by ‘REDSHANK’

With the prolonged fine weather, all kinds of exotic creatures have appeared in our part of the countryside for the first time in living memory. Hummingbird hawkmoths are plentiful. I have seen not one but a dozen at a time hovering over the snapdragons in our flower garden.

Not only hummingbird moths but hummingbirds have appeared. Calling at the Three Tuns, I found the regulars in an uproar as a whole bevy of these beautiful little creatures hovered over their pint pots, causing the less wide-awake to drop them on the floor.

At last Old Ted, the landlord, fairly lost his temper. “Get away, you pesky little varmints!” he shouted, lunging at the glittering little beauties, then chasing them across the room until he tripped over an antique horsecollar he keeps for grinning through and fell heavily to the ground, cursing all tropical interlopers.

There was a big laugh at this, and Old Jim, who always keeps a stuffed magpie on his person to avoid bad luck if he should meet a single magpie, annoyed the landlord even more by producing it and waving it in his face.

Meanwhile, the hummingbirds were hovering over the shove-halfpenny board, putting Old Frank and Old Amos off their game. Rustic oaths bombinated about the smoky room, growing ever more archaic and outlandish as I tried to make hurried notes in phonetic script.

Nature Diary

by ‘REDSHANK’

Once again, Spindlemass is with us, when the country folk compete in collecting the largest possible quantity of pretty pink spindleberries and displaying them in traditional patterns in their cottage windows. The origin of the Spindleberry festival, or Spindlemass, is like most things in our part of the countryside, lost in the mists of antiquity.

Some old herbal books recommend spindleberries for their purgative qualities and others for their binding effect and some for both at the same time. Many country folk are addicted to them. But old Dr Higgs, who retired from practice in Bournemouth and previously in west Africa, to live at “the Hollies”, an ivy-grown villa subject to subsidence at the outskirts of our village, maintains that this is contrary to reason, and that he could think of many other substances which are equally without any effect on the digestive system.

This is regarded with scorn and derision yet I often think that the traditional beliefs of the country folk, illogical as they may seem, are worth more than any rational argument.

by ‘REDSHANK’

ST JOHN’S DAY, Midsummer Day, has come and gone, bringing to the nature diarists’ community, as the country folk call us, melancholy thoughts of the inexpugnable passage of time and of the already declining year. In our neighbourhood, St John’s Eve is a time when age-old customs, elsewhere, alas, confined to the mists of antiquity, still flourish even in these prosaic days.

Young men and maidens, not to speak of some in neither category, forsake their clubbing to dance in the woodland glades, undeterred by ghostly commercial travellers, doomed to play solo whist among the trees for all eternity, who scarcely interrupt their play to hurl traditional insults from another world.

It is different with the watercolourists who, following another ancient custom, come trooping out from the neighbouring town to set up their easels in the woods, industriously sketching everything they see, including the indignant dancers. Many of them are retired schoolteachers recommended “remedial art therapy” by their psychiatrists, distressed gentlefolk and ordinary people lately released into the community.

All take their orders from the big, ginger-haired old fellow who seems to be their leader. From my library window I watched through powerful field glasses as he rallied them amidst the dancers, lashing out with outsize paintbrush or sharp-edged paintbox and generally giving as good as they got.

He encouraged them, too, with anecdotes of eminent painters he seems to have known well: how he and Turner saw off a gang of criminal art dealers in Petworth Park; how he and Edward Lear, attacked by bandits while painting in Albania, put them to flight by endlessly repeating Lear’s limericks.

The village folk regard him with superstitious awe. He lives, so the talk goes in the Blacksmith’s Arms, in a rambling old mansion “way out t’ other side o’ Simpleham Great Park”. He is said to be a “gurt old ‘un for t’ book learnin’.” Some say he is writing a “Book of All Known Knowledge”. Some say he is the king of all nature diarists. All believe he is a powerful enchanter.

When I called at the inn the other day, there was an animated discussion about him, carried on, of course, in the genuine old British Composite Pandialect. Jack, the retired poacher told how, when laying a trail of sultanas to trap pheasants, he had seen the big man sitting in his enchanted garden, where creatures of the wild, deemed to be extinct in other parts of England, came to his call: the speckled linnet, the ringed dotterel, the corncrake and the wolf. Jack swore he had once seen an Andean condor perching on the enchanter’s shoulder and whispering secrets in his ear.

Old Seth the waspkeeper, who has a tendency to live in the past, and contributes a “Wasp at War” feature to the local newspaper, thinks the master watercolourist is a German or even Japanese spy, using watercolours to signal to enemy airmen. All believe he and his watercolourists are creatures of ill omen, and that to speak to them brings misfortune.

Though I am inclined to smile, I am sure there is a profound rural wisdom here, far beyond the grasp of your average know-all urban intellectual.

Nature diary

by ‘REDSHANK’

“SNOW in July, we’ll have sunshine forbye,” is an old adage still heard in the gunroom and four ale bar in our part of the country. Another old saying, “relevant”, as the country folk say, to the present unusual summer, is, “Nature diarists make their own weather”, already proved true a hundred times over.

