The world seems swamped with depressing news these days and then you see this. We have to have hope for our beautiful planet, what ever the news.
Ethiopia has closed government offices to ensure everybody plants trees. Let’s follow Africa and hope each seedling grows! 🌱🌳🌳🌱
( For those of you who have to study this poem for an exam – trout are fish that make a circular ripple on the surface of the water as they come up for air hence “trout ringed pools”)
While I was watching fat flanked trout flick in a clear stream as the evening fell, I was reminded of the lines from the Kipling poem The way through the woods:
“when the night air cools on the trout ringed pools,
Where the otter whistles his mate,
(they fear not men in the woods because they see so few..)”
I love the repeated ” oo “sound, which makes the line so wonderfully peaceful and elongated like a sigh of satisfaction.
It is a wonderful poem for evoking sounds as well as sights.
I particularly like the alliteration of ” the swish of the skirt in the dew” where the repetition of the ” s” in “swish” and “skirt ” mimics the sound of the fabric brushing through the grass .
The metre of the rest of the line ” steadily cantering through ….” lets the reader actually feel the movement of the horse as it makes that unmistakable jerky double step of a horse cantering on the path in the “Misty solitudes” .
Kipling manages to evoke such a hauntingly lovely place through his almost effortless use of visual and auditory imagery .
As with all poems worth loving, you should read this aloud to yourself, just to feel the words roll in your mouth. Enjoy!
The Road through the Woods.
THEY shut the road through the woods
Seventy years ago.
Weather and rain have undone it again,
And now you would never know
There was once a road through the woods
Before they planted the trees.
It is underneath the coppice and heath,
And the thin anemones.
Only the keeper sees
That, where the ring-dove broods,
And the badgers roll at ease,
There was once a road through the woods.
Yet, if you enter the woods
Of a summer evening late,
When the night-air cools on the trout-ringed pools
Where the otter whistles his mate,
(They fear not men in the woods,
Because they see so few.)
You will hear the beat of a horse’s feet,
And the swish of a skirt in the dew,
Steadily cantering through
The misty solitudes,
As though they perfectly knew
The old lost road through the woods.
But there is no road through the woods.
Ruyard Kipling.
Walking by the edge of an old duck pond , the shadowed earth between the grass shivered. A tiny vibration of stalks and a sense that the ground was spotted with raindrops falling upwards: the frogs had emerged.
Great lumbering things that we are, we minced and high footed our way, conscious at once of our potential to massacre with each clumsy foot fall.
This single froglet rested momentarily in an outstretched hand. Its pin prick heart beating blood around around this minuscule body; nerves registering our heat, eyes wide to the boundless ocean of our enormous flesh.
Two animals together for a single heartbeat next to an old duck pond in the July shade.
Today was the sound of kestrels learning to fly, keening, crying , mewing, mewling, over and over as they flopped and fell and soared and swooped for the very first time out of crowed malodorous nests in dark church towers out, out into the wide blue sky flying with clouds and martins and jackdaws and the clacking of stork bills and the unrepeatable perfume of lime trees in flower for the first time, the first time, the very, very, first time in to the new world.
I was telling my neighbour about the hedgehogs is the garden and she told me how amazed she was to see them in her garden too. There is no surprize in this as a hedgehog roams about two kilometres a day. The problem is that so many gardens are so securely fenced off from each other that hedgehog cannot move from one to another. Small gaps between fences panels or holes under lines of wire fences are all that is needed for a prickly hog to squeeze safely through and to find enough to eat each night.
Humans are obsessed with tidiness. We like straight lines and we fill the gaps in with unyielding concrete in the name of tidiness. We strim down the rough patches and we mow the grass within an inch of its life. Tidy gardens have very little wildlife and are such a waste of wonderful spaces!
Putting hedgehog path ways through new and old fences is a wonderful way of cooperating with your community, getting to know the neighbours and helping one of the most irresistible mammals I know.
This link to the wildlife trusts of the UK shows you how to do it.
https://www.wildlifetrusts.org/actions/how-create-hedgehog-hole
We spotted a large hedgehog out in the afternoon sun in our garden yesterday. She seemed in good health and unafraid. Something seemed to be sticking out of her mouth, but it was very hard to get a good look when she hid by a wall.
My husband thought it was a little bird foot, but this seemed ridiculous. We left her in peace and she trundled off into the bushes. On the lawn was a half eaten young sparrow, which one of our cats had caught from the bird table and then eaten the breast in typical faddy cat fashion. The bird was also missing its feet.
A check of the guidebook confirms that cute hedgehogs will eat carrion and like nestlings that fall out of the nest.
