Wiltshire wildlife

This is my weekend picture; some of the flowers and beasts around Caen Hill. In the top right corner, you can see some of the locks on the Caen Flight, the staircase of locks that takes the Kennet and Avon Canal up from the Avon valley to Devizes and the Vale of Pewsey. In the distance is Roundway Hill. Creatures included are grass snake, slow worm. wood mouse, hedgehog, badger, fox, roe deer, tawny owl, pipistrelle bat. The flowers are primrose, wild garlic, bluebell, thyme, lemon balm, and foxglove.

 Now it's done, I'm having a beer and contemplating a fry-up. 

It's three years now since I committed to buying my boat, and move onto the canal. Crikey! Now, excuse me, I've got BEER to drink. 

the fox that barks in the wood

There's a sure remedy to lying in bed at half three in the morning, worrying about everything there is to do.

So I got up and stoked the stove and got on with this painting of some boaty friends.

Presently the owls kicked up a quick shindig, and then a little while later dawn happened.

With a sunny day, you can do so much more, when you're on a boat; rainy days keep you skulking indoors, but sometimes you really need the extra space that the Big Living Room provides. Today it allowed me to take the bak wheel off my bike and pour lots of oil into the gear hub (Shimano hub gears don't like muddy towpaths)

sorry, I was so engrossed in tinkering with the hub
that I didn't take a pic in the middle of the job

 Then a quick ride to Bathampton to look at Becky's alternator, which wasn't charging the batteries. More by luck than judgement, we found a loose wire and it started behaving again.

Exciting development on the galley front. I found a recipe in the River Cafe Cookbook for pizza fritta. Now, we are always at home to pizza on this boat, and a recipe that cooks it in a frying pan is certainly worth a bash.

Make the dough for the base in the usual way; stretch out as thin as poss to cover the base of the frying pan; cook it until the bottom is nicely done, take off the heat, flip it, put the topping on, and return to the heat, with a cover over the pan (I use a tin plate). And blow me down, it works a treat.

The afternoon slowed down until it was motionless; the low sun ignited the Traveller's Joy with a cold white fire. Then a fox started barking the slow seconds in the woods, and we tiptoed into the evening.

wasps, hornets, butterflies, maps

The sun came out and I moved the firewood off the roof of the boat down into the the cabin. Tucked up in the wood pile were several somnolent wasps, looking for all the world as though they were dead, stripey pharaohs, but groggily reviving on being disturbed. I evicted most of them, but one flew around the cabin for ages before finding its way out. 

A walker stopped to look at the canal map, and decided to buy one. I'm moored at Hornet's Nest; he asked if I've seen any here. "Yes, but not many. Unfairly maligned, aren't they?"

He agreed. And talked about the hornets he's seen out in Italy. 

"What's the italian for hornet? I know a wasp is vespa, like the scooter"

"Hang on, I know I know it but... bee is ape"

"Direct from the latin, then"

"yes.... ah, calabrone! Wonder what's the etymology? Hang on..." he pulled out his mini computer "...it's hard to read in sunglasses ....ah! Uncertain Indo-European origin. Not very helpful."

"Covers a multitude of sins..."

I got onto my computer and jiggered around with my butterfly paintings, as you see. It's a tricky business, colouring the background. I had to lift the text up using a magic wand, and clone out the mess behind it. Sorry, this is graphics software talk. 

Then I uploaded the butterflies to Redbubble, where you can find them. I like the idea of making patterns out of pictures, that can endlessly repeat. Though having lines that continue through each block into the next one is more of a challenge, and more exciting when it comes right.

Deborah was amused yesterday; a colleague had told her she had a friend visiting from the USA, who showed her "a really brilliant meme about Trump and Brexit..." -and Deb knew it was going to be my map. Gosh! I'm certainly getting my fifteen minutes' worth with that. Or at least, the map is. I just threw it out into cyberspace.Go litel book, and so on.

death of a deer

"Otter? ...dog?" -my visitor had seen something odd swimming past the window, and was trying to make sense of it.

"Ah, muntjac," I said, and grabbed the camera. We watched intently; the deer swam to the bank opposite, which was steep and concreted, and tried to get out. He finally succeeded, but was obviously unsteady on his feet, and a hind leg was dragging. He settled under a hazel tree. Presently, he limped along the bank into the undergrowth.

Deer -and other animals, and indeed people -often get into difficulties in the canal; the bottom is muddy and treacherous, and the banks steep and surprisingly difficult to climb out onto, as I have found to my cost on the three occasions I've fallen in. A friend who fell in last January, at night, was stuck in the water for several hours before being rescued, and suffered badly in consequence. At least the deer was saved from drowning, but there was still cause for concern.