As well as snow, we have had a freak sandstorm which deposited outsize date stones from North Africa on my croquet lawn; earth tremors which brought down a grandfather clock in the Chequers Inn on top of Old Frank, the landlord, causing much hilarity; and, to crown all, barn owls roosting together with a whole flock of magpies in Paxman’s Oak.

And – another sign of an unusual summer – when Old Seth the Waspkeeper, last of a dying breed, began his yearly “telling the wasps” according to immemorial custom, covering all the latest divorces, seductions, rapes, muggings and drug-peddling cases in the village, the cantankerous creatures would not listen, buzzing round in circles with a monotonous droning sound and giving every sign of cynical boredom.

Having had more snow than usual this winter, we have been blessed with a sudden warm spell that makes one appreciate spring’s coming is not far. While winter days are best spent indoors beside the hearth, today’s temperature made some significant flirtations towards 60°, thus requiring a venture outdoors. Bescarved and betweeded, I tromped through the fields, greeted by birds singing an unusual tune, perhaps surprised by the lack of late winter’s usual frigidity. Viewing the leafless trees and the lifeless vegetation there is little doubt winter is still definitely upon us. But at least some of our avian friends remain amongst us.

Over two-hundred species of bird, the enthusiasts tell me, have been sighted in the fields and marshes through which I tromp. Most famously, twenty years ago a Wood Sandpiper — Tringa glareola — found its way to these parts. The Wood Sandpiper breeds in Scandinavia and spends northern winters in southern Africa or Australia (a not disagreeable routine, one would suppose). The 1990 Wood Sandpiper of Westchester whetted the whistles of birdwatchers (themselves a curious species) up and down the Eastern seabord. (more…)

by ‘REDSHANK’


With the prolonged fine weather, all kinds of exotic creatures have appeared in our part of the countryside for the first time in living memory. Hummingbird hawkmoths are plentiful. I have seen not one but a dozen at a time hovering over the snapdragons in our flower garden.

Not only hummingbird moths but hummingbirds have appeared. Calling at the Three Tuns, I found the regulars in an uproar as a whole bevy of these beautiful little creatures hovered over their pint pots, causing the less wide-awake to drop them on the floor.

At last Old Ted, the landlord, fairly lost his temper. “Get away, you pesky little varmints!” he shouted, lunging at the glittering little beauties, then chasing them across the room until he tripped over an antique horsecollar he keeps for grinning through and fell heavily to the ground, cursing all tropical interlopers.

There was a big laugh at this, and Old Jim, who always keeps a stuffed magpie on his person to avoid bad luck if he should meet a single magpie, annoyed the landlord even more by producing it and waving it in his face.

Meanwhile, the hummingbirds were hovering over the shove-halfpenny board, putting Old Frank and Old Amos off their game. Rustic oaths bombinated about the smoky room, growing ever more archaic and outlandish as I tried to make hurried notes in phonetic script.

by ‘REDSHANK’

THE badgers were out again last night. Not content with taking three pockets from the billiard table. Old Brock had made off with all the billiard balls as well, as I discovered when proposing a game with a fellow nature diarist this morning. What can your average badger want with billiard balls? Will this sagacious beast barter them for more useful objects with owl or weasel?

Musing on this, we wandered out across the garden in the golden September sunshine, and into the village giving a “good morning” now to Old Jim the Poacher, sweating in his heavy multi-pocketed poacher’s greatcoat, now to Old Miss Briggs, the former dame school economics teacher, now to a foursome of commercial travellers setting off for a solo whist session in Bragg’s Wood.

Passing the lopsided thatched cottage of Old Seth Gummer the Waspkeeper, last of his kind, we knew by the unusually loud buzzing from his garden croft that he was busy with the ancient custom of “telling the wasps”, so different from that equally ancient custom “telling the bees”. A grizzled figure dressed in waspkeeper’s sacking, with a perforated tin pail over his head, he was telling his vespine charges about all the happenings in the neighbourhood this summer that he thought would interest them.

Sure enough, their eager buzzing grew frenzied as he described, in lurid detail, adulterous affairs, divorces, rapes, lesbian elopements, cases of drug addiction, paedophilia, muggings and other assaults, and, most exciting of all, the formation of a retro-techno-sado-rap group in the village.

Pausing only to say a hurried “good morning” to Old Seth, who was fumbling vaguely with his antique Edison Bell recording apparatus, we walked on, accompanied by a few enterprising wasps, pondering on the strange mixture of old and new, of immemorial tradition and brash modernity in our part of the countryside.

by ‘REDSHANK’

To many, the end of summer and onset of autumn brings melancholy thoughts but for us in the nature diarist community it has many consolations as the season unfolds, bringing all the traditional customs still observed in our part of the countryside.

Old Seth the wasp-keeper, last of a dying breed, has now celebrated the age-old custom of “telling the wasps”, when he gathers his vespine charges about him and confides, with their buzzing approval, all the notable events that are taking place in our neighbourhood: actual and grievous bodily harm, rape, fraud and the formation of new gangs of hooligans of ever-increasing ferocity.

