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.
October 30th – On my return, I popped into Kings Hill Park since it was such a beautiful afternoon. There was nobody around, peace reigned – apart from the normal industrial sounds of Darlaston living and breathing, which is a sort of background music to me now – and the only activity was from Mrs. Squirrel here, checking me out for food.
Sore from the hospital and feeling weary after the ride, I sat and thought, had a snack and something to drink, and gently recharged in my nowhere garden.
The park looks even better in it’s current cloak of autumn, with beautiful flowers still in bloom and the leaves turning so prettily.
This is one of the gems of the Black Country, yet what tour guide ever mentions Kings Hill Park? What guidebook ever dared to breathe the name?
This is just our peaceful, beautiful secret. And I love it so.
October 13th – Chester is always a delight from the cormorants loafing on the Dee like old men on a park bench to the chimneys and remarkably diverse architectural threads, and in autumn, it’s amplified, particularly on a day with such dramatic skies.
I love the central shopping area with the ‘rows’ – upper tier walkways, bridges and balconies that weave and dodge, reminding you of Pratchet’s Ankh Morpork.
A great afternoon.
July 5th – I needed a break mid morning to have a think; so I slipped out of work on an errand and headed to Kings Hill Park, where I met this fellow.
This park has it’s share of cheeky grey squirrels, but this one was definitely posing for me. What a little star he is.
He didn’t help me with my train of thought, but he did provide some amusing light relief from it.
June 26th – A brighter day and on the journey to work, a small mystery.
A huge pine cone, eaten by something, probably a squirrel, lying on the canal towpath near Pleck.
It was lying under an apple tree, with no pines or conifers in sight.
Perhaps the grey bushy-tailed fellows commute a long way these days.
This year’s apple crop is looking healthy, though…
December 28th – It was one of those so cold, but so beautiful sunlight winter days when there was thin ice on the canal and the usual winter towpath quagmire had frozen solid, so I headed to Birmingham on the canal. From Aldridge, via Rushall Junction, Tower Hill, Aston and Brindley Place. After a call at the German Market I went up to Soho, over Sandwell Valley Park and home on NCN 5 via Yewtree and Walsall.
The kingfisher was the best that could be done – the birds are very active at the moment, but they don’t stay still for long! In the sunset photo, that’s St Augustine’s at Edgbaston, as viewed from the canal mainline at Rotton Park. the sky really was that colour.
A beautiful day, and a lovely ride.
August 13th – I went up to Freda’s Grave via Chase Road, and noticed that near the shale parking area, someone had been feeding the birds on an old tree stump. Sat with the camera, me and a companion took loads of pictures as a variety of songbirds swooped in and out.
Photographing these busy little birds is actually hard – they’re so fast, it’s hard to focus and get a decent picture and better reactions than mine are clearly required.
A more willing subject was found at the the deserted picnic area near Birches Valley, where Mrs. Squirrel was hoovering up the day’s dropped morsels and helpfully giving some good camera face.
Not a bad entry for the seven days of wildlife challenge…
July 21st – Darlaston’s Kings Hill Park. Cutting through on a morning errand. The place was deserted, but you’re never really quite alone.
I do hope she found what she was looking for…
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?
May 12th – That cheeky squirrel. I was cruising around the canal looking for the swan family – still nowhere to be found – on my way home from work. I stopped at the hazel thicket on the bend by the Watermead Eastate to answer a call. All the time I felt I was being watched.
It seems Nutkin wants me to move along now, and not make a fuss….
Yet another example of why I’ll never make a wildlife photographer…
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