Fawlty Towers
Hundreds of people staggered bewildered through the fog yesterday after a 130 car pile up on the Sheppey Bridge in Kent. When the sun eventually burnt through temperatures nearby reached 30 degrees. September is the month we feel a palpable sense of change, lucid, mellow, melancholy or full of extremes.
In the morning I waded through the shrunken River Granta as far as I could until a tangle of rampant vegetation flicked seeds all over me and forced me back the way I'd come, past a sniff of fox under the blackthorn and the long scratch-marks of a steep badger climb on the riverbank. A heron had got into trouble in the same spot last week. Reed, himilayan balsam and great willowherb thwarted the flapping bird in its lanky panic as I passed by in the field above.
I followed a swathe mown through the grey meadows. Fog and mist obliterate long distance visibility but open up a world we're usually oblivious to. Great cities of spider webs are invisible until each one is highlighted by droplets of water reflecting all available light. I dawdled through the streets of animal architecture until the sun shone hot and bright.
The days are rapidly shortening. I wanted to hang on to every last minute of yesterday so I indulged in an evening trip to RSPB Fowlmere.
Moorhens dived and dabbled. A whistling kingfisher flew over. Resident jackdaws were already fidgeting in the treetops. A cumulus congestus cloud towering in the east was stained pink by the sun. A green woodpecker foraged on the woodland path. Four of us peered at the distant barn owl box and could just make out the white disc of a bird's face within the dark interior. I used up much of the day's sun quota waiting for it to emerge. In vain. Dragonflies hawked across a meadow where a cow grazed. I stood hot and humid watching them. Like swallows they come close, seemingly confiding in us as they exploit any insects our heavy footfall disturbs.
A walk through woodland alongside the chalk stream where a dark trout fanned the water and a loud plop perhaps a water vole took me to a view of meadows below a high bank. A tightly woven spiderweb netted the setting sun, the spun gold looking like a little furnace among dark tree trunks. Five minutes later a white buck from the fallow deer herd emerged.
Sitting alone in a hide I waited for the crepuscular moment the resident otter might emerge. I made a mental list of everything I'd seen. Reed warbler, swallows, hobby, ducks in the distance coming into roost, and the famous leucistic water rail, paddling across the darkening water before skulking into the reeds to roost. Water rails are incredibly furtive and seldom seen; this white bird is comically conspicuous. 'Watery fowl', I mused to myself, recalling one of the wonky anagrams from the 1970s Fawlty Towers comedy (the only title sequence that stuck in my mind, being a child with a one-track mind for animals). A tawny owl called out in storybook fashion and the strange alarm call of the water rail sent shockwaves across the mere.
Today there's a reassuring gentle drip of rain soaking the parched ground, swelling the level of the dry waterways and seeping deep down into the local chalk bedrock. Imagine it in the future bubbling up from the lively springs at Fowlmere. It's a lovely sound effect when you're sitting in the reserve in swampy silence.
I followed a swathe mown through the grey meadows. Fog and mist obliterate long distance visibility but open up a world we're usually oblivious to. Great cities of spider webs are invisible until each one is highlighted by droplets of water reflecting all available light. I dawdled through the streets of animal architecture until the sun shone hot and bright.
The days are rapidly shortening. I wanted to hang on to every last minute of yesterday so I indulged in an evening trip to RSPB Fowlmere.
Moorhens dived and dabbled. A whistling kingfisher flew over. Resident jackdaws were already fidgeting in the treetops. A cumulus congestus cloud towering in the east was stained pink by the sun. A green woodpecker foraged on the woodland path. Four of us peered at the distant barn owl box and could just make out the white disc of a bird's face within the dark interior. I used up much of the day's sun quota waiting for it to emerge. In vain. Dragonflies hawked across a meadow where a cow grazed. I stood hot and humid watching them. Like swallows they come close, seemingly confiding in us as they exploit any insects our heavy footfall disturbs.
A walk through woodland alongside the chalk stream where a dark trout fanned the water and a loud plop perhaps a water vole took me to a view of meadows below a high bank. A tightly woven spiderweb netted the setting sun, the spun gold looking like a little furnace among dark tree trunks. Five minutes later a white buck from the fallow deer herd emerged.
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| All photos by Jo Sinclair |
Today there's a reassuring gentle drip of rain soaking the parched ground, swelling the level of the dry waterways and seeping deep down into the local chalk bedrock. Imagine it in the future bubbling up from the lively springs at Fowlmere. It's a lovely sound effect when you're sitting in the reserve in swampy silence.
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