The Valley in February

It was cold, wet and miserable on the valley this morning, every tree and bush had raindrops clinging to it.

I thought that I would make it a quick walk for exercise purposes only, no hope of seeing anything unusual, but then as usual I began to find things to interest me.
First it was the trees:

I don't know enough about trees, I can recognise a few,oak, beech, willow,hawthorn but most are just trees. I decided this morning that I am going to have a Tree of the Week where I look closely at one and then go home and try and identify it. The above tree is my first, it was a nice shape, clearly deciduous, and had little pine cone like things (I think I will have to learn the language as well).

It also had long greeny red shoots on it:

Now, I've been on the web and I think it is an alder although if anyone has any better ideas please set me right. The greeny red things will develop into catkins and hang down I think. Alders grow well on wet or marshy ground and are frequently planted on reclamation land as they fix nitrogen into the soil in a similar way to legumes. The wood was popular as it didn't rot very easily and was used to make the soles of clogs and also the pilings on which Venice stands are made from alder. According to Wikipedia so is the body of the Fender Stratocaster although I can't see that that is anything to do with water resistance.
Moving on down the valley I was interested to look out for any traces of a house which is marked on my 1906 map next to where it says Primrose Valley:

Judging by the size of the shape on the map, it must have been quite a reasonable size yet there is no trace at all today. I think this is the area where it would have been:

It is difficult to imagine that there was ever a house there, The woods look as if they have been there forever but as I learnt this morning that the alder tree is capable of growing almost a metre a year I suppose it is quite possible that they are only fifty or thirty years old. I was also thinking how lonely the house would have been with just a track to it and half a mile or so from any other building but then I realised that this is how lots of houses in the country would have been before the advent of cars meant that all houses needed a good metalled road up to them,
It was at this point that I would have liked to have gone home, I was quite cold and the sleet was sending little icy darts into my face, but then I heard a woodpecker from the other side of the railway line. I'd caught a quick glimpse of the woodpecker last week (greater spotted) but it had flown off across the railway line. I couldn't resist trying to track it down.
By the time I had reached the footbridge and crossed into the grassy area on the other side, I couldn't hear it any more, but this tree (blighted as they say in books) seemed promising:

I went up to investigate , there were no birds in it apart from a blue tit, but on the other side of the tree there were distinctive round holes so I am pretty sure this is the woodpeckers haunt.

So now I have another place to check on as well as the jays' trees and the kingfisher's pond, I will have the woodpecker's tree to keep an eye on. I will also be checking on the alder tree to see if those inflorescences (see I have looked up the correct word since starting this post) develop into catkins like the pictures in the books.

Who Do You Think You Are, David Bailey?

I'm getting increasingly frustrated with my photos. I was out this morning, in the damp early morning mildness, and saw the kingfisher. Joy! I took a photo. Here it is:

I know there is a kingfisher in this photo but even opening it in Photoshop and enlarging it made it difficult to tell the difference between bird and bulrush.
I have partially solved the problem, the frugal way by buying a second hand digital camera off ebay. It is a fixed lens camera only suitable for snaps but at 16 megapixels it will be a big improvement on the phone. It cost £40, my dream digital SLR costs nearer £1000 and there were ones I couldn't even dream about costing over £2000.
The other solution of course is to dig out the old Canon AE1 35mm SLR with its 300mm telephoto lens. This does have its drawbacks 1) It will seem like forever waiting to get the film back from processing 2) they would then have to be scanned into the computer 3) I would have to learn how to use it again. Shutter speed? focal length? remind me someone.

Deadlines no more

For the last nine years whilst working at the university, January 31st has been the deadline for filing the Transparency Review Return for which I was responsible. January went by in a blur of long hours, stressful meetings, last minute adjustments. Prior to that, I ran my own chutney business, so January 31st was also a stressful day, as it was filing day for self assessment tax forms. Many a time have I hand delivered the form to the tax office at 5.30pm. So there is a strange feeling of lightness in the air,  coupled with a nagging worry that I have missed something important, as for the first time in seventeen years, the last week in January is just another step on the way to spring.
This morning on the valley, it was mild and springlike, I saw two rabbits in the wood as I hurried on my way to the pond. Like a teenage girl hoping to see her crush hanging out on a street corner, my walks these days all head in the same direction as I hope that today the kingfisher will come out and display himself. Yesterday he flitted several times across the pond before settling on a branch overhanging the pond, as though posing for an illustration in a bird book. I couldn't get a photo, my camera is only on a mobile phone and not good enough for anything further than a few feet away, also by the time I have taken off the security code that I put on in a fleeting attack of  responsibility, any self respecting bird has flown off long since. Here is a picture of the overflow area of the pond though, looking very full since all the snow has melted.

