Wildlife alongside the South Tynedale Railway

A few highlights on our walk in South Tynedale, from the footpath beside the narrow gauge railway, including a song thrush giving it full volume, a willow warbler, water avens just coming into flower, a hunting stoat and a wasp chewing wood fibres from the footpath signpost, for nest building.

Spring gentians

We headed off into the high Pennines this morning and on the way home called in at the Moor House-Upper Teesdale National Nation Reserve to pay our respects to the spring gentians. In early May this little plant, which is Durham's county flower, produces one of the most astonishing floral spectacles in Britain. If you stand on the edge of Widdybank Fell, on the road that runs down to the waterfall at Cauldron Snout, and then turn through 360 degrees, withered, windswept ankle-high grasses and sedges stretch all the way to the horizon in every direction. But there at your feet, nestled down amongst amongst them, are the intensely blue, star-shaped flowers of spring gentians. In a good year there are thousands, and for a couple of weeks this becomes a place of pilgrimage for botanists. Even for those who are not botanically inclined, the sight of something so exquisite and fragile in such bleak, harsh surroundings is a deeply memorable experience. It's an extraordinary combination of plant and place.

Old chisel beak is back

Last April I discovered that a heron was visiting our garden pond soon after dawn, making alarming inroads into the frog and newt population, which necessitated some emergency work, installing a protective net. This spring I protected the pond with criss-crossed wires from the beginning of the frog spawning season, when the pond was a living frog soup and the carnage from a heron visit would have been horrific. Earlier this week I removed the unsightly protective wires, assuming that the heron wasn’t coming back. Too soon. It was back again this morning. I'm guessing that it's the same bird, but there's no way of knowing.