July 28th – The hazel hedge by the canal, between Silver Street pedestrian bridge and Coopers Bridge is heavy with nuts this year – clearly to the joy of the local squirrel population. Thankfully when I spotted these healthy specimens, they grey rodents hadn’t completely stripped the trees of their creamy bounty yet.
But they’re having a jolly good go, bless them.
Still can’t get into my head that w have fruiting hazels growing healthily on what used to be an open, festering refuse tip.
July 8th – A bit of a recovery ride I suppose took me out and around Lichfield late in the day. Noted hazelnuts in profusion near Darwin Park, but what really stole the day was the sunset. From the cobwebs eerily lit on the gorse to the sundog that shone to the south of the sun, it rendered everything it touched utterly beautiful, none less so that the oceans of ripening barley.
What a beautiful end to the day.
May 13th – The Walsall Canal swans at Pleck had hatchlings when I passed them midday; I was very pleased to count four, and I suspected she was hatching more. The cob patrolled on the open water, and the scene was tranquil.
I returned the same way that evening on my way home, to find a drama unfolding. An elderly heron was perched on the rear rail, his beady eye making unfailing eye contact with the cob, who was perched on the nest with his mate. There was clearly deadlock – the heron obviously had spotted an opportunity, but the swans were having none of it.
In a couple of days when grown, they’ll be safe from the herons and other predators, but it’ll be a tense few days for mum and dad as they guard their precious charges.
Nature, red in tooth and claw.
August 10th – A remarkable season, and now the fruiting begins in earnest. The wind was gusting hard, and the threat of rain not far away, but I slid out mid afternoon in defiance of Hurricane Bertha (spit). I let the wind blow me along the wet canal to the cyclway over the common – on the way, I noticed what I think are cherries growing ripe on a tree by the Pier Street Bridge. They look rather fat and large to be such gems in Brownhills. Can anyone help there?
There’s also been a remarkably prodigious crop of hazelnuts from the hedge thicket opposite the Watermead estate – but what wasn’t already squirrelled was blown down in the wind; the towpath is thick with nobbled and wind-fallen nuts.
On the cycleway, a similarly bountiful crop of blackberries, and the elderberries too are ripening to a beautiful black-crimson gloss.
Summer coming to an end is always sad, but how can one remain so in the face of such wonderful fruits?
August 12th – rounding the bend in the canal opposite Brownhills Canoe Centre, I noticed some debris on the towpath under the hazel thicket that’s grown so well there in recent years. Taking a closer look, I realised that the detritus was partially eaten hazel, or cob nuts, stripped by hungry squirrels. These are a fine, nutritious snack for our furry pals, and birds and foxes will Hoover up the remainder. I always wondered why I’d never seen these bushes fruit…
September 12th – A day of fearsome winds, seemingly crafted on Satan’s back doorstep which tormented me all the way to Great Bridge. Fortunately, the wind honoured it’s bargain and blew me back up the canal through Moxley and Darlaston to Walsall, and it was in Moxley that I spotted something I never noticed before; right in the centre of this industrial, urban place, there’s a row of Hazel trees which are currently fruiting large hazelnuts. The squirrels are having a ball and discarded, nibbled shells litter the ground beneath. This is a truly remarkable thing – Moxley was once a very polluted place, and this is a sign of an improved environment. I’m still stunned, to be honest.
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