Hoping that my coat was long enough to keep my bottom dry, I sat down gingerly on the grass and  for ten minutes waited for anything that might show itself. Although the kingfisher is my star attraction, the supporting players in the guise of little brown birds that flit in and out of the bulrushes were all out. If they would stay still long enough to get the binoculars to focus on them it would be a help. Out too were a pair of mallards, the duck I saw earlier in the month now being joined by a drake. I do hope there will be ducklings in spring.

 At this point another star player came into view as a red kite soared across the sky. By leaning back so I was lying back against the hillside I could watch its graceful trajectory. It was at this point that I realised how much my life had changed. Never in the last seventeen years, had I thought I would spend any time in this last week of January, lying on my back on the grass watching birds.

The Valley looking Alpine

A quick picture from Tuesday when the sun came out, the sky was blue and the valley looked like an Alpine ski resort (almost).

The Valley

As I said in my opening post, I don't live in the country, much as I'd like to.I live in Leeds, alongside half a million other people. However that doesn't mean I am surrounded by concrete, in one direction I am a stone's throw away from Temple Newsam Country Park and in the other, a slightly longer stone's throw is Roundhay Park.
This is not where I walk Jess though, I walk her by taking a walk down the garden and opening a gate in the fence at the bottom which leads onto the valley.

 The valley is part park, part wasteland, part nature reserve. It was once something less pretty, a map of the 1890's shows 3 quarries, Halton Sewage works and a disused colliery. Later the quarries were used as a convenient landfill tip which has in part guaranteed its status as a green area as the long grassed over tip produces too much methane for building to be safe. Instead it is mainly used by dog walkers, footballers, people taking shortcuts to work or school, teenagers needing a place to congregate and drink alcohol (less of them at this time of year) and thieves hiding from the police (in summer the noise of the police helicopter hovering over the valley using its thermal imaging camera is quite common).
Despite all this human  activity, there is a surprising amount of wildlife. Since starting my daily walks there with Jess I have seen foxes, rabbits, pheasants, jays a whole flock of magpies and amazingly a kingfisher. My route is beginning to be known to me by the animals I see in each location. Thus the thicket beyond my fence is where I have seen the foxes (dangerously close to the gardens with their chicken coops), I walk down towards the railway bridge passing the magpies field where a whole flock of twelve or more will often congregate. Turning right to walk by the railway I have twice seen rabbits dash across the path and into the embankment, further along is the jay;s wood, I saw a pair there this morning fluttering in the air together before settling on a branch. Doubling back at the next railway bridge, I pass a less than spectacular pond.

To my amazement at New Year, I saw the bright blue flash of a kingfisher there. It was as amazing as it was unmistakeable and I am delighted to say I have seen it once more since. On the hillside slightly above the pond I have seen a heron, with its huge grey slightly menacing presence. My route then takes me back past the magpies field (useless to try and hold on to superstitions when there are so many about), and up the hill past the bowling green, which I think of as the pheasant's territory having seen them on two occasions there.
Who knows what  I will see when spring comes and the days lengthen, fox cubs playing in the grass? Is the kingfisher a passing winter visitor or could we see chicks? As long as I have Jess to walk, I will be out there every day, marking the changes brought by the seasons.
I wrote this yesterday but had no chance to post it due to the internet being down, this morning's walk gave me the chance to examine paw prints in fresh snow. There were a surprising large numbers of rabbit prints which led to patches of grass cleared of snow by the wind. The presence of droppings suggested that the rabbits had come to take advantage of this.
It is snowing now and due to carry on until midnight, leaving me a fresh set of tracks to folow in the morning no doubt.