We kept an eye on him, and Chris and Jinny, my boating neighbours, called Penny, a friend who is very good and knowledgeable about rescuing wildlife in difficulties. But there wasn't much you could do; the deer was mobile enough to melt into the dense undergrowth if approached. If you didn't know he was there, you'd never guess from this photo, would you?

The next day he fell in again, perhaps while trying to drink. When he returned to the hazel tree, we saw that his back leg was evidently badly broken.

The local wildlife trust sent a marksman, who shot him with a .22 rifle. We rowed across and picked up the body. In death, he seemed tiny. He had abscesses on both back legs and had evidently been very badly injured; rutting? hit by a car? Who knows.

don't count your ducklings

It's always a mistake to enumerate your ducklings;
So many of their mickles fail to make it to a muckling.
When their mum swims by with a feathery flotilla
Of little bobbing humbugs, remember that they've still a
Sticky time ahead of them as canapés and finger food
For herons, crows, and foxes- indeed, anything that's in the mood.
Could you swear you just saw something where the local pike just made a wave?
Don't think too much about it, now; a duckling simply won't be saved.

otter in the night

I'm sceptical when people claim to have seen otters on the canal. Oh yes, I think, but don't necessarily say, you saw a mink and would like it to have been an otter. Because otters are Nice, and mink are Nasty.

Still, one of the neighbours (neighbours in the canal sense can be sometimes next door and sometimes  several counties away. This is how canal society works).... one of the neighbours, I say, was insistent that a nearby culvert is a fine place for sitting out at dusk and watching the otters cavorting. Better than Strictly, it is, apparently.

I took myself down there, leaving my bike at a distance and walking feather-footed along the last few hundred yards of towpath.

It was a little early in the evening for otters to be cavorting, evidently. The silence was broken only by the choir practice of a local tawny owl clan. And a thousand rooks and jackdaws.

Down the wooden steps to the culvert, was a little platform for the canal people to stand on while inspecting things. And on the little platform was some poo.

If otters were around, this might well be the sort of place for them to leave their spraint. So I descended. It looked superficially a bit like small dog poo, but poking it with a stick (as you do) revealed fish bones.

Very ottery.

That night I was awoken by splashing and thumping against the hull. I took my Very Bright Torch and popped out of the after hatch. SOMETHING was swimming along the opposite bank by now. Two very bright eyes reflected my torchlight back to me. It dived and reappeared some distance away, then dived again...

Cycling to town the next day, a short distance from the boat I found this signal crayfish, intact save for the fleshy tail that had been scooped off and presumably eaten.

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.

a morning badger

I put the kettle on, then steeped over to the open galley hatch. And froze. 

There on the bank opposite was a badger, drinking from the canal. Presently it turned and ascended into the wood, becoming invisible almost immediately in the undergrowth and the half-light of the early morning. 

For some time I heard it slowly truffling its way through the wood, in the general direction of home.

After my bucket of tea, I went up to the wharf, half a mile away. (When the hot weather began, I moved Eve to the shadiest spot I could find, in the shade of some great ashes and oaks. It's made a big difference to the temperature on board, which is now bearable). There are some wild cherry trees up there, and I'd noticed the day before that they had reached a peak of ripeness, some being deep red and some so deep that they looked almost black. One tree's fruit was quite sweet but a little bland; the next tree's fruit looked exactly the same, but was really sour, but with a strong flavour coming in behind the sourness. I thought it would be just the thing for putting in vodka...

The blackbirds were already busy in the tree; once wild cherries are ripe, they're gone in next to no time. They clucked petulantly and occasionally flurried at each other, even though there was plenty for everyone. A thrush darted up, plucked a cherry off on the wing, and returned to a chick, almost as big as itself, and presented it with the fruit.

I filled my Tupperware tub, and watched the martins that had begun wheeling over the housing estate over the water. Then there was a PLOP that is always worth investigating, and, watching the other bank, I saw a water vole swim along, then scramble out and start nibbling noisily at the reeds. Another one joined it. You could easily spot where they were, as the vegetation shook under the onslaught of their nibbles.

I got the camera out, then put my specs up on the top of my head, the better to see through the viewfinder. I turned, and PLOP. 

This time it was my specs.

Nothing else for it; off with shoes and leggings, and into the water. It was a great relief to find that the bottom was gravel, and not the slimy, foul mud that you often find down there. I guess the swash of many propellors had kept it clear. The water was just about waist deep. After ten minutes of probing with my toes, I found the specs and lifted them out.

And so home, to the second shower of the day.