We make bread; the crusts go every day to the sparrow; the sparrows make a lot of babies; the cats catch some young sparrows; the hedgehog eats the left overs and makes more hedgehogs. Nature is never wasteful and never soppy!
The future for the environment can look bleak, but every day there are signs that people are waking up and maybe things can get better. Sport does little for me personally, but this article on the living green walls at the home of tennis, made me really smile. Every dull concrete wall in every polluted, depressing city in the world will look like this one day . Bring on a green living future!!
This post is for those who would like to trap moths and discover what is flying at night when they are safe in bed. If moths give you the heebie-jeebies then skip this post!
I am sure there are other ways of doing it, with other equipment, but I am just sharing my own experience for those who are curious.
I have been trapping for about 12 years on a regular basis. I had been out with other naturalists many years ago in Wales, but it wasn’t until my husband bought me a trap for a present that I started in earnest.
First thing you need is a moth trap.
https://www.watdon.co.uk/ Watkins and Doncaster provided Charles Darwin with his equipment. They send across the world and they know what they are doing. I recommend their basic plastic bucket trap to start with and two bulbs (in case you smash one!).
All a trap is, is a UV light bulb which attracts the moths, above a plastic funnel. The moths then fall down into the bucket below, where they perch on cardboard egg boxes in safety for the night.
The next morning you switch off the light, open the trap gently and carefully remove each egg box one by one. You then photograph the moths (in case they fly off!) and then try to identify them using a good guide book.
I use British Moths by Chris Manley published by Bloomsbury. I have not found a similar single volume guide for France. I am certain there are excellent guides for where you live. There are also some excellent free on line identification sites. I use https://ukmoths.org.uk/systematic-list/ and also http://montgomeryshiremoths.org.uk/ which is very good for showing what is around at the right time of year.
You make a note of the weather and date and keep a list of what you find in English and or Latin. I tick off all the species that I have confidently identified in my guide book, so that I can find them again more easily. I later send my list and photos to my local naturalist organisation, https://faune-alsace.org so that my records can be compared with others, but you can skip this bit!
That is the bare bones and I am aware that it sounds unutterably dull and nerdy. The reason for doing it is because you get to see the most wonderful creatures with your own eyes, while drinking a cup of tea on the back step of your own home and that takes some beating as a wildlife experience. I have been lucky enough to live in Zambia and to spend months on safari, I have lived in Costa Rica for four years and in Brazil for two and spent as much time as possible in the forests, rivers and oceans, seeing wildlife that most people only see on David Attenborough tv programmes and yet I have never enjoyed wildlife in such comfort, or been so amazed on a daily basis as I have been when moth trapping in my own back garden!
Tips.
2. Start by identifying the ones with clear colours or markings. Leave the dull ones until much later. There is no shame in being confused. If the guide book says the moth that you have spent hours identifying is very rare in your area, then you probably have made a mistake.
3. Keep your moths cool. If it is warm and the trap has been left in the sun before you open it, then they will all fly away before you identify them. Move your trap into the coolest shade you can and let them settle before taking out the boxes. If you do this, you do not need to put them in collecting jars to look at. They will sit happily on the egg box while you admire them.
4. Take a photo on your phone or camera, so you can look back at them and identify them when you have time. This final phase often requires a glass of chilled wine and a sofa!
5. Let the moths fly off when they want to, or shake onto a bush. My cats used to try to eat them, but now treat them with feline disdain.
Enjoy!!
1. UV light and plastic funnel.
2. Box containing old egg boxes and electrical connection.
3. Lead to mains or to a big battery if you want to set up the trap in a remote place.
4. Identification guide.
It has been painfully hot here. My garden has had to fend for itself, as going out in the sunshine has been impossible. Luckily we are on holiday and can sleep the heat of the day away and get up before dawn, open up the house and let in a breath of cool air.
My moth trap has been on almost every night and a wonderful range of visitors has appeared to be sorted over in the pearly morning light before the sun races up over the hedge.
I have been trapping for more than 10 years now and I never cease to be amazed by the diversity and beauty of the moths that I find and how they vary with the seasons. I have identified more than 160 species of moths just in my back garden over the years and 67 species this year so far. Every time I open the trap there is a possibility that I will find a moth that is a totally new record for me and that is a real thrill. I send all my records into my local wildlife society on line and it surprising how under recorded French papillon du nuit (butterflies of the night) are.
The photo at the top is a lovely large emerald that fluttered out of the trap onto the lawn.
And this beast is a privet hawk moth.
As they say in the film credits “no animal was hurt in the making of this blog” and all these gifts of the night fly away after identification.
Who knows who will arrive tonight?
Cathy's real country garden 
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