wild times on the canal

Dawn near Semington. The roe hind raises her head and sweeps the horizon with the radar dishes of her ears. The fox is a red periscope surfacing from the thistles. A wood pigeon porpoises across the gulf of meadow. Fax and teletext messages burst in turn from the skylark and sedge warbler...

The hind examines a pair of cock pheasants who are quarrelling; she leaps back when they remonstrate with her; retreats a few paces, then edges forward again.

The fox tiptoes slowly away, quartering a nettle pitch with its head raised and ears well forward; it springs into the air, but whether or not it caught the mouse is impossible to tell from where I stand. The deer follows the hedge to a gap, and melts into the field of rape. 

Shortly after, the first jogger passes, and the towpath is recolonised by people. It's Sunday, and there are many walkers and cyclists.

As the sun begins to show signs of setting, a roebuck steps lightly out from cover and moves to a hollow in the field, where only his head and antlers can be seen. 

He looks expectantly back to the trees, and presently returns to them with a decided frisk in his hooves. 

The hind appears at the gallop, pursued by the buck; after a few circuits of the field, with much looking-back on her part, they settle to grazing, just out of reach of the last sunbeam that crosses the whole expanse, scintillating a million midges as it goes. 

A peacock calls, for this is, after all, Wiltshire.

goosegogs and fox prayers

The collection of empty jam jars under the galley cupboard is growing. They claimed their first prey last week, when Jan Lane called by, bearing the gift of goosegogs, fresh from her garden. So I boiled them up with a very small mount of water and some sugar, and they lasted long enough for me to decant them and eat them with cream, very nice too. Don't know what you call gooseberries done this way; goosegog idiot?

At five o'clock this morning a fox was barking from the hill above the canal. The bark didn't just echo around the wooded valley, it positively rang. So for this morning at least, this part of the Avon valley can be a welkin, a prayer bowl for foxes. I wandered down to the river to enjoy the sound, and heard the kingfisher, which flew by and perched high on a hogweed plant overhanging the water. So I fumbled with my iPhone in hopes of recording it, and so missed it diving in. Though I heard the splash. So then I started filming the place where the ripples were receding, to record its resurfacing. And missed it again.

Sometimes you're just better off living in the moment, I guess.

the barking of the fox

Here's Garden Fox, barking at twilight. It's one of a range of calls the local foxes make; yickering when they play or fight, screaming in the mating season. There's not been any screaming this winter; at least, not yet. I wonder if some of the local foxes have died? -in the past few years, there has been a group of three; but this winter I've only seen two at most, and only the solitary one recently. 

Partrishow

...a remote church in the Black Mountains, with the shrine of St Issui, and, in the valley below, a holy well. A good place, and I like going there. There's all sorts of things going on in the picture, but I'll leave them for you to find and put your own story on. (Click on the picture to see it large)

A picture for the year's turning. I've been thinking of how to do this picture for ages, and then just got stuck in and hoped for the best. There are bits of it I'm really happy with, and I'm also happy that I've started the new year with a new picture. Even though it meant I was very antisocial on New Year's Eve.

I've got some prints done, and they are available in my Etsy shop. There are two sizes, small (roughly A4) and large (roughly A3). 

There's a Fibonacci spiral in there somewhere, by the way!

busy

busy, originally uploaded by Dru Marland.

just at the moment, the gurt A0 drawing board that looms over my room like a big looming thing is overwhelmed with stationery, as I package up yet more cards. It seemed daft to keep getting them printed them in dribs and drabs, so I took a deep breath and ordered 500.... so, thanks to the economy of scale, I am selling them in my Etsy shop at £15 for 20 cards.

They are also available at £5 for 5. Or, heck, as few as you want!

Just sayin'.

a sloe poo

I'm snug in my parka, the wind is on the lively side of fresh. We're out on the water meadows by the Severn, up in Gloucestershire, looking for sloes. The first bushes we see have been stripped. But we find some, by and by.


A big white bird. Was that an egret? Seemed to be a bit lively for an egret, but it isn't the sort of day for a lazy, indifferent sort of herony flap across the sky. Two decidedly herony herons unfold from behind the hedge and circle away. A crow rises over the same hedge and is flung skyward by the wind.

Two wheatears are bobbing in the grass by Littleton Warth. Then they up and fly off, showing the white arses that give them their name.

There's fox poo, carefully deposited on a rock for maximum effect. It's full of blackberry pips. I imagine the fox, carefully pulling the blackberries off the bramble with its teeth. Further along, there's badger poo, full of sloe stones. But I didn't take a picture of that, because a car had driven over it and it wasn't so picturesque. You know how it is, when you're photographing poo.

back to work then

It's back to the drawing board, here at Schloss Marland. In a good way. Probably. This is another go at the three hares motif. And yesterday's picture was inspired by Alan Summers' haiku (below).

I've started looking into ways of selling pictures, too, before this room disappears under the teetering mounds of paintings, drawings and tubes of old paint that I have to fight my way through to get to the keyboard and type this. It's all rather messy. I've opened an Etsy account, but had to stop because I destroyed my credit card in error. As you do.

virgin snow
a fox makes prints
for the morning