We’re very close now to the Winter Solstice, and my winter-dark reflection time, so here I go…
Another few months, another move: this time to the little east(ish) Yorkshire village of North Cave. The main ‘reason’ for this move was because the flat available was so close to the Yorkshire Wildlife Trust’s nature reserve of North Cave Wetlands.
I’ve loved this place for years, and on and off have watched it grow from the bleak left-overs of the quarrying industry to the amazing place it is now… and it’s still developing, with all sorts of plans now the Trust has acquired the empty farmhouse and its buildings, situated right in the centre of the reserve.
Over the years I’ve visited, I’ve had some wonderful nature moments: mostly alone, sometimes with a variety of my special people (even if one or two of them have needed more persuading than others!).
My recent visits though have taken on a whole new significance. Primarily because I feel now a deep connection with this place, rather than it being simply another lovely wild(er) space to visit. Even when I am not there, but sat here at the laptop, or reading on my sofa, I feel its existence just a one minute drive or a ten minute walk away. I open my window and love just knowing it’s there. At night, especially, when human activity is reduced, I can hear and even smell it. And in the daylight I see many of its other-than-human residents and visitors too, passing my window.
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| Hobby: a beautiful summer visitor |
I’m loving it that I have a new and rather special nemeton. I’ve created my sacred indoor space, as I always do, wherever my current four walls are, but to have an outdoor nemeton so close by, and to feel its existence so intimately - even when I’m not in it - is a new and wonderful shift for me. I’m planning on facilitating some wellbeing walks there in the new year, so let’s see how that goes…
I’m also planning on another blog, dedicated to the reserve, though with more focus on and detail about the species I encounter there, but for now here’s one small but amazing event from yesterday’s visit:
Lapwing for Lunch?
To see a peregrine is a wonderful thing. To see a peregrine in a stoop dropping down at speed onto its prey - even better. To see a peregrine ‘contour flying’, trying for a kill at a wetland, putting up hundreds of waterfowl in its wake - better still.
And this is just what happened - repeatedly - at North Cave Wetlands this morning. I was chatting with a friend, a fellow regular visitor (with better eyesight than me) who drew my attention to an approaching peregrine.
It was wonderful to get a closer look at its beautiful markings through my binoculars, but as the lapwings, gulls and a variety of other birds took to the air, and the peregrine came at them from another direction, I decided the action was a big enough picture - and close enough - to watch with the naked eye. Always my preference if possible: the least encumbrance twixt me and the action.
Over and over again the peregrine made unsuccessful forays, from different approaches, over the lake, putting up the resident ducks, lapwings, gulls and even the cormorants. Over and over again the peregrine disappeared briefly into the trees and bushes surrounding the lake and the water birds returned to their feeding and grooming. But the peregrine maintained its repeated attacks. Once, so low over the water even the dabbling ducks became divers, and disappeared underwater rather than attempting to rise from it.
It was one of those moments - in this case, a long-lasting moment - I love so much when out and about in nature: an event giving me that absolute sense of what I call the ‘otherness of nature’. The sense that nothing else was happening in my life - or indeed the world at large - apart from witnessing this hungry peregrine trying to get food, and its prey trying to avoid becoming food. The primal struggle of eat or be eaten playing out right in front of my eyes. We are being reminded repeatedly these days (and rightly so) that we homo sapiens are nature too, but this small vignette of that ‘otherness’ of the natural world made me reflect on how much we have removed ourselves from it. Or tried to.
Then, suddenly, my reverie was interrupted.
“It’s got something!” my friend shouted. This I thought I wouldn’t see properly without my binoculars, but then realised the ‘something’ must be big, as even without bins I could see it hanging from the peregrine’s talons. The something was soon identified as a lapwing: quite a good sized lunch for the peregrine.
I grieved momentarily for the lapwing, but was pleased the peregrine’s persistence had paid off.
