The Crepuscular Hunter

Bluebells, Fallow Deer and Ancient Beech Woodland.

Crepuscular: Animals most active during twilight. (Dawn and dusk)

I wasn’t going to show you these pictures, just because they are not very good. Taken at 5:30 in the morning they are not good pictures of a Bluebell wood and they are not good pictures of a Fallow Deer.

These pictures are a small part of the reason that we get up before dawn and make our way into the forest but it is very hard to photograph because the light is so poor.

But I want you to know what it is like so…

The best thing to do when you look at these pictures is to close your eyes and let your imagination go to work.

Open your eyes for a minute, I just want to set the scene and give your imagination something to work with.

Fizz is on the lead, she is quite happy to be on a lead and she has to be because there are Wild Boar about. Fizz chases the sheep on the farm if she gets a chance, she doesn’t hurt them just chases them round but if she did the same with a sow boar with piglets she would get hurt. The Boar would not hesitate to protect her young.

We have been walking for an hour and about twenty minutes earlier I had been thinking that perhaps I was being over cautious and should let her have a run. Just then I saw an animal in the woods, I think it was probably a deer but all I saw was an animal on the edge of the wood jump back and disappear into the shadows.

Don’t get the wrong idea, I have no fear, this is a magical wonderland for me. I used to own woodland in East Sussex and there were boar on the land. I often slept in my wood. I spent ten years watching them and have had many encounters. I have never ever seen any aggression in the animals and my experience is that they have the disposition of deer and are very difficult to approach. We don’t get to see boar today just a deer.

Close them.

And open.

You need to be able to smell the forest. The air is very still and only slightly cool. We left home in shirt sleeves, it is going to be very warm in another six hours and you wouldn’t want to be carrying a coat.

Bluebells have a sweet scent and when you are surrounded by thousands of them, well… you can smell other plants in the forest as well as the trees and the soil but the Bluebells fill the air, the only thing that I can think of that I like better is Honeysuckle. This is the forest.

Then there are the birds, they are singing their little hearts out and every so often the song is punctuated by the hollow, echoing, rap of a Woodpecker.

There he is, a young male Fallow Deer browsing amongst the Bluebells, what a perfect thing to see.

(Male? I have seen his penis sheath, picture three. You can click on my pictures to enlarge them. With experience you will learn to look for these things)

He is stepping out onto the forest track.

And that is our lot. He has seen us.

I like wild animals.

Goodbye beautiful animal and thanks. I hope that I remember this moment forever.

And that is why we get up so early in the morning. I wanted you to know, even if I can’t photograph it.

What a lucky animal and what a beautiful place to live.

Come on Fizz, we have got adventuring to do.

Animal Magic

“Just like that”

It’s your destiny

The Swallows have fledged, or at least they are fledging. They are still in the nest today but they have been out and they can fly.

It has taken me a few days watching and all that you get are a couple of short video’s but for me, my understanding and the pleasure that I got from watching them makes a few days just a drop in the ocean. It was time well spent.

Anyway you should be glad that you don’t have to watch the whole twenty hours of video, that I now have to sort and delete from my machine to free up space.

Here are the best bits.

Yesterday morning there were five birds on the nest, there were five birds on the nest and then there were four birds on the nest. I had missed the very first flight and only realised when number five returned to the nest.

This first video starts with the mother calling for them to leave the nest, there is a little comic interlude of the way that they follow flies, their little heads bobbing in unison and in the last bit the second bird to approach the nest is the returning chick. Does he bring food back or do the others just think that he has?

This next video shows them leaving the nest and returning. They spent most of the day fluttering around inside the little alley way that has become their home and by the end of the day they were all settled back on the nest but this is fledging. Today I think that they have ventured outside and seen the blue sky but they still return to the nest.

These birds have made me think a lot about nature as a whole thing and about life and death in the wild. The caterpillars that I am trying to raise are falling to the parasitoid flies that these Swallows depend on for food and survival. The parents have done a really good job of raising them given the wet weather we have been having. I have often looked out in the pouring rain and wondered how they are managing to raise a brood and now this, flight.

I am so in in love and in awe of them and so damned jealous.

I am jealous because they get to eat those delicious crunchy flies, or perhaps because they can raise offspring in a matter of weeks and not the 26 years it usually takes us. Maybe I am jealous of something else altogether…..