Exhale.

I think that this is a female orang-tip, but white butterflies are almost as tricky little brown birds. (Not as awkward as yellow dandelion like flowers however!)

White tail, three bands of yellow – I think that this might be a garden bumblebee (bombus hortorum) which would be entirely appropriate because it was in our garden when I photographed it.

A and I walked around Know Point on the sands.

We spotted a spring issuing from the base of the cliff…

…I’ve realised that all of the channels on the Bay close to the shore, some of them quite wide and deep in places, are fed by deceptively small springs like this.

We ran out of sand and had to clamber up the rocks…

..and down again to Cow’s Mouth…

I’d quite forgotten about the little cave there…

As we rounded the corner towards Jack Scout, the tide came racing in…

Fortunately for us it’s an easy scramble up the rocks and into Jack Scout.

I spotted this in Fleagarth Wood….

These little painted stones seem to be everywhere. I know this idea predated the lockdown, but present circumstances  seem to have given the craze new impetus. I thoroughly approve. Especially when they are as skilfully rendered as this.

Ramsons in Fleagarth Wood – almost in flower.

Now that I have ‘finished’ ‘War and Peace’, I wanted to read something completely different. I’ve actually started several books, but some have fallen by the wayside and two have emerged as joint ‘winners’. The first is ‘A Pelican at Blandings’, which, now I’m well into it, I realise I have read before. It doesn’t matter. I love P.G.Wodehouse and particularly the Blandings novels. I haven’t read them all, but I have read several, some of them repeatedly. The plots are much the same every time, it’s the manner of the telling  which is important and, as ever, this one is making me smile (again).

The other book is ‘The Age of Absurdity’ by Michael Foley. Its superbly written and so densely packed with ideas that I’m beginning to feel like I should be reading it very slowly with pencil in hand to underline passages and scribble notes in the margins. I was feeling very smug, reading a chapter about the elevation of shopping to an end in itself rather than a means to an end, when I came across…

My own compulsion is buying books…in the hope of acquiring secret esoteric knowledge….I have increasing numbers of unread purchases. A new book retains its lustre of potential for about six weeks and then changes from being a possible bearer of secret lore into a liability, a reproach, a source of embarrassment and shame.

Oh dear. That’s me. We’re surrounded by tottering heaps of my compulsively purchased secondhand tombs.

Still, both ‘War and Peace’ and ‘The Age of Absurdity’ have been rescued from those stacks, so there’s hope for the other neglected volumes yet.

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Tunes. First, ‘Grandma’s Hands’ a great Bill Withers song you may not know:

Then Blackstreet’s ‘No Diggity’, built around a sample from Mr Withers

Finally, the marvellous Hackney Colliery Band’s cover of same:

 

All very different. All brilliant.

A Saturday Triptych – Second Helpings

Sharp’s Lot – Fleagarth Wood – Jenny Brown’s Point – Jack Scout – The Clifftop

Welsh Poppy.

Welsh Poppies.

Dandelion Wine anyone?

I intend to keep an eye on this tree, as well as the Mystery Sycamore, since it’s close to home, but I don’t know what species it is.

Distant Howgills.

Blue Tit.

Clark’s Lot (or Sharp’s Lot or Pointer Wood)

This was something of a butterfly walk, this being the first of several Peacocks I saw, and before this I had already fruitlessly chased both an Orange Tip and a Brimstone.

I always eagerly await the arrival of new Beech leaves each spring, but this year I’ve really come to appreciate the colour of emerging Oak leaves.

Field Horse-tail?

Quaker’s Stang and Warton Crag.

Early Purple Orchid.

The Old Chimney.

Bluebell.

Robin.

Cowslips.

Forget-me-nots.

Primroses and Bluebells.

Peacock and Violets.

Another Robin.

Dandelion with Honey Bee. 

Banded Snail on Hydrangea leaf.

Jenny Brown’s Two Times

Walk The First: Silverdale Green – Woodwell Clifftop – Hazelwood Hall Grounds – Heald Brow – Jenny Brown’s Point – Jack Scout – Bottom’s Wood – The Lots – The Cove

Last Saturday. When this post is published I will be up to date; a dizzying prospect.