Shame it was such a poor picture of the vole. Sometimes it's better just to enjoy the moment.

wild times on the canal

Sitting out on the back hatch while the sun comes up; one of the joys of summer on the canal. If you keep still, you tend to get ignored by kingfishers and whatever else happens to be around, so you see lots. Yesterday morning I heard a clop, and turned, startling a roe deer on the towpath right next to me. It dashed back the way it had come, and dived into the canal, swimming across and scrambling up into the woods, where it did that disappearing trick that roe deer are so good at, only the white rump persisting a little longer, like the Cheshire cat's smile.

Up by the Sainsbury bridge in Bradford on Avon, a flight of steps ascends from the towpath to the road. I was heading up that way, and about to insert the front wheel of my bicycle into the ramp that allows you to get bikes up and down, when I saw a slow worm wriggling its unhurried way down.

I put the bike to one side and took its picture. A woman appeared at the bottom of the steps, pushing a pram with two small children in it. I told her about the slow worm, thinking the children might find it interesting.... they were more than interested; they picked it up and started to squabble over it, playing tug of war as I attempted to intervene without shouting at someone else's children, and the mother made ineffectual remarks; she evidently wasn't concerned about the welfare of the poor slow worm...

...and its tail came off and wriggled furiously. The brats were persuaded to deposit the creature in the grass, and led off crying. 

Hey ho.

Then there was the dog that came galumphing along the towpath, leaping into the water and emerging with a Huge And Very Dead eel. It dumped it by the side of my boat, and trotted away. Well, thank you.

I heaved it into the middle of the canal, and for the ret of the day it drifted to and fro in response to the vagaries of the water flow down the lock and up through the pump.... I began to contemplate means of sinking it or attaching it to a passing boat. But it was finally lost from sight and smell.

I hope.

March hare

...this particular March hare was started in autumn, hence the seasonal fruits. But I finished it today after it had been sitting around for months. And it's the first day of March. So happy St David's Day!

Uffington Hare

The new picture, following on from the Questing Vole, shows a hare looking up at Lepus, the constellation of the hare, below Orion and pursued by Sirius (though you can't see them in this pic, just in case you were looking). I drew the picture then scanned it and coloured it using Paint Shop Pro. This is good for those deep, smooth colours, as you see; I'd made two starts at this picture using watercolour, and put them aside as it just wasn't the medium for the picture I had in mind. 

As several people asked if it was going to be available as a card, I thought I'd better get some printed up; the cards won't be ready for a few days yet, but I've just picked up some prints and they can be got here on Etsy

sunset

Some evenings, it would be a positive sin to stay indoors. Against the deepening red of the sunset, the local ducks flew quick sorties in neat vics of three or four, wings swishing as they criss-crossed the sky at all altitudes. A loose stream of laconic crows barked their way from right to left in the vague direction of the rooky wood. It reminded me of the Battle of Britain, with the crows as Heinkels and the ducks as the Spitfires. Casually mixing my film references, as the indigo of the evening intensified, groups of geese came whooshing by at low level. That was obviously the Dambusters.

on small publishers who sell online

When I published Inking Bitterns, I set up my own website to promote, inform about and sell it. You can find it here. I also registered the book with with Nielsens, the people who supply ISBN numbers; and I think it is from them that the big online sellers get their info on what is newly published, and, in the case of Amazon, automatically list the book. It was odd seeing all these Big Sellers advertising my book, especially because I had decided not to sell through Amazon, because they take such a big cut that I would have made a loss on each sale, quite apart from any other consideration, like, you know, TAXES.

So yesterday I got yet another email from someone who wanted the book, but had been discouraged by going to Amazon and finding that it was listed as CURRENTLY UNAVAILABLE - we don't know when or if this item will be back in stock.

I tried putting a review on the Amazon page, explaining this and suggesting where prospective buyers could go to find the book. But the review wasn't accepted- it jut dropped into a hole in cyberspace.

So then I wrote to Amazon, thus:

I am the publisher of Inking Bitterns - it is a book of illustrated poetry, and I sell it at a low price because I think that's important. So I haven't used Amazon to sell it, because it would mean my making a loss on each sale. But you have listed it anyway, presumably as an automatic response to its listing by Nielsen.... and you have marked it as out of print. Feedback from other sources tells me that people wanting the book have been put off by this information; it is in fact sold through my own website, and has been ever since I published the book.
Could you please remove the listing for Inking Bitterns, or amend the information you have on your listing?
Dru Marland
Gert Macky Books

...and got this reply

 Amazon Your Account Amazon.com
Message From Customer Service
Hello,
I understand your concern about published book "Inking Bitterns" which is listed on our website; I'm very sorry for the information you found on the book.
Given the case, I would like to introduce you to our Author Central; in order to make changes into the listing of the book, "Inking Bitterns" on your end, please join our Author Central. Author Central is a resource designed to help authors become more active participants in the promotion of their books.
Amazon's Author Pages also offer customers a new way to browse favorite authors, discover new books, and more. The pages also include bibliographies, biographies, and discussion boards.
You can find out more at:
http://authorcentral.amazon.com
For further assistance, kindly click the link below so you can contact our Author central customer service through phone or email:
https://authorcentral.amazon.com/gp/help/contact-us?ie=UTF8&language=en_US&openi...
I hope this helps! We look forward to seeing you again soon.

