Tag: feral

29th September – Near Walsall, my attention was snagged on a bright, sunny morning by a small family, apparently living in an open, junk-cluttered garage just off a main street. They seem healthy, happy and don’t look malnourished. Clearly wary of humans, but mum, who was attentive and nervous of me, stood her ground and watched her kittens closely.

A rare treat. I have passed this with the location to the Cats Protection branch as I strongly suspect these cats are feral.

May 31st – Also a lovely sight and a regular here, honeysuckle or woodbine, and my favourite display grows up the embankment on the northwestern flank of the Black Cock Bridge; tumbling and cascading over the railings a fences, a huge bush flowers here every year and always looks and smells divine.

For a flower so entrenched in British culture, it’s got that alien look of tropical blooms, like the Passion flower: our wildflowers aren’t normally this brassy!

It would be very hard not to love honeysuckle.

May 26th – This chump of flowers seem to show every year, growing just on the edge of the Southwest parapet of the railway bridge at Hollyhill Lane, Shenstone. I’m fairly sure they’re aquilegia, or grannies bonnets as Susan Marie Ward has no doubt told me before, and they’re absolutely gorgeous.

I presume they’re garden escapees, as I don’t think I see them wild anywhere else, which makes me wonder why there are the two different coloured plants here. 

Maybe it was guerrilla seeding, or made just seeds present is someone’s dumped garden waste – whichever, they’re a delight to the heart.

May 25th – Not a brilliant shot but something I’ve not seen growing wild in the UK before – ornamental alliums. These are pretty much onions, similar to wild garlic etc, and several less ornate relatives are common, but I’ve never seen these large, purple globes before outside of gardens.

They’re growing well on the grass edge land at Sandhills, just by Home Farm. I was fascinated to find them.

May 11th – Less hard to spot is Mrs. Muscovy, the Newtown One. Now feral, the flock she should have been part of has moved on, and this uncaged canard who escaped and subsequently survived nearly 18 months of canalside freedom is now a permanent fixture of the canal between Middleton Bridge and the aqueduct over the railway at Newtown.

When I passed this rather unique duck today, she was preening and bathing determinedly in the water, and making quite a splash.

And long may she continue to do so…

April 21st – Spent some downtime doing mechanical things on the bikes and then went for a test spin up to Chasewater. On the way, I noted that Mrs. Miuscovy, who escaped her domestic flock over 12 months previously, was still thriving on the canal despite her singular and peculiar habit of rarely moving from the towpath and adjacent patch of canal.

She’s a fascinating and resilient bird, and considering her fellow escapee was fox lunch soon after escape, the Newtown One’s survival is remarkable and to be commended.

A daring and delightfully eccentric duck.

March 13th – Always nice to see the deer; this large herd were between Norton Bog and Cuckoo bank, and didn’t seem much bothered by me al all, eventually being scared off by a the noise of a siren on  the nearby main road.

It was quite misty so the photos aren’t as clear as I’d like.

They look healthy and content.

March 11th – The Newtown One. Like the Scarlett Pimpernell, they seek her here, they seek her there. Always within snatching distance, but always evading the grasp.

This bird has a safe roost, free food and company back home. But she appears to prefer contemplating silently life’s complexities at the canal side.

The saga continues…

February 21st – Today, I saw an old familiar, I thought was lost – the white domestic goose from Chasewater with the bump it’s head. Originally part of a cohort of six kept as guards for the boatyard at Ogley Junction, they were cast into the wild when the yard closed. Living on the canal by the Chemical for a few years, two were lost, presumably to the local fox’s belly. When the Chemical was redeveloped, the geese moved to the main lake at Chasewater, where they lived seemingly contentedly amongst the Canada geese and swans.

One bird was lost to the cold in 2013, and another disappeared last year; for a couple of months now I’ve only seen the one, and assumed this bird was lost, but today I saw it preening by the waterspouts club.

The flock would be probably over ten years old now, and it shows in their eyes – these are venerable birds. Truculent, permanently cross and hostile to anything that didn’t give them food, they were hard to like. But I’ve always loved them. Such pure, white plumage, always tidy birds who knew their mind.

I hope they see another summer, and feel the warm sun on their backs once more.