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In the circumstances I believe it unwise to talk a lot about positive aspects of lockdown, so many people have suffered under this and from this vicious virus.  As an aside I would say as much as we want to get rid of this virus I do hope no one takes seriously the pompous President of the United States of America when he suggests the injecting of disinfectants might be the answer.  I don’t believe for one second he didn’t mean it despite his back tracking.  Is this bloke for real?  I am sure one day we will all wake up and find that there is in fact a real man of substance in the White House.  Being overly positive at this time in respect to benefits to nature might sound as if I am a politician putting spin on an incredibly sad subject.  Nevertheless no one can ignore possible short-term benefits to the natural world from matters such as cleaner air, less traffic and the chance for some wildlife to gain some space away from constant pressure from Joe Public.  Add to this the fine weather, in the UK at least, and one can see how some, if of course not all, wildlife might benefit.  Apparently, in Thailand it has been noted that sea life is returning to areas long deserted because of throngs of holidaymakers lining the beaches.  This must be happening in many places now.  A temporary period of less pressure, but a much needed one.  I have certainly noticed more butterflies locally than there has been at this time of year in recent years.  Speckled Wood Butterflies seen in the garden are shown below, as is an Iris.  This Iris stems from Irises given to us by a neighbour in around 1976 when we were all collecting soil from an area of the village, to add to our muddy and rock-solid gardens.  The houses had just been built.  It is doing well this year as its fragility has not been hammered by April showers as per norm.

 I am pleased to say that two birds missing from my garden list in recent weeks, Wren and Coal Tit have returned.  The Wren was in full song yesterday, and a wonderful song it is.

My lockdown exercise included a recent walk down to the lake.  The highlight down there being the pair of Great Crested Grebes.  No line of photographers this year.  I noticed too that the Coot appears to be sitting on eggs, so the pairs coming together was a success in that respect.  I stood by the larger lake watching for Swallows and Sand Martins for several minutes before their calling was heard and they appeared in number from behind me, flying over the lake to feed.  The highlight of my walk was on my return journey.  As I approached the church grounds I picked up the song of Willow Warbler which the constant calling of Chiffchaff failed to drown out.  I eventually caught sight of the bird, lit by the sun and gleaning between song bursts.  I entered the church grounds and stood under the tree in dappled sunlight.  Apart from bird song there was silence.   The bright new foliage of the tree giving some shade.  I listened to the song for several minutes before moving on towards home.  For those minutes, my mind had focussed solely on the song of the Willow Warbler and all seemed normal and well with the world.  I felt as refreshed as I had done for a long time, as I once more settled in to lockdown.  Nature is a wonderful relaxant as is poetry, as I am finding out.

Elephants Troop Past Fenwick's, Northumberland Street, Newcastle.

My favourite mammal is the Elephant.  I’ve seen many in the wild and stood within metres of a few.  I could go on to tell many a tale involving Elephants, animals certainly not to be messed with, but that is not the reason for this blog.

With time on my hands and as Chuck Berry once said, no particular place to go, I’ve begun to go through old family photographs of which there are many in my home.  I knew within this collection there was at least one which showed Elephants trooping past Fenwick’s on Northumberland Street, Newcastle, and I was lucky enough to find it in the first batch of photographs I pulled out yesterday.

I have in the far recesses of my memory a picture of me standing on Northumberland street as a small child watching an Elephant or Elephants, which I think were on the way to a Circus or an Exhibition on the Town Moor.  That would have been in the early 1950s and I can’t be certain this photograph is of that occasion.  However, I do know this photograph would have been taken probably in the early 50s by my mother. I find it hard to imagine this was only a few years after the ending of the World War Two.  I’m thinking I might be able to make out tramlines on the road, but I don’t know for sure when they were removed.  Trolley buses ran when I was a small child but perhaps the tramlines were still in place.

I have no idea how many times Elephants have trooped up Northumberland Street, which was of course the main AI at the time this photograph was taken.  Does anyone remember being there I wonder?

I’ll save my story of me having been bitten by a monkey on the Town Moor for another occasion.

I have a clearer memory of going to see a large cetacean at Blyth.  Cetaceans are up there with my favourite mammals too.  In this case it was not alive and it was some years after the troop of Elephants.  It would have been either the late 1960s or early 1970s.  Now if you were around at this time you must remember the appearance of Jonah the Whale.

I tend to keep all things associated to visits outings etc, so have an odd assortment of information from my past years and I have a small leaflet which gives facts about Jonah, but is lacking any dates.  I must have read it at the time, but having read it more recently much of the information seemed new to me, so maybe I had just put it to one side and forgotten it.

Having done a little research I’ve found that Jonah was one of three Fin Whales killed for ‘scientific reasons’ in a joint project between the Norwegian Whaling Industry and the World Wildlife Fund.  The whales were hunted and killed around 1952/53 and Jonah had been involved an earlier tour of the UK in the 1950s.  Initially this all seems to have been an attempt by the whaling industry to seek positive publicity.  I can’t believe the WWF would get involved in such a project these days!  I’ve read the Jonah eventually fell into the hands of showmen, and it is they perhaps that were responsible for the showing at Blyth, although the WWF are still shown on the leaflet as being involved in the sponsorship.   Do the remains of Jonah still exist I wonder?

Below is an image of the leaflet giving information.  

Click to enlarge

I have put this information on my blog as it is historically interesting.  I would not wish any reader to assume I support in any way the killing of Cetaceans and the use of Elephants in shows of any kind.  I prefer to watch wildlife where it ought to be, in the wild.