Hmm, it didn't help. A further mail, after a complicated trawl through the Author Pages:

I would like the information on Amazon about Inking Bitterns, a book that I published, to be amended so that it does not claim that the book is out of print. The book is in print, but has never been available on Amazon because it is not economic for me to sell on Amazon.

...and another reply, which may be more helpful (time will tell)

Hello,
I understand your concern about the book you published.
I forwarded this information to the appropriate team so they can check and correct the issues found on the details page of the book.
Rest assured, as soon as I hear from them, I'll get back to you via e-mail.
Thanks for giving me time to find the resolution to your inquiry and we hope to see you again soon.
Best regards,

...Meanwhile, the book is, and always has been, available from GERT MACKY!

Alton Barnes White Horse

Here's the finished picture that I showed in the earlier stages in my previous blog post. The Alton Barnes white horse looks out over the Vale of Pewsey, which is a lovely, wide open place where you can sit up on the Down and gaze over to Salisbury Plain and imagine the far distant past, in between admiring the evolutions of the huge jet fighters that occasionally wheel over the Plain, and the distant rumble of artillery.

I had a paint crisis on Saturday, when I put on a wash for the sky, and it went horrible. I use Daler Rowney hot-pressed paper, because it is really smooth and allows me to paint very fine detail. But the flip side is that it won't suck up huge amounts of paint. So I did a quick dash to Bristol (Wiltshire seems a bit deficient in art supply shops) and picked up some gouache from Harold Hockey's. The sky is painted with Winsor and Newton's Permanent White, which is their most opaque; and Brilliant Blue mixed in with it. 

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. 

Landfall

A recording of the poem, with accompanying picture.

As splash is bracing, so's the daffodil's yellow;
Salt-sharp, and waxy to the touch,
First lighthouse loom, that longed-for landfall after much
Wandering winter oceans.

Later, mellow on the Bristol train, my holdall stuffed
With Coptic crosses from Djibouti, buddhas from Colombo,
I watch the Wylye valley's willows roll
Slowly to the breeze's brush;
The roebuck stilled mid-field to watch our passing

And, on the bare bank, at last is such
A spray of primrose, petal pool of cream,
As glows against the stormcloud massing
Over the Plain, moment of grace

Warm as this sun now on my face,
Through the open window where I lean
To hear the evening-drowsy blackbird's song;
"Made it, though. Made it through another one."

inking bitterns - poems and pictures for wild places

 ...is now published.

It's a collection of poems from Colin Brown, Liz Brownlee, Stewart Carswell, Alana Farrell, Deborah Harvey, Alan Summers, John Terry and Cathy Wilson;  and it's illustrated throughout by me.

It costs £5, and you can easily buy it online from the Gert Macky website. Or, if you have the good fortune to live in Bristol (and if not, then why not?) - you can get it in the Durdham Down Bookshop, or Stanfords in Corn Street.

After our quick jaunt round Wiltshire yesterday, it can also be found at Devizes Books and the Corsham Bookshop,  both fine shops worth a visit even without the prospect of this particular book.

We'll be reading from the book at Halo, Gloucester Rd, on Monday 2nd December, and at Foyles on Friday 6th December.

And I'll be at the Local History Book Fair at the Bristol Record Office on Saturday 7th December, which is very handy for the Create Centre, who have their Festive Fair at the same time.

The Railway Rabbits

Most of us rabbits who disappear don't come back, Mrs, said Little Woo Woo, her dark eyes trembling. Not ever...

So begins the desperate search for Mr Rabbit....

Fresh from the printers comes The Railway Rabbits, the latest book by Geraldine Taylor, with pictures by me. She describes it as 'a story for children, written for grown-ups as well. ... for children, it's about a brave little rabbit searching for her father, helped by Hairy Old Badger, a one-eyed owl and London taxi drivers.'

It's a limited edition of 100, and if you want one then it costs £5, and is available from Geraldine Taylor c/o 28 Berkeley Rd,, Westbury Park, Bristol BS6 7PJ,   email geraldine@geraldinetaylor.co.uk

egret triolet

So white a bird, the egret sails
Serene above the Severn mud
That smirches us, but can't assail
So white a bird; the egret sails.
Our boots sink in; we flounder, flail.
We'd rise and follow, if we could,
So white a bird. The egret sails
Serene above the Severn mud.