Right of Spring
The first day of Spring came upon us earlier this week. The weather has been quite changeable of late with days of temperatures in double figures followed by days where it was lucky if it got as high as 5C. In the Lake District snow was making it difficult to get feed out to the sheep on the fells whilst in the Cotswolds, sheep were being put on fields of yellow trefoil and white clover to mob-graze.
Meanwhile here on the home front everything in the garden seems advanced by a week or two. The narcissi and primroses fill most views and the hellebores are still going strong - one set catching the morning sun as it rises over the fence, a view I can savour from my bed but probably not after next weekend when the clocks change!
Buzzard, one of a pair seen over the cover
Out on the fields, the red kites and the buzzards are in good form and almost everywhere. I have not seen any hares yet which has been a bit worrying until I checked my records from last year. I did not see any good boxing pairs - or in this case a threesome - until well into April, so plenty of time just yet.
I signed up to the National Plant Monitoring Scheme recently and having selected my square, a few miles away from where I live, was looking forward to learning about wild flowers and plants. At the weekend we went to walk over the allocated 1km square - there are two footpaths that conveniently bisect the square - with the aim of plotting the five small sections to be monitored. The fields are mostly arable with a couple bits of pasture with cattle or sheep. As this is a big shooting estate, there are a couple of spinneys and some cover crop in this plot.
Before proceeding any further, I needed to contact the land owners for permission to carry out the surveys. Making an assumption that the land belonged to the biggest landowner in the area I contacted the estate office, explaining that I wanted to find out who the landowners were so that I could write to them formally, saying what I would be doing. I got a fairly prompt response that effectively refused any permission even though the detail of the work had not been given:
The land is partially owned by the ....... Estate and partially by another private land owner. Unfortunately the Estate undertakes this type of monitoring itself and the land is within a environmental stewardship scheme. It is also tenanted and forms an important part of the Estate’s shoot. Unfortunately this means we aren’t able to give permission for you to access the land in question. I am sorry we can’t be of more assistance.
Rather brusque I thought. And rather typical. What was wrong with finding out a bit more? Where do they send their monitored data? And what has the shoot got to do with it? I decided to lay that one down and move on (though I did consider returning to the site and strictly follow the footpaths through the burgeoning crops instead of walking round the edges of the fields).
