April 2008 Archives
Red eye express
Posted by Cliff Birchall on April 24, 2008 11:03 AM
WITH the rapidly growing cereal crops in the fields making a thick green curtain, pheasants are having a good time looking for insects and other food.
The other morning the only way you could spot them was by looking for their red eye patches. It was as though there were lots of disembodied heads moving about the fields.
Now in their brightest mating plumage, the pheasant cocks are presenting brilliant scarlet heads. It made them easy to spot.
Also making a colourful addition to the morning was a charm of goldfinches near to New Hill House Farm, dashing for cover into the hedgerow.
Hardly colourful but no less impressive was an oystercatcher flying over the fields in Lord Sefton Way, its beautiful black-and-white plumage presenting a striking zig-zag pattern as it passed over the fields.
And I spotted my first pair of swallows yesterday.
Music on the moss: The first Tim Buckley record I bought was Lorca, his first real expedition into jazz. It's an uncompromising record that sees Buckley using his voice as an instrument more than anything else, stretching words into syllables of sound rather than normal verses. The brilliant Lee Underwood backs him on guitar and pipe organ.
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What's fawn and quick?
Posted by Cliff Birchall on April 1, 2008 9:24 AM
Weasels and stoats are normally just spotted as shapes racing across a country road at an increadibly high speed for something so small.
Such was the case this morning on Clieves Hills.
I rounded a corner and there was a weasel - the smaller of the two compared with a stoat and without a black tip to its tail - working away at F! speeds.
It crossed part-way across the road and then did what all nature seems to do - it turned back. It did a circle in the blink of an eye and then disappeared into the verge.
You need to see several - usually on several occasions - to build up a picture of what they are like as animals. They are extremely agile and you can imagine that small rodents and mammals whose paths are crossed by a hunting weasel or stoat have little or no chance ot outwitting or outrunning them.
They have a fiercesome reputation as hunters. I usually see a stoat two or three times during the year in Downholland, between the Saracen's Head and Farmer Ted's on the bend by Sparrow Wood. Although much larger, they are just as agile and fascinating to watch.
I'm still trying to work out why a pintail duck was sitting on the chimney of my neighbour's house yesterday morning. It did not flinch when I walked out to the garage, ran the car out, closed the door or sat and watched it for five minutes. It's the first time I've seen a duck perched on the chimney of a three-storey house inland!
Music On The Moss: After The Byrds, we're back to another favourite: Captain Beefheart And His Magic Band. I loved Trout Mask Replica from first hearing it in 1969. But my favourite album is the one which followed, Lick My Decals Off, Baby. With just one guitarist, it's pared down but still full of complexities. Doctor Dark is the top tune, followed by the instrumental One Red Rose That I Mean. This is the album on which Peon first appeared and it is interesting to compare this take with the same musicians playing it live by a Devon stream on the later Mallard album. There is some frantic harmonica on I Love You, Big Dummy but you also get more of the frenetic sax playing by The Captain. He also really uses his vocal range on this album, which encompasses everything from humour to rage.
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This page contains an archive of all entries posted to Man on the Moss in the April 2008. They are listed from oldest to newest.
March 2008 is the previous archive.May 2008 is the next archive.
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