of thing on the regular.

One of the first things to establish is a “patch” – that is, somewhere nearby that I can visit easily and regularly for a quick nature fix throughout the year. I’m still in the market, but I think I’ve decided upon the stretch of the River Tone that runs along Longrun Meadow and into the Netherclay Community Wood. It’s within easy walking distance and there’s plenty to see, including otters – though I dare say I’d be exceptionally lucky to find them out on a weekend wander.

The egrets around here are pretty fearless, though. The flooded banks of the Tone must be harbouring a number of small fish, because I was able to watch this one hunting for quite some time, catching a couple of tiddlers and a small eel. I wonder why great egrets are more skittish than the little and cattle egrets that have colonised so many towns and cities? Is it genetic, perhaps – or is it the memory of that obsessive slaughter for their feathers that keeps them at bay?

I added a few new locals to my “patch list” – namely, teal and buzzard – but spent most of the walk learning how best to cradle the heavy lens over a long distance. I think I’ll need a strap for the lens itself, because I don’t want to chance the weight of it putting undue strain on the camera itself.

I was looking at a tied-down weekend this week, but thanks to a couple of necessary swaps and the support of my wonderful Debating team, I worked Friday night instead and got the weekend off. Suddenly, I had a free Sunday. Coupled with the knowledge that my Railcard expired at midnight, putting a definitive end to many years of affordable train fares, I decided to put the lens through its paces in a new environment: Dawlish Warren.

I came out here at the end of October, when the sun was still shining and the beach was still packed with holidaymakers. In my memory it felt like the end of summer, but it must have been autumn, because the brants had already arrived in great numbers. They were very much in evidence today, numbering well over a hundred, and more than likely the same birds I saw back then.

Brant geese are a seafaring species of goose that spend the winter around the coasts of the British Isles, returning to their breeding grounds in the Arctic circle at the beginning of spring. Most of our geese – the dark-bellied kind – come from northern Russia and Siberia, though the odd light-bellied individual is often to be found among them, straggling over from its North American range.

In ancient times, before their migration routes were known, the people of the British Isles had no answer to explain what happened to the thousands of “burnt geese” that flocked to the coasts, saltmarshes and estuaries, only to disappear without a trace with the spring. Together with the closely-related barnacle geese – who once pulled a similar disappearing trick – they were believed to hatch from goose barnacles, which shared their colour palette. As such, being “not of flesh”, they were permitted on Christian fast-days – a practical solution in desperate times, it must be said.

It’s hard to see how anyone could have believed that old yarn about birds born from barnacles, but then again, the same people believed that swallows slept at the bottom of ponds during the winter. Sometimes we make up the most fanciful nonsense to avoid having to face the obvious reality, even when it is staring us in the face.

Out in the bay, I saw a silhouette I recognised immediately, diving and resurfacing in a small channel between the shore and a shrinking sandbank. The most common diving seabird around here is the cormorant, but in winter, there are quite a few birds that might dive beneath the surface: shags, sawbill ducks, scoters, grebes and divers. Only one of those comes close in size to the cormorant, and that particular bird holds its head level, unlike the cormorant, who swims with his bill upturned.

I didn’t need binoculars to know I had found a great northern diver – the first I’ve seen since my schooldays – and I went tearing across the beach to get a closer look.

The last time I saw one of these impressive creatures, it was far out to sea and flying east along the British Channel. I haven’t had the luxury of seeing one so close before – close enough to appreciate its terrifying red eyes, an evolutionary trait shared with grebes that filters light and helps them to see underwater.

I watched it hunting in the bay for a few minutes, before it decided to run the gauntlet of the shrinking sandbar and scour the southern shore. I counted the seconds between each dive. This one averaged out at 40 seconds, but the diver has been known to stay submerged for up to five minutes. Pretty impressive for such a small and fast-moving creature.

I made it back to Dawlish Warren’s station in plenty of time for the hourly train, but the sun was still shining and I hadn’t yet had enough, so I set out along the Warren Road to the north. The railway hugs the coastline, so the roads meanders a bit on its way north from the Warren. Eventually, after about an hour’s jaunt through the countryside, I came to the ferry town of Starcross. I decided against pushing on to the Exminster Marshes and set up shop at the station, which looks out over the estuary. I was rewarded for my patience with a family of punk-rock red-breasted mergansers, as well as a number of familiar waders probing the mudflats below: turnstones, redshanks, greenshanks and a couple of curlews.

There will always be a special place in my heart for curlews. Their mournful bubbling call was the backdrop to many a childhood adventure around Romney Marsh and the mudflats of Sandwich Bay, and followed me up into the highlands of Scotland on a couple of hiking adventures in my twenties.

Apart from that, they’re remarkably beautiful creatures, with their cryptic feathering and dark, thoughtful eyes. I’ve been very lucky with the egrets around Taunton, but I hope I can continue to observe these magnificent creatures and do justice to them with my new gizmo.

