July 21st – This relaxed, healthy looking chap wasn’t about to move because some cyclist was taking his picture. Oh, no. He knew he was safe behind the wire fence of the factory, and with all the workers at home, he could chill out on a summer evening in peace. Rugeley bunnies have attitude, it would seem.
July 14th – I returned home via the Goscote Valley cycle route, Pelsall, and Ryders Mere. Ryders Mere really is gorgeous right now, a lovely pool surrounded by the most delightful meadows. Wildflowers are here in abundance, everything from orchids to clovers, vetches to hawkweeds. It’s a thoroughly delightful place.
Now I’ve seen it from afar, I’m even less liking the paint job on Humphries House. Oh dear.
July 7th – I noticed this plant – a climber of sorts – growing over a hedgerow near Hammerwich. I’d been to Lichfield, and was taking the scenic route back. I don’t recognised the flowers or foliage. It’s quite pretty in an understated way. Anyone got any ideas?
June 15th – Chasewater was deserted as I cruised round in the early evening. I’ve noticed in recent years that the park has a burgeoning rabbit population, and when there’s few folk around, they come out of hiding and take the air. This fellow was on the dam by the Downes house. I hope the engineers are keeping an eye on the rabbits… badgers caused the collapse of a canal in Llangollen a few years ago. Mind you, knowing badgers, they could have used explosives or anything. They’re truculent little buggers…
April 28th – I spotted this bird of prey hovering, almost totally still, over the heath by Anglesey Basin at Chasewater. He’s an interesting character. I know what species I think he is, but I’m unhappy about the details. Can any birders help? Many folk don’t realise that Brownhills is host to loads of species of birds of prey – from Owls to Buzzards to very occasionally, Kites.
This fellow was certainly an impressive sight. Sorry about the poor photos, it was nearly 7pm and the light was lousy.
April 18th – Baby weather – wet and windy, but warm. I worked from home before heading off mid-morning for a meeting in Redditch. It was drizzly and wet, but the riding through Stonnall and Little Aston was great. I saw lots of birds – great tits, blue tits, long-tailed tits, greenfinches, bullfinches, goldfinches, buzzards, a kestrel, a jay. I saw a countless rabbits, and a fox. Summer is coming. I can feel it. The rain is getting warmer….
January 3rd – It was at the southern end of the park I first heard it. An insistent, solid, two-pulse, one note, regular cry. Loud, actually, but until now, lost in the traffic noise and windrush. I dropped down into the base of the park and followed the calling. It was very nearly dusk, only the odd hardy dog walker or two around, and the persistent bird call, coming, as it turned out, from the dense copse in the northern hollow. What I think was a little owl (but I’m no expert on bird calls, it was certainly an owl) was calling out for all it was worth. I was in awe. Days of feeling lower than a snake’s knees, and then to hear such a bird a short ride away. Fabulous.
July 9th – after an hour or two of exploring the Black Cock and canal with a good mate, I came back to Brownhills along the canal. I reflected on the changes – how the wildlife had come out of the barren, vile pollution I knew here as a child. I watched dragonflies, admired oak, beech and sycamore saplings, smelled the heavenly scent of a carpet of honeysuckle. Crab apples ripened gently in the sun, a common tern hunted for incautious fish, grey wagtails expertly pecked at insects. I scrambled up on to the bank at Catshill Junction, where in my youth had been a ditch the size of a railway cutting filled with brackish, foul water. I remembered a solitary, 45 degree telegraph pole titling forlornly with it’s wires draped in the soup that would now be 20 metres below my feet.
As I looked from the top, a group of teenagers – who probably weren’t old enough to remember the last century – were lazing on the grass in the centre of Clayhanger Common, basking in a patch of sunlight, completely unaware that had I done this at their age I’d be in the middle of a festering refuse dump.
That’s why I love this place, for all it’s faults.
May 30th – Rabbits don’t do clever, but this one at Farewell, Staffordshire was quite unique. Taking a suicide run out of the hedge on the left, he doubled back when he realised the danger and ran straight ahead, in the same direction as me, for about a quarter of a mile. The camera loses him for a bit, before I catch him up again and he jumps into the hedge. Never seen that before.
The video quality is quite poor. I’ve had to zoom in quite a bit, and you may need to turn the quality setting up on youtube.
April 15th – Skirting Walsall through Rushall on my way home, I saw the 6th Heron of the day, but this one was a little disturbing. I’m used to these oddly dishevelled, down at heel fishers, but this one seems to be laughing at me. Or is he just mad? Should the death of fish really look quite so pleased with himself?
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