East Coast Nature Notes 23rd March 2012 Southbound
East Coast Nature Notes 23rd March 2012 Southbound
The sun is attempting to burn off the o’er pressing grey cloud and has done a commendable job of managing to remove the bulk of it. The cloud ceiling has risen considerably and there is now a golden glow cast across the city as we wait for the train to depart. At ground level visibility is not great and the hills on the other side of Armpit are shadowy and not quite precise.
The temperature is warm; I have experienced many days in high summer that have been colder and more drear than this. In fact it is another lovely day.
At work the pair of mallards are getting ready to nest in the hedge by the car park. This is good news. At least for the pair of carrion crows who each year make sure that their young are well fed with ducklings.
As we pull away from the station the sun is starting to appear as a bright yellow patch through the sky. A police helicopter flies towards us, the banks hard, circles and slowly starts to progress towards the prison. The trees continue to display their catkins and the daffs are still displaying ell, including many of the small, delicate and more wild looking ones. A couple of clumps of dandelions are out, their flowers low, without any visible stalk.
As we cross a little bridge, past graffiti a magpie sits atop a tree slowly filling with fresh leaves. Pieces of wasteland are filling in and filling up with green. Smoke from a farmer burning thins slowly and very lazily drifts skywards.
Magpies bounce back and forth across a field like cats on an electric floor. Copses and small woodlands that only a few days ago could be see clear through are becoming dense enough to hint that in a week or two they will become places of mystery and shelter.
Wakefield is reach with ease and then we continue. Above the McDonalds several gulls are circling. Oh for really vultures rather than these raucous interlopers. Wearing a hard hat and a high visibility jacket a small woman is hanging out the laundry. Health and Safety perhaps being a tad over zealous in that street.
The river, silver, perfectly flat and smooth, is crossed and we move past gardens coming to flower and sprouting all around.
The rape seeds is looming. What were a few flowers and now in the dozens and more. The ponds have many more ducks then people and still a pair of the black and white geese paddling in the middle.
A kestrel, low and fast along the field edge. From behind and the safety of the margin, a red eye watches the predator recede into the distance.
The buzzard - r one at the same spot is circling slowly over a field filling with crop. Turning in a slow, anti-clockwise loop Then only moments later Bentley Station makes a brief appearance. Then Doncaster slowly appears as we wait. A pair of sparrows a male and female bounce from one tip of the not quite dormant brambles the cover the side of the track.
Lots of gulls on the pond south of Doncaster and a few in the air. A couple of coots and a black and white duck. By the trackside a red-eye eyes up a blade of grass.
Fields are spotted with pairs of grey-brown ears, pricked up and listening. From small holes and scrapes and tufts of grass they scan the horizon.
Brown geese in a field growing quickly enough t tickle the undersides of their beaks. We continue south, fast forwarding into spring. A spring that is meek and mild. More magpies bouncing on electric floors. Perhaps 500 daffs in small clusters of thirty or fifty.
Our speed drops and we go past short trees. Bare of leaves and only a tiny hint of buds. A sub-station all grey and blue. Large rabbits beside it, looking out onto a school’s football pitch.
We roll towards Retford’s station and pass through gently. The fishing pond’s protective nets and wires fail to stop two ore mallard landing and joining the others already there. A field past that is covered in daffs. Hundreds and hundreds. Fully half the field is yellow.
More poisonous yellow stalks, tendrils of the agri-enginered triffids appear as we progress with a little more speed. The sub brightens and we have real shadows. A hare lies stretched out in a field, confident in its safety as it is surrounded by sheep with young lambs.
Then we reach the ponds with most of the usuals in place but with low numbers. Newark loses another old building and near by a white framework of steel marks a new one rising.
A lapwing does its display flight over a ploughed field. High it rises, drops, twists. Just above the ground, flashes of the wing markings, it turns and almost flies upside down.
The ducks in the next field have turned their back on it. They have no time for such a flamboyant display.
The sky is blue above us. Hazy towards the horizon. The world is a water colour done by an artist who is skilled but short-sighted. The large new wind turbine cranks around. Lambs that were small lumps of legs and water eyes have grown considerable in just a few days. Then a roadside, both sides thick with the white variation off the daffs.
A housing estate, the tv aerials providing welcome resting places for a smattering of starlings. This is the outer edge of Grantham. So we slow down to a decent jogging speed so we can go through the station and don’t make too much noise to disturb the locals. Smokers outside the Asda puff out so much noxious smoke that the main doors are almost invisible.
Rumbling minutes later we pass through to the other side of the station.
The first ht air balloon hangs to the east. Red the canopy advertises a brand of annoying bearded man. Then on the field side, right up by the track an albino hind roe deer. Brilliant white, she looked across the small wire fence towards us as we rumbled past.
Three minutes later twelve more hinds standing in a field, or lying, all together in the very middle. All looked very relaxed, though three or four kept a watchful eye out on the world around. Thirty pair of smaller brown and pink geese crop the grass of a field next to some small fishing pond. The land is worn out, the hills gone now.
Peterborough arrives all too soon! I wanted more deer. Though thirteen deer in such a short burst is the most I have ever seen. Twelve together the largest group and never before an adult albino. So plenty to be happy about.
One or two geese in the fields south of Peterborough. So far no swans. Not a single one. Then finally one, sleeping in a field, half a dozen small geese grazing nearby. Two more deer, smaller and further away than the previous ones. I'd not like to try and give a positive id for them.
Just before Sandy the fields are starting to form a thin mist at the far edges. The sky is starting to cloud over and the warmth is gone from the sun.
