The Two Terriers

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The eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month

November 11, 2016

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A squadron photograph, Italy, 1944.

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As if you're there

A week or so ago friend gave me two books about wild fowling by Peter Scott and both published by Country Life. I've now read them from cover to cover and travelled to Ireland, Scotland, Hungary and England, to ponds, lakes, rivers estuaries and the foreshore. Now I have no desire to spend all night hunkered down on the foreshore in the tidal mud and be at the mercy of the weather but reading them I was well and truly transported there in my imagination.
Now both of the books are going to be passed on to a friend who is not only a shooter but a wildfowler too, he goes down to the marshes on The Wash to do his wildfowling so maybe, just maybe, reading the books will inspire him to greater things.

The paintings and drawings by the author are a treat too and very, very atmospheric. I don't think he is up there with 'BB', aka Denys Watkins-Pitchford, in the writing or illustrating stakes but these are two great volumes and anyone who has experience the ma…

Triple terrier trouble

Three Parson Jack Russell Terriers ready for their dinner and it can't come quick enough for them. On the left Barney with a paw held up and tail wagging in expectation, in the middle Lucie and on the right Fizz, all of them ready to feast.
After dinner comes the walk down the drove and round the orchards, the weather conditions mean that the clean white colouration will end up a mucky brown splattered with mud and the dogs will be soaking wet. The bonus as they slowly dry-off is that they will begin to give off that distinctive odour that always reminds me of the smell of wet sheep.
Right that's quite enough of the philosophical musings it's time to eat and then it will be time to plot a route through the deepest puddles and mud and get thoroughly filthy.
What could be better?

The rootstock lives on

A dead Tsar plum tree riddled with rot and insects as well as being well drilled and weakened by the woodpeckers looking for their food. Although the aged fruit bearing tree has grown its last crop the rootstock lives on. The farmer told me that when his father planted the orchard the original Tsar plum tree was grafted onto a prunus rootstock and this graft has supported the tree for pretty well one hundred years. That's a lot of plums.
Now the old tree will be separated from the rootstock and any timber that isn't suitable for logging and the fire will be left where it falls for the wildlife to colonise and break down into the soil.
Meanwhile the original rootstock will be left to bear fruit in the form of Bullace and the Boss intends to make some Bullace gin or vodka and some jam too. That works for me.
Yet again proof that every cloud has a silver lining.

I'm still standing

Norfolk reed and despite the gales, rain, frost, snow and every combination the weather can throw its way the reed it is still standing along the dykeside. This winter the farmer deliberately left it standing to provide cover for the birds and animals and he couldn't have picked a better winter for the project.
So far we've seen herons, egrets, snipe, woodcock, mallard, teal, pintail and any amount of LBJs in there and water voles,. Muntjack and roe deer hunker down out of the wind too. The barn and tawny owls hunt along the headlands and we find plenty of owl pellets so it must be a bit of a one stop food store for the owls.
It's quite amazing how one small change in the farming routine can make such a difference to the wildlife.

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The eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month

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