Chaffinch.

As the title suggests this was a two walk day and both walks took me to Jenny Brown’s Point, although by different routes, the first on my own and the second in company.

It was another good day for bird-watching: just before I took this photo, which looks down an avenue of trees towards Hazelwood Hall, I spotted a woodpecker in a nearby Beech, and as I took it, two Buzzards lifted from one of the trees ahead and circled, the smaller male bird stooping toward the female as they do in their spring display flights.

Warton Crag and the salt marsh from Heald Brow.

The tide was very high and the channels of Quicksand Pool were brim full.

I’ve posted before about the old wharf at Jenny Brown’s Point; boats must once have landed there, but it’s not all that often that I’ve seen the tide high enough to reach it.

Here’s the Robin (again?) which hopped along the path into Jack Scout ahead of me.

Hazel Catkins.

I usually assume that a bird which looks as scruffy as this Blue Tit is a juvenile, but it must be too early in the year for that. Is it moulting?

Near Woodwell, two Roe Deer came pelting over a garden wall and raced across the road with a greyhound in half-hearted pursuit.

Walk The Second: Silverdale Green – Clarke’s Lot – Fleagarth Wood – Jenny Brown’s Point – Jack Scout – Bottom’s Wood – Spring Bank

The Howgill Fells – the dusting of snow (just about visible in the first photo at the top of the post) has almost gone.

Arriving home from my first walk, I found that TBH had arranged with some friends a family walk to Jenny Brown’s Point.

It had clouded over considerably since the morning, but it was still a very fine walk.

There’s a way around this mudbath, but the DBs chose to ignore that fact, naturally.

The tide had receded, but left some pools in its wake.

Unlike the Howgills, the Bowland Fells still retained a dusting of snow.

So that’s it – I’m completely up to date. What’s next?

Crag Foot and Quicksand Pool

The days are lengthening. The snowdrops are out and have been for a week or more. The birds are busy in the trees – I’m sure that I saw a magpie with nest building material in its beak last week. At the weekend foul weather and domestic duties kept me from taking advantage of the improvements, but on Tuesday after work I took a scenic route back from the train station. I climbed uphill by the road and then turned through Fleagarth Wood.

On another (fairly) recent walk from the train station I walked with Mike, who used to be our neighbour (and who supplied the boundary riding postcard I posted recently). He asked whether I had noticed the spot along the Row where a dog fox crosses the road regularly. Had he seen it? No. Then how did he know? Because of the smell. When we reached the place Mike was referring to, by Bank Well, sure enough there was a faint but distinctively sharp scent. Now I thought that I could detect the same aroma in Fleagarth wood, but when I stopped to sniff again it seemed to be gone. On Sunday evening, driving home from a family trip to the swimming baths, we saw a fox cross the road ahead – so they are about – just very elusive.

When I emerged from the woods on the edge of the salt marsh, Warton Crag was glowing golden in the late sun and a window at Crag Foot was catching the sunlight and throwing it back like a signalling mirror (see above). Although I was enjoying the light I was a little disappointed – the golden glow spread southwards along the coast, lighting the windows of the buildings along the sea front at Morecambe and previous experience led to me to believe that I would miss the sunset as I wouldn’t reach Jenny Brown’s Point quick enough to see it. I hadn’t factored in the time of year – the sun set further south in the western sky than I had anticipated and I had a chance to watch it from the muddy bank of Quicksand Pool, by Jenny Brown’s cottages.

By the time I did reach Jenny Brown’s Point the sun was gone, but it had left fabulous colours in the sky to soften the blow of its departure.

This afternoon the light was superb once again, the best view being of Warton Crag again as we passed it in the train – the trees amber in the sunlight and the sky behind egg-shell blue with huge scraps of blue-black clouds. This time I took a route through Eaves Wood, where there has been more tree felling and scrub clearing up by the Ring of Beeches.