Around the Island

A LAPWING climbs steeply over ploughland then spin dives, whooping like a roller coaster rider. A second bird appears and flies towards it. Thirty to forty Fieldfares feed amongst the grass with the Starlings on a hillside pasture near Thornhill Farm. We haven't seen much of fieldfares this winter.

We pause at the moated site of the ruined Hall, which was destroyed by an explosion during a Civil War siege. The Treecreeper is white beneath and streaked brown above like faded woodgrain. As it climbs the trunk if braces itself with its tail. It pauses and, with a neat little manoeuvre, holds its rear end clear of the tree to defecate.

Leaf buds on a Horse Chestnut stand upright on the branches, like the flower buds of magnolia.

Two Long-tailed Tits flit about in the branches that overhang the moat. A Song Thrush sings from a branch nearby.

In the hedges clusters of Ivy fruits look like giant blackberries. Dog's Mercury flowers are yellow with pollen (the male and female flowers are on separate plants in this species). One small isolated Blackthorn bush has burst into blossom, but most in the hedgerows are still in bud.

One shrub has green blossoms that are unfamiliar to me; five petals and a tuft of stamens and stigmas.

Richard Bell,
wildlife illustrator
E-mail;'richard@daelnet.co.uk'