The Shortest Day

Today is the Shortest Day and boy, is it doing it's darnest to prove it. Today is the second of two really damp, low cloud, misty and drizzly days when the best that could be said of the daylight is that we've had eight hours of twilight and the best description of it is Dank! Everywhere and everything is wet, the roads are wet and mucky and as a result my car looks like it has been used for rallying, it is so filthy, the garden is wet and muddy and even the walls inside my garage are wet. What a difference from the beautiful, dry, bright and frost day featured in my last posting. Gawd, this next couple of weeks can't rush by fast enough, goodbye Christmas, welcome New Year and the increasingly longer days.
And talking about Christmas, this year, possibly because I'm reading more blogs, although it's in the media as well, I've been driven nuts by people who seem unable to accept that some people actually dislike Christmas and even harder to understand, that people don't have some kind of medical or mental condition because they actually enjoy being on their own on Christmas Day. Long periods of my adult life have been spent on my own over Christmas, yes, I have gone out to Christmas dinner at people's houses  but it's such a joy to speed off home as soon as possible and simply shut the door and be on my own.
There is so much falseness about Christmas these days, so much expense, so much debt, so much one-up-man-ness, so much guff about the need to be together, so little religion and the simplicity that Christmas started as years ago. There are also the once a year Christians, who go to Christmas Eve Mass and tell all their friends about how they're doing all the right things  On a phone-in on the radio this morning there was a whole feature about the quest for, and finding, the latest must-have and expensive toys and some parents stressing out about not finding said toys for their spoilt little darlings. Is that Christmas, I'm so glad that I dislike it and shun it and so amused that people find me odd.

Such a Frost

The thick mist/fog forecast for overnight didn't appear but a severe frost did and everything was covered in white when I went out to the paper shop at 6.00am. Later, as the sun began to rise in the dawn sky, I arrived at a white reserve in a temperature of -3 degrees.

Everything was covered in a white frost and it looked pretty bleak and foreboding.

 The reserve's cattle just carried on carrying on though, despite the fact that the grass that they were eating was frozen.

At first it was like walking round inside a freezer unit but gradually, as the sun began to radiate a semblance of heat, the frost began to lift and things became more comfortable.

A couple of small parties of Greylag Geese flew into the reserve from their overnight roost on the neighbouring farmland.

 Ice on the surface of the sea wall fleet, the only decent amount of water on most of the reserve.

So anyway, that is how it looked at first light this morning, a reserve frozen in time, pretty much how my frame of mind is at this time of year. Just holding my breath and waiting for the Spring to spur things into new life, just going through the motions. Yesterday, over lunchtime, the regular three of us carried out the monthly Wetland Bird Survey at our designated sections. Mine, the main marsh part of the reserve, came up with a reasonable variety of wildfowl and waders but as usual, thanks to the lack of water, nothing substantial numbers wise. Totals yesterday, among others, of  80 Greylag Geese, 70 Mallard and 110 Shelduck, look pretty pathetic when as recently as 5-7 years ago, when the Flood field was indeed flooded, we were counting wildfowl in the thousands.

I returned later in the afternoon yesterday to then take part in the monthly Harrier Roost Count. It was an amazing sunset in the still, December afternoon but then turned pretty cold as I paced up and down the sea wall waiting for the dusk to increase and my target species the Hen Harrier to suddenly appear  and drop into roost. Eventually, if any did do that, I missed them in the gloom and registered a nought, although up to four have been seen coming out of the roost at dawn in recent days, so Hen Harrier numbers looking better. At the same time, elsewhere on Sheppey, the regular Marsh Harrier roosts were being counted and came up with the amazing total of 103 birds going in to roost, Sheppey really is a national Marsh Harrier stronghold these days. 

A drop of water

Since my last post we have had a few more rainy spells and at long last a trickle of water is beginning to return to the reserve. Take the ditch below, photographed a month or so ago.....

....and how it looked this morning from a slightly different angle. It's only an inch or two of water and several other previously dry ditches are beginning to look the same - it may not be the feet of water needed but it's start.

While on the reserve this morning, under dark skies and a bitter and strengthening N. wind, I watched a Merlin hunting. Out over the saltings it flushed what looked like a Skylark and gave chase. The frantic Skylark rose up in to the air before plummeting downwards on several occasions, all the time being harassed by the Merlin making stoops at very fast speeds. If only the poor Lark would of landed in the vegetation it would of survived OK but it continued to keep flying up and eventually the Merlin snatched it and took it away to eat.
My rear garden, with it's canary aviary to one side, is not all that huge and this autumn I have spent a lot of time stripping out bushes in particular that had become very overgrown and were providing little for wildlife.  (Now that the large shrubs have gone the area at the top of the garden is bigger than it looks in the photo.) It looks a tad bare now but I have already begun planting plants that will cover the fences over the ensuing years, plants that will provide food and interest to insects of all kind. The same will apply to and bare areas in the borders, most things that I plant have to attract and feed bees and butterflies, etc., I'd rather plant wild flowers or some weeds, than pretty flowers that give back very little. Hopefully next summer I can post photos of it looking full and colourful.

Days Past

During these short, dark, damp, cold days of winter I often find it easy to open a bottle of red wine from my collection and sink into melancholia. Days and delights, often well gone by - long, hot and delightful days with the sun on one's back, warmth in the bones, a treat round every corner on a dusty road. Does it matter which road that we take, let's see where we end up, will there be a nice pub at the end - sitting in their garden, a hot sun on one's back, a nice pint of ale in the hand. Those subtle delights carrying on into a warm and daylight evening, the last warm rays lingering until 10 pm or past.
At times such events seem to stretch back so far - was last winter really so long ago, did we really do so and so well back in March, the coming back after a hot day out, the warm and lingering evening, the BBQ, the wine, the mosquitoes and the bats as darkness gradually crept in. Playing silly CD's into the enveloping darkness, Dean Martin, Frank Sinatra, Barry Manilow - another bottle - why not, and the eventually falling into bed, contended people.