I might not get so flexible a weekend for a while now, so I’ve cashed in my chips early. But I’ll be back with more nature news in the near future, so stay tuned! BB x

3rd October, 10.40pm. The Flat

The October half term holiday came to a rather unorthodox end this evening with a last minute trip into town to catch a talk by celebrated English nature-writer, John Lewis-Stempel, on his latest release: England: A Natural History. It isn’t every day you get to meet people who you have grown up reading, and as this is a year for saying yes to things, why not? I came away with a signed copy and a really interesting chat with the author about the importance of names – not just the scientific names of the animals and plants around us, mind, but the old English names that are disappearing even faster than some of the creatures themselves: you might have heard of a peewit or yaffle, or possibly even a dumbledore, but would you know a bumbarrel or cuddy bear* if they were sitting in a tree in your garden? (Answers at the end!)

I’m feeling much recharged after ten days’ leave. These boarding school terms really do knock the stuffing out of you, though as I like to say, I’m happiest when I’m up to my eyeballs – it leaves less time for dwelling on things. I left it a little late for any far-flung adventures this year, but I did make it to Dartmoor a few nights back, taking advantage of the last few days of the public bus service that crosses the moors before they shut down over the winter.

Why Dartmoor? Possibly because it’s arguably easier to get to by public transport than Exmoor, which is a lot closer, but mainly because I had an insatiable itch to see the legendary Wistman’s Wood, a tiny sliver of temperate rainforest nestled deep in the heart of the national park. It popped up in a number of ghost stories I read a while back and again in Guy Shrubsole’s The Lost Rainforests of Britain. The desire to see that last fragment of the Great Wood that once covered this island ended up pressing against the inside of my skull like Wistman’s own stunted trees.

I was holding out for mist and fog, but I had neither. The weather was actually remarkably pleasant for fickle Dartmoor, so instead of mirk and mystery I was treated to soft clouds and sunlight through the ancient branches; the kind of warm glow that Tolkien bestowed for a moment upon Fangorn Forest, an ancient wood of his own design. Did he pass through here, I wonder? His faithful illustrator Alan Lee certainly must have done at some point.

Just as it sits in a valley in the innermost chamber of Dartmoor’s heart, so too is Wistman’s Wood at the heart of much of Dartmoor’s folklore. It is said to be haunted by the spirit of a terrier who can still be heard scampering through the boulders, while by night it is prowled by the far more sinister wisht hounds, a local variant of the hell-hound myth that can be found across the British Isles, from the gytrash and Barghest to the Beast of Bodmin. The wisht hounds were believed to be kennelled in Wistman’s Wood by Old Crockern himself, the ancient pagan spirit of the moor whose foreboding tor rides the crest of the hills a short distance to the west of the woods.

There were no malevolent spirits during my brief stay, of course – at least, none that I could see from my perch atop a boulder on the fringes of the forest (visitors are no longer allowed to enter the wood proper, so as to protect the longevity of this sacred and truly unique ecosystem). But that is not to say the place was lifeless: quite the contrary, in fact. There was no wind, but the trees were alive with rustling leaves that turned out to be the beating of tiny wings. In the space of a single minute I clocked three species of tit (blue, great and coal), blackbirds, redwings, wrens, robins, tiny treecreepers and the truly pint-sized goldcrest, our smallest native bird. I haven’t seen a forest so alive in a long time. Even the air itself felt different, a fact that would have been obvious to all but the senseless by the thick, mossy lichen growing on every surface, a perfect natural yardstick for a healthy forest.

I spent the next five hours or so wandering in a wide arc around the surrounding moorland, following a rather makeshift path swiped from the internet the night before. I haven’t hiked around Dartmoor since I was at primary school, so I’d forgotten that, up on the moors, river crossings are often not bridges but rows of stepping stones. Which are a delightful challenge in balmy summer weather, no doubt, but something of a roadblock after the first heavy rains of autumn. I made the tactical decision to not tempt fate and so I took off boots, rolled my trousers up to my knees and waded across.

I hardly need to point out that Dartmoor’s rivers are devilishly chilly – and surprisingly deep. I was just shy of the other bank when the water came almost up to my waist. Thank goodness I’d brought a spare pair of trousers, or I’d have had a very wet hike back to the inn!

Luckily, as I crested the hills due south of Two Bridges, the sun came out to guide me home. It seemed to turn the grass to gold, in a wave that washed down the hillside until I was stranded in an ocean of golden blades. I straggled up to the Crock of Gold, a small stone-strewn vantage point where, as if on cue, a shining rainbow daubed itself across the grey sky to the north. No leprechauns on this occasion, but I got my gold one way or another.

Well, I’d better put down my proverbial pen and get some sleep. Back to work tomorrow, and another busy term awaits! BB x

*Bravo for holding out for the answers! A peewit is of course a lapwing, a yaffle is a green woodpecker and a dumbledore is a bumblebee, while cuddy bear and bumbarrel are old English names for the wren and long-tailed tit respectively! Go figure!