Reflective

Yes, I’m still alive, and with an ever growing backlog of pictures to share, a new camera and only one free day a week in which to either be out exploring or indoors post editing photographs… well, I think you can see where I am going with this. I have always loved writing this blog but it seems for now that being out in the world is more alluring than describing the adventures I have out there. Perhaps I just need to develop a punchier style; I don’t want to keep all the amazing things I’ve seen all to myself, that’s for sure. Today I went to Tottenham Marshes in search of dragonflies and butterflies but all you get (for now) is this lousy skyscape… ha!  I’d better get busy, there’s things to show and tell…

For more beautiful and fascinating images of the sky around the world, visit Skywatch Friday!

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Meanwhile, in the UK… orchids!

Deep in woods loud with birdsong an elegant spike of white flowers glows, a tiny constellation. This is platanthera chlorantha, the Greater Butterfly Orchid. Night scented (it smells of vanilla) I wonder if its brightness also acts to help lure the moths that pollinate it.

Most orchids I’ve seen in the UK have been relatively small and often rather inconspicuous, but this stately plant was nearly a foot tall and vivid against the woodland gloom. We only saw two of these unearthly beauties on our walk, which made them seem very special.

And although there were almost certainly more of these orchis mascular or Early Purple orchids, we found just one bedraggled flower spike pushing up gamely through the ivy and leaf litter.

I was lucky enough to attend a conference in the Wye valley this weekend, which meant a chance to walk in the woods beside Offas Dyke for an hour or two. I found these lovely plants during that short walk. It’s only right for this blog to celebrate what we have here in the UK right now alongside my Nepali show and tell.

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I came back with the swifts

I’ve not been around… not around here anyway. I’ve been busy on other projects, neglecting the part of me that wants to get down in the mud to look at earthworms, or wants to sit beside a mosquito infested pond waiting for bats. I’ve been inclining toward my more urban self. But that’s not the only reason I haven’t been around. Last autumn, when we realised that the time was right, the finances were (kinda, sorta) ok, that everyone involved could spare the time and that the weather would be perfect, we began planning a spring journey to Nepal. One of R’s oldest friends lives there – she married a Nepali guy and now they live in a beautiful house with their three lovely children just outside Kathmandu. We would go to visit them.

I can’t say I wasn’t nervous. On a previous trip to India eleven years ago I had been constantly ill, never quite shook off my culture shock and found the inquisitive crowds that would constantly gather around us incredibly tiring. I had a great time there, but was ill and exhausted for months on our return. Would Nepal be as gruelling?

I’ve written myself into a corner here; I can’t very well tell you how Nepal was for me in a short blog post, and that’s been one of the major problems I’ve experienced since getting back – how could anyone find the words? “So, how was Nepal?” a friend asks. “Ummmm… BRILLIANT” I reply, my eyes glazed and somewhat absent. The friend loses interest; it’s all they are going to get out of me. Because the truth is no matter how much I wanted to tell everyone what Nepal was like, no matter how much I wanted to start blogging the moment I got home, IT’S JUST WAY TOO BIG.

Anyway, I’ve finally bitten the bullet. I have thousands of pictures, and choosing which ones to post here is going to be torture – this project is going to take me months to complete. But I have to get a move on – I need to write while it’s still all fresh. I really don’t want to forget a thing.

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End of the rainbow, end of the road

About a fortnight ago my best beloved and I went to Whitby, where we camped on a rise above the town with our lovely friend A. It was a wonderful few days, and the changeable weather ensured spectacular skies – I have so many sky images from our visit that they will keep me in Skywatch Friday posts for months to come.  Here, we had been walking from Robin Hood’s Bay to Whitby along the Cleveland Way National Trail, when the sky blackened. A rainbow glimmered faintly among the clouds as rain began to spit, while the sun shone on the crops that line the final mile or so into town. I’ll be posting more about this walk hopefully, there’s a lot more I’d love to show you.

I’ve had a lot of adventures this summer – many have not made it into this blog because they kept me a little too busy, but also, I’ve been deliberately keeping my time online to a minimum.  Now, with autumn just around the corner I need to hunker down and concentrate on making new stock, and while that means spending a lot more time indoors near the computer, I’m just not sure that once autumn starts I’ll have the time to blog consistently.  I’m not going to give up this blog, ominous though the title of the current post must seem (I chose it just because it fitted the picture, I didn’t intend the melancholy vibe I now see it lends).  But perhaps the form will change, less writing and more images, or maybe  just a monthly bulletin. I’ll always try to keep up with the wonderful bloggers I’ve met along the way, but please forgive me if my visits to your blogs are fewer.

For more beautiful and fascinating images of the sky around the world, visit Skywatch Friday!

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Red Kite Soaring

Last weekend as I sat quietly reading a book in the garden at R’s family home, I glanced up to see a large raptor circling lazily in the hot summer sky. Buzzards are common in that part of Hampshire, but this most certainly was not a buzzard. The forked tail gave this spectacular bird away. It was a red kite.

I sat entranced as it approached, lower and lower, quartering the field below the garden. It made a couple of lazy passes over my head, enabling me to capture these images on my not so great little point ‘n’ shoot, then sailed languidly away. A better flyer than a red kite you will never see; swifts and swallows and falcons are spectacular, but a red kite seems to defy gravity. With the tiniest adjustment of those long wings they can swoop or hang as if suspended on a string, turning and gliding, a burst of acceleration followed by an eerie stillness, all lazily performed (it seems) with the minimum of effort. Watching these birds you almost believe that if you stepped off a high enough cliff with your arms raised just so…

The birds beauty and prowess are not the only reasons for feeling surprised joy when one just casually appears above you. It was at one point nearly extinct in the UK, with only five breeding pairs surviving. And yet in Tudor London these birds were common scavengers,  with a contemporary report stating that “the kites are so tame, that they often take out of the hands of little children, the bread smeared with butter given to them by their mothers“*. Although officially protected in London for their valuable scavenging services by which much putrefying material was removed from the streets, red kites were persecuted throughout the British Isles until they reached their final perilous decline. By the 1920′s, the red kite was all but wiped out.

It’s spectacular comeback means that while red kites are by no means common, you are more and more likely to get lucky and see one with every passing year, and indeed they can be locally common. They are moving outwards at last from their strongholds in Wales and The Chilterns, and this bird is one of a pair which arrived in the neighbourhood only this summer. The first time I ever saw one close up I will never forget; it exploded out of a farmers field on top of Winter Hill near Cookham, a flurry of rusty red and charcoal and so very obviously the rare bird of my dreams that I actually shouted it’s name out loud. A grinning local out walking his dog told me I that if I liked red kites, I was in for a treat. He was right; that afternoon was spent on Winter hill with a picnic, a bottle of wine and the spectacle of red kites in plenty riding the wind below us. I will never forget that first sighting.

*Source of quote:- Birds Brittanica

For more beautiful and fascinating images of the sky around the world, visit Skywatch Friday!

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