Enjoying Nature and Reflecting Despite Lockdown

To use a couple of words now in constant use, lockdown has certainly had me ramp up the garden bird watching.  I’ve spent several hours this past week sat at the patio door with camera at the ready.  Patch birding to my mind is without doubt the best and most rewarding part of bird watching and of course if you have a garden it will often be a central part of your patch.  I remember being asked some years ago by a then up and coming twitcher ‘’do you not get bored watching the same area and birds all of the time’’?  I’d like to think that now a little more mature, that the person in question will have a better understanding of the merits of patch birding.  Of course, present circumstances will have presented the need of all birdwatchers to stick to patch, at any rate one would hope so.

Chiffchaff on Rose Bush

Blackcap female

I took the opportunity whilst watching the garden to take some images of common, and in a couple of cases less common garden birds.  I’ve always been proud of the numbers of birds attracted to my very small garden in the middle of housing estates in a now not so new township.  Gardens will become more and more of a haven for birds and other wildlife in this and other areas, as concrete and brick cover more and more green areas around us.  If my garden can attract birds, so can yours, and without too much effort!  Council and developer talk of wildlife corridors (don’t corridors have to lead somewhere?) and increasing biodiversity is simply political spin in my opinion, whilst your garden (if you are lucky enough to have one) could form part of a pattern that provides space in a real and practical manner.

Robin

Dunnock

In no way do I try to deflect from the fact that I travel in normal circumstances to watch birds, although chasing rarities is not and has never been my thing.  With such activity along with much else out of the question at present, it is not only garden watching that I have ramped up.  I’ve been digging out some old music albums that I retain from my youth and the one I have lined up to play next is, Snow Goose by Camel, recorded in 1975 and inspired by Paul Gallico’s book The Snow Goose.  I was given a copy of the latter, which is illustrated by Peter Scott as a gift from a good friend.  I believe the central character of the book was based largely on Peter Scott himself.  The book was also made into a film of course.  Now the Snow Goose is one bird I would chase after and I envy the author William Fiennes who followed the migration of Snow Geese in North America and produced the book The Snow Goose which I have somewhere, but can’t find.

Chaffinch

House Sparrow with friend

As well as albums I’ve been revisiting one or two of my older bird books, and one I pulled out the other day was Robert Dougal’s Celebration of Birds.   Readers of a certain age will remember Robert was a News Reader on BBC as well as becoming President of the RSPB.  I found the receipt for the book inside and see that I purchased it from Thornes Bookshop on Percy Street, Newcastle on 12^th March 1979.  Good grief, that is over 40 years ago.  As the man said, I do not believe it!   The book contains quite a bit of poetry and poetry has appealed to me more as I have aged.  Poems can say so much with so few words if put together well, although I confess there is some poetry I would not touch with a barge pole and even more that I don’t quite understand.  I have become keen on the poet John Clare as I know no other poet that describes the natural world around him so well.  Clare also wrote very well about working farms and villages in the nineteenth century and although written long before my childhood they do bring back memories of days spent on the farm I visited as a child.  In the early 1960s the farm still used a horse in the fields.  Bob, the horse, would not have looked out of place in a scene set in Clare’s time and neither would the hay-gathers, when everyone mucked in, have looked out of place.  I remember well hot sunny days in the meadow when everyone would break when the farmers wife brought down the basket of scones, sandwiches and large pots of tea.  I must thank my friends Hilary and Kelsey for introducing me to Clare’s works and the artwork of Carry Akroyd that often accompanies them, and I have been reading this poetry and admiring the artwork over the past few days.

Great Tit

Blue Tit

Goldfinch shares bath with Blue Tit

Returning to Robert Dougal, he describes in Celebration of Birds a two man show he and Newcastle born James Alder (one time president of the Natural History Society of Northumbria amongst many other roles) were involved in at the Theatre Royal, Newcastle on the 5^th November 1970.  Were you there?  Apparently James had with him an injured Kestrel which he released and it flew off into the auditorium.  On hearing James call it, the bird immediately flew back to him.  I know James would often help injured birds back to fitness and rerelease them whenever possible.  Prior to the show James had written to The Evening Chronicle about Kestrels breeding on top of a crane on the banks of the Tyne.  I have a book about this very subject which was completed from notes by the son of James Alder after his father’s death.

Starling

I’ve included here several images taken this week in the garden and hope you enjoy them.  There’s nothing of great rarity but it was never my intention to capture such.  I was pleased to see a Chiffchaff and a pair of Blackcap, the latter may be nesting at the foot of the garden as may a pair of Robins.  The BlueTits are exploring their usual box and the now resident Wood Pigeons have been very amorous and are nesting in the large tree again.  Noticeable absentees whist I watched were Coal Tit, Wren and Song Thrush. Perhaps too busy nesting elsewhere.  I was pleased to count several Blackbirds, this perhaps being my favourite visitor, not least because of its song.  On quiet spring evenings, and every evening is quiet just now, the song of the Blackbird is a joy to hear as the early evening light begins to fade.  Over two or three days I listened to the drumming of Great Spotted Woodpecker.  I wonder how many of my neighbours noticed that?

Wood Pigeon

Jackdaw

Greenfinch

I’ll let John Clare have the final word.  Stay well.

The Blackbird

The blackbird is a bonny bird;

I love his morning suit,

And song in the spring mornings heard

As mellow as the flute.

How sweet his song in April showers

Pipes from his golden bill

As Yellow as the kingcup flowers,

The sweetest ditty still.