Logic

A pipit in a tree must be a tree pipit just as a pipit in a meadow must be a meadow pipit. The same logic suggests a meadow buttercup is also in the meadow and a creeping buttercup is on its hands and knees.

By the same token anyone seeing a butterfly on a tortoiseshell can be pretty sure it's tortoiseshell butterfly.....?

The pipits do look almost identical, at least to those who don't have one in each hand and a guide book on the table. The 'parachute flight' of the tree pipit would be a pretty good desciption of what this fellow was going in for.

Cuckoo Stalking

A good year for cuckoos and this is excellent cuckoo territory. To them the wilder the better. Not just several males with noticeably varying calls but the bubbling call of the female heard several times.

Following the call and trying to get closer reminds of the rule well known to everyone wanting to take a photograph: wildlife always appears just when you've put the camera away and zipped up the case.

I'm also reminded of the early meeting of the RAG when they were trying to tell us that Blacka being in 'unfavourable condition' had such a bad effect on the birds - 'not a single grouse nested on the moor last year' said the BTO man. Interesting that, I said, has there been no other species that's been doing well? Well, wrens I suppose, he reluctantly replied. No mention of all the exuberant summer visiting song birds, cuckoos etc. I'm sure that if he came back now he would claim that the management of the land in the last ten years has improved things immensely. God knows how. Poisonning trees and installing barbed wire? It's a local speciality: make up your mind first - then look round for something to back it up.

Hard Done By

Nobody is quite so hard done by as the hard-done-by-farmer. If it's not the supermarkets driving down the prices, or the forms to fill in for subsidies or the cost of fuel, or floods or droughts it's the public, particularly the urban public, who want to walk across their land.
A caricature I know, but with a grain of truth.

So let's offer some sympathy on hearing that their incomes will suffer as the value of the Euro goes down. Farm subsidies are paid in Euros.
Best, though, not to mention that farm incomes went up by 25% in 2011!!

Beech, Oak and Birch

Ten days ago beech had already transformed those parts of the woods where it dominates, creating translucent ceilings in the morning sun.

 

At the same time oak had only begun to stir.

It has now emboldened after the warmth of late May.

Oak ceilings are quite different.

Elsewhere on Blacka the area around Lenny Hill is particularly rich in young oaks

and, should they be allowed to make progress, it will be interesting to see how they develop. Some of the more established of the oaks have a spreading character presumably because they colonised earlier than the others with no neighbouring competition. Will the next generations be straighter, accelerating towards the light where several of similar age are nearby?

That's certainly happened with a vengeance at some places in the case of birch

while other parts show a more random character. Some unnecessary felling of older trees further out from the edge of the crowded clusters has exposed the stark edges here and not improved the view. So much for minimal intervention.

Feppin' Cheek!

The transformation of the major central area of Blacka Moor from prime free recreation land before 2001 into farmland is entering its conclusive phase as Sheffield Wildlife Trust begins work on applying for Higher Level Stewardship through Natural England. Despite totally insincere statements that this will only go ahead with the willing cooperation of local people through consultation, none of which has happened, they are already beginning the process.

This brings up an argument that was ongoing from 2004 to 2006 when claims that farming designations and the grants which follow them would mean a fundamental change to the site even greater than the inclusion of an added paragraph about conservation in the covenant. At that time our concerns were dismissed by various people including councillors, officers and local groups with a cosy ‘stakeholder’ status such as Ramblers or the BMC.

The pledge that 5 years of grazing as an experiment would be the limit of the implementation of SWT’s policy is now exposed as the lie we guessed it to be. If they had intended to stick to this they would have discussed thoroughly how to resolve the ‘experiment’ through a proper process of evaluation and consultation before any thought of continuing with more farming and grazing management. Instead they are going ahead with arranging a Farm Environment Plan (F.E.P.) which is the essential prelude to HLS. This has confirmed by Natural England.

There is, deeply embedded within the culture of the local conservation industry, a lack of openness in its relations with the public that is hard to distinguish from fraudulence. It’s a culture and that means anyone who tries to deal with it or even to remove it from the inside will have a struggle. It is simply easier to get the results you want by sundry short cuts and dubious stratagems.

Sixty years of the new Elizabethan age and 66 years from the Butler Education Act and sundry educational reforms in between have delivered to us local administrators and managers of national charities who do not recognise the moral bankruptcy they practise when dealing with the public.

Would that matter so much if they had only left us large areas of natural beauty of landscape where we could get away from them?

May and Rowan

On Blacka the two blossoming attractions crop up where they wish and it's still possible to find one that you had not been aware of. Rowan is more numerous here so the cream colouring predominates.

That helps the more vivid white of the thorn to stand out the more when you find it. May blossom can overwhelm a small tree to the extent that you can almost fail to be aware of leaves.

It's a good year when rain holds up for long enough to give a long flowering season.

Fundamentals

Some pictorial contributions to the recent posts on Natural Beauty and The Back End, which referred to the respective rears of sheep and deer.

This is a fundamental question. Unfortunately this blog knows no way of incorporating smells.