Today started in the early hours with icy rain, which turned to snow at 7.00, giving us our first light covering since 2011 and then turned back to rain for the rest of the day. It's been cold, been wet and to be honest, bloody awful, and neither I or my dog have been out and the corkscrew is hovering. Will it of made much difference to the dryness on the reserve, without going there I know it won't of done as far as the ditches are concerned, but it will of made the surface of the ground muddier, especially where the cattle have walked. Rain is also forecast for tomorrow and so at last, are we finally coming to the end of our drought.
My rear garden at 8.00 - two hours later it had all gone.

Southern Water - or lack of it.

As you can see from the photo below, yet another ditch on the reserve has pretty much conceded defeat against the lack of rain that I've been bleating on about for the last year or so.

The roots that you can see in the top left of the photo are those of willow trees growing alongside, the roots should be in about three or four feet of water. The whole reserve, ditch and fleet-wise, is parched, with few wildfowl and waders but finally, the area's water authority, Southern Water, have gone public on the area's lack of water. On BBC TV local news last night they announced that we have a water shortage and that one of the largest reservoirs here in Kent, Bewl Water, is only a third full. They are now asking the public to cut down their water consumption by a quarter in order to avoid restrictions next Spring. And yet, and these two things must go hand in hand, new houses are being built in ever increasing numbers here in the South East and all those new households will expect to be plumbed into the ever decreasing supply, it's a nightmare that will continue to get worse.

To those in the north and west of the country it must seem unreal that we in the South East are in this situation mid-November but it's true and here on Sheppey seems the driest of all, it's as though we have some sort of anti-rain force field around this island. I've lost track of the number of times that rain, tracking from west to east across the southern counties has miraculously petered out just as it reaches us.

Never mind, at least this early morning was quite stunning as I walked round the reserve with little Ellie. Clear blue skies and the marsh white with frost as I arrived and gradually as the sun, still surprisingly warm, climbed up and slowly round the sky, it got warmer and the frost melted away. In the space of an hour I went from frozen to very warm and it was a joy to be there, if only for the scenery.

Tomorrow is a Long Time

It's a rare damp and misty afternoon here on Sheppey in Kent, after an even rarer couple of hours of rain. Best described as damp, murky and warm, oh how I wish it would rain regularly for weeks on end!
After spending the first couple of hours of the morning wandering round the reserve with Ellie, I spent the rest of it near breaking my back digging bone hard and bone dry soil in the rear garden of my house. I've cleared a largish area of all of it's shrubs and things, cleared the weeds, etc., and begun digging the site in the vain hope that the once normal winter weather of rain and frost will break up the ground and make it able to be re-planted in the Spring.  Now, I'm sitting in the conservatory, sipping a glass of beer, listening to a James Taylor CD and feeling quite wistful - James Taylor has that effect.

Dylan Thomas once wrote:-
"It is a winter's tale
that the snow blind twilight ferries over the lakes
and floating fields from the farm in the cup of the vales,
gliding windless through the hand folded flakes"......

As I sit here now on this mild, damp afternoon with dusk creeping mistily nearer, I wonder if I will ever see such a snowy scene here again, experience that hushed silence that creeps across the countryside and that delicious feeling of being tucked inside the warm nest of a home while all the world freezes outside. Out in the garden a big, fat, Wood pigeon waddles it's way down the lawn towards the pond and takes a drink. It has spent the last hour or so scurrying around under the bird feeder tubes, filled with sunflower hearts and being gorged upon by thirty odd House Sparrows, scattering crumbs non-stop to the pigeon below. The mist is creeping in from the nearby seashore, evening is approaching and out further in the estuary the fog horns are beginning to sound their eerie wail, a sound that has been the backdrop to so many of my memories.

Time to stir, time to shower, time to cook my dinner - time to think about tomorrow - tomorrow is a long time.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                              

Hard Times

Silly as this might sound, over the last couple of weeks I've been trying to dig some flower borders prior to the winter, should it actually occur. Being at the wrong end of the very long dry period that I keep harping on about and having clay soil, it's bloody near impossible to get a spade in the soil it's so hard. This is the silly bit - consequently, to make it a tad easier I'm having to put the garden sprinkler on for a couple of days in order that the ground softens up a bit and even then the soil is turning over in large clods like house bricks - plenty of rain and some hard frosts are needed.

The situation on the reserve and it's grazing meadows remains the same, endless drying winds, sunshine and just the occasional heavy shower. It really is ridiculously dry and talking to one or two farmers, it seems another problem is now rearing it's head as a result. Ditches and fleets on grazing marshes are always called "wet fences", i.e. all the time that they have sufficient water in them livestock cannot cross and stray where they shouldn't. Unfortunately, as you can imagine, with many such "wet fences" now dry thanks to the drought, livestock is wandering about all over the place, even on to neighbouring farmland and it's a real headache.
Now here is the bizarre bit, if you were to visit and look at the arable farmland alongside our grazing deserts, you'd almost say that the above was a lie, the recently sown wheat and rape is growing away like magic! Shortly after the crops were sown we had several heavy and prolonged showers, just enough to soak the top inch or so of soil, germinate the seed and start it into early growth, those fields look quite green.
Of course, several heavy showers are a long way short of the heavy and prolonged rain that we need to wetten and re-fill ditches to the average depth of three feet and indeed soften up the whole marsh so that birds can probe for insects.