The sun is forming a 8 in the sky due to the way the cloud is bending the light. Not quite a double sun, but very, very close.
The sun is attempting to burn off the o’er pressing grey cloud and has done a commendable job of managing to remove the bulk of it. The cloud ceiling has risen considerably and there is now a golden glow cast across the city as we wait for the train to depart. At ground level visibility is not great and the hills on the other side of Armpit are shadowy and not quite precise.
The temperature is warm; I have experienced many days in high summer that have been colder and more drear than this. In fact it is another lovely day.
At work the pair of mallards are getting ready to nest in the hedge by the car park. This is good news. At least for the pair of carrion crows who each year make sure that their young are well fed with ducklings.
As we pull away from the station the sun is starting to appear as a bright yellow patch through the sky. A police helicopter flies towards us, the banks hard, circles and slowly starts to progress towards the prison. The trees continue to display their catkins and the daffs are still displaying ell, including many of the small, delicate and more wild looking ones. A couple of clumps of dandelions are out, their flowers low, without any visible stalk.
As we cross a little bridge, past graffiti a magpie sits atop a tree slowly filling with fresh leaves. Pieces of wasteland are filling in and filling up with green. Smoke from a farmer burning thins slowly and very lazily drifts skywards.
Magpies bounce back and forth across a field like cats on an electric floor. Copses and small woodlands that only a few days ago could be see clear through are becoming dense enough to hint that in a week or two they will become places of mystery and shelter.
Wakefield is reach with ease and then we continue. Above the McDonalds several gulls are circling. Oh for really vultures rather than these raucous interlopers. Wearing a hard hat and a high visibility jacket a small woman is hanging out the laundry. Health and Safety perhaps being a tad over zealous in that street.
The river, silver, perfectly flat and smooth, is crossed and we move past gardens coming to flower and sprouting all around.
The rape seeds is looming. What were a few flowers and now in the dozens and more. The ponds have many more ducks then people and still a pair of the black and white geese paddling in the middle.
A kestrel, low and fast along the field edge. From behind and the safety of the margin, a red eye watches the predator recede into the distance.
The buzzard - r one at the same spot is circling slowly over a field filling with crop. Turning in a slow, anti-clockwise loop Then only moments later Bentley Station makes a brief appearance. Then Doncaster slowly appears as we wait. A pair of sparrows a male and female bounce from one tip of the not quite dormant brambles the cover the side of the track.
Lots of gulls on the pond south of Doncaster and a few in the air. A couple of coots and a black and white duck. By the trackside a red-eye eyes up a blade of grass.
Fields are spotted with pairs of grey-brown ears, pricked up and listening. From small holes and scrapes and tufts of grass they scan the horizon.
Brown geese in a field growing quickly enough t tickle the undersides of their beaks. We continue south, fast forwarding into spring. A spring that is meek and mild. More magpies bouncing on electric floors. Perhaps 500 daffs in small clusters of thirty or fifty.
Our speed drops and we go past short trees. Bare of leaves and only a tiny hint of buds. A sub-station all grey and blue. Large rabbits beside it, looking out onto a school’s football pitch.
We roll towards Retford’s station and pass through gently. The fishing pond’s protective nets and wires fail to stop two ore mallard landing and joining the others already there. A field past that is covered in daffs. Hundreds and hundreds. Fully half the field is yellow.
More poisonous yellow stalks, tendrils of the agri-enginered triffids appear as we progress with a little more speed. The sub brightens and we have real shadows. A hare lies stretched out in a field, confident in its safety as it is surrounded by sheep with young lambs.
Then we reach the ponds with most of the usuals in place but with low numbers. Newark loses another old building and near by a white framework of steel marks a new one rising.
A lapwing does its display flight over a ploughed field. High it rises, drops, twists. Just above the ground, flashes of the wing markings, it turns and almost flies upside down.
The ducks in the next field have turned their back on it. They have no time for such a flamboyant display.
The sky is blue above us. Hazy towards the horizon. The world is a water colour done by an artist who is skilled but short-sighted. The large new wind turbine cranks around. Lambs that were small lumps of legs and water eyes have grown considerable in just a few days. Then a roadside, both sides thick with the white variation off the daffs.
A housing estate, the tv aerials providing welcome resting places for a smattering of starlings. This is the outer edge of Grantham. So we slow down to a decent jogging speed so we can go through the station and don’t make too much noise to disturb the locals. Smokers outside the Asda puff out so much noxious smoke that the main doors are almost invisible.
Rumbling minutes later we pass through to the other side of the station.
The first ht air balloon hangs to the east. Red the canopy advertises a brand of annoying bearded man. Then on the field side, right up by the track an albino hind roe deer. Brilliant white, she looked across the small wire fence towards us as we rumbled past.
Three minutes later twelve more hinds standing in a field, or lying, all together in the very middle. All looked very relaxed, though three or four kept a watchful eye out on the world around. Thirty pair of smaller brown and pink geese crop the grass of a field next to some small fishing pond. The land is worn out, the hills gone now.
Peterborough arrives all too soon! I wanted more deer. Though thirteen deer in such a short burst is the most I have ever seen. Twelve together the largest group and never before an adult albino. So plenty to be happy about.
One or two geese in the fields south of Peterborough. So far no swans. Not a single one. Then finally one, sleeping in a field, half a dozen small geese grazing nearby. Two more deer, smaller and further away than the previous ones. I'd not like to try and give a positive id for them.
Just before Sandy the fields are starting to form a thin mist at the far edges. The sky is starting to cloud over and the warmth is gone from the sun.
The sun is forming a 8 in the sky due to the way the cloud is bending the light. Not quite a double sun, but very, very close.