This is the season when late groups of water colourists invade our neighbourhood with their easels and brushes, under the aegis of the big ginger-haired old fellow who seems to hold them in a state of awe and even terror, making no secret of his utter contempt for their efforts.

“Now pay attention!” he can be heard roaring miles away. “First get control of your picture space. I well remember my old friend Jack Constable telling me that command of your picture space was half the battle, and you could forget all about composition, structure, tonal harmony, conceptual values and all the rest of the stuff you learnt at art school.”

His group of amateur artists, mostly pensioners and elderly people who have been advised by their psychiatrists to get something to do, and old ladies who seem unable to distinguish between paintbrushes and knitting needles, received his advice with reverence, positively elated that he should speak to them at all.

I felt rather sorry for them, but mindful of the belief, common among the village people, that any contact with these strange folk can bring misfortune, I did not intervene, even when a pathetic old pensioner with several hearing aids grasped my arm and begged me wordlessly for help.

The whole group disappeared over the brow of Mandelson’s Hill preceded by the ginger-haired leader, who is still shouting about “Bill” Monet and other eminent painters he had known, waving an outsized paintbrush, and I saw them no more.

Oddly enough, the country folk have great respect for him and seem to regard him as some kind of enchanter. Certainly they believe that all the creatures of the wild, from magpies to badgers, will come to his call. He lives in a big rambling old house with a large overgrown garden where he can be seen sitting and meditating on the secrets of nature. Old Frank the gamekeeper swears that once, peering through a gap in the garden wall, he saw him sitting amid the brambles and deadly nightshade with a huge Andean condor perched on his shoulder as he whispered his secrets to it.

The country folk call this enchanted garden “an European eco-habitat” and are agitating for an official warden with a degree in environmental studies.

by ‘REDSHANK’

St John’s Day, Midsummer Day, has come and gone, bringing to the nature diarists’ community, as the country folk call us, melancholy thoughts of the inexpugnable passage of time and of the already declining year. In our neighbourhood, St John’s Eve is a time when age-old customs, elsewhere, alas, confined to the mists of antiquity, still flourish even in these prosaic days.

Young men and maidens, not to speak of some in neither category, forsake their clubbing to dance in the woodland glades, undeterred by ghostly commercial travellers, doomed to play solo whist among the trees for all eternity, who scarcely interrupt their play to hurl traditional insults from another world.

It is different with the watercolourists who, following another ancient custom, come trooping out from the neighbouring town to set up their easels in the woods, industriously sketching everything they see, including the indignant dancers. Many of them are retired schoolteachers recommended “remedial art therapy” by their psychiatrists, distressed gentlefolk and ordinary people lately released into the community.

All take their orders from the big, ginger-haired old fellow who seems to be their leader. From my library window I watched through powerful field glasses as he rallied them amidst the dancers, lashing out with outsize paintbrush or sharp-edged paintbox and generally giving as good as they got.

He encouraged them, too, with anecdotes of eminent painters he seems to have known well: how he and Turner saw off a gang of criminal art dealers in Petworth Park; how he and Edward Lear, attacked by bandits while painting in Albania, put them to flight by endlessly repeating Lear’s limericks.

The village folk regard him with superstitious awe. He lives, so the talk goes in the Blacksmith’s Arms, in a rambling old mansion “way out t’ other side o’ Simpleham Great Park”. He is said to be a “gurt old ‘un for t’ book learnin’.” Some say he is writing a “Book of All Known Knowledge”. Some say he is the king of all nature diarists. All believe he is a powerful enchanter.

When I called at the inn the other day, there was an animated discussion about him, carried on, of course, in the genuine old British Composite Pandialect. Jack, the retired poacher told how, when laying a trail of sultanas to trap pheasants, he had seen the big man sitting in his enchanted garden, where creatures of the wild, deemed to be extinct in other parts of England, came to his call: the speckled linnet, the ringed dotterel, the corncrake and the wolf. Jack swore he had once seen an Andean condor perching on the enchanter’s shoulder and whispering secrets in his ear.

Old Frank the waspkeeper, who has a tendency to live in the past, and contributes a “Wasp at War” feature to the local newspaper, thinks the master watercolourist is a German or even Japanese spy, using watercolours to signal to enemy airmen. All believe he and his watercolourists are creatures of ill omen, and that to speak to them brings misfortune.

Though I am inclined to smile, I am sure there is a profound rural wisdom here, far beyond the grasp of your average know-all urban intellectual.

During the past fortnight, I have been learning to row on the lagoon in Pelham Bay Park, a body of water with which I had no previous aquaintance. “Learning to row?” you ask. “But weren’t you in the University of St Andrews Boat Club during your bejant year?” Yes, dear reader, I was a full paid-up member of said body, but I was too busy avoiding lectures, failing courses, and other such frivolities of one’s first year at university to actually row, and only went to circuit training when Ezra Pierce irritated me enough that I felt obliged to give in and head on over. Nonetheless, at the suggestion of a good friend I decided to enroll in this program and have not regretted it at all. Rowing, in short, is addictive, and it is a grand shame that I shall have to wait until at least September in Scotland to get back on the water. (Above, the Travers Island clubhouse of the A.C. can be seen from the far end of the lagoon). (more…)

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