NATURE Much ado about something

EASILY SPOOKED?The pheasant often cries wolf – though sometimes the danger is real.

Much ado about something


A pheasant’s alarm, a mink’s calling card, a wildflower wonderland and a grebe family’s swimming lesson


Country sights and sounds
John Shelley

The repeated alarm calls of a cock pheasant were enough to attract my attention, but not to excite it, for the pheasant has a reputation for fussing over the slightest anomaly he is presented with. The mere sight of frog or mouse sends his head rising to the fullest extent of his neck.
He examines his new acquaintance, first with one eye and then the other. (His eyes are on the side of his head; he sees best sideways.) Should the creature he has met with move, he raises his voice in a single or sometimes twin, shrill staccato complaint that carries far. In short, he cries wolf, making a fuss over nothing.
The magpies, however, know what they are talking about. It is not their nature to get excited or alarmed over trivialities. So when they added their voices to the pheasant’s objections, I knew I would have to investigate.
After slipping through the hedge as quietly as I was able (crashing about like a blinded bullock, says James), I followed the fence-line as far as the mare donkey and her foal, both of which were focused on the far corner of the field where the pheasant still fussed. They saw me – nothing passes them by – and came running to see what treat I might have. That was it. The game was up. The pheasant ran off into the next field and the magpie clan went swooping and scolding after the cause of alarm.
I walked over, half expecting to catch a glimpse of a young fox driven by hunger to hunt during the day. The unmistakably thick and cloying scent of mink reached my nostrils.
Just yesterday one had crossed the road in front of my car. Now, I am certainly not in favour of using an automobile as a weapon, but I must confess the wheel twitched in my hand, almost of its own accord. If only the mink would leave us our wildfowl we might let him live. As it is, he will kill every day as long as he is able. I missed, by a foot or so.
Heading home, I cut across the moor between wood and water, where the poor ground was once part of the lake bed. It now supports a Lilliputian woodland comprised of stunted birch and willow, neither of which are able to force their roots through the marl to the mineral soil beneath. Around these trees grow tough grasses and a host of wild flowers.
July sees this almost-Alpine meadow at its best and I’ll warrant such an array of colour is found seldom in any garden. Golden hawkweed glows in the sun alongside purple-crowned knapweed, a favourite for bees. We have a forest of marsh helleborines, each loaded with semi-pendulous, pink and yellow pastel tinted flowers, together with blue vetch and sun-bright bird’s foot trefoil. Wild thyme drapes over anthills, Ladies’ bedstraw grows in golden plumes alongside yellow-centred, white starburst ox-eyes, and so much more, and all of it, every shape and colour and scent borne from brown dirt.
We see the work of the local jay family coming to fruition. Each autumn these birds gather stores of acorns and hide them away, often burying them in the ground at the edge of established woodland. They scarcely, if ever, remember where they placed their spoil, and by late spring many of the acorns have germinated. Now hundreds of miniature oak trees have appeared. I should like to see them in fifty years time, or even a hundred.
I sat in my boat for a while, enjoying the late afternoon sun with my mind on an evening afloat, and witnessed one of the most comically beautiful things I have seen. A pair of little grebes had been fussing around the reeds, scuttling in and out of view for some time. I didn’t really notice when they disappeared, but I did see them return, each of them, male and female, carrying one of their young on its back. These were no bigger than the end joint of my thumb and appeared to be recently hatched, being mere balls of multicoloured fluff.
The adults swam side by side, communicating with peculiar chuckling noises. They suddenly dived simultaneously, pitching the babies headlong into the water where they sat in utter bewilderment, bobbing like a pair of furry corks. Was this their first swimming lesson? I think it might have been, for they had no idea what to do until their parents returned and led them in haphazard circles, plunging beneath and skittering across the surface while uttering their mad, laughing cries. Before I left the babies were learning to dive.
In the field behind, the pheasant started up once more. With mink about the grebe family will do well to stick together.