Wednesday 2 April 2014

The Lark Ascending, Kingcups and Frogspawn

Standing outside Shrewsbury Town Football Ground this afternoon, I was delighted to hear above the traffic sounds of that side of town the crystal sounds of a lark, invisible high above me but very audible. This used to be a much commoner sound than it is now. Much of our farmland is no longer suitable for skylarks, so you need a good spread of permanent pasture, or an area of heathland or moorland, to stand much chance of hearing them.

Fortunately, there are quite a few places round here that seem to fit the bill. And in particular I remember a wonderful sunny day a few springs ago on the Stiperstones, when skylark song seemed to completely surround me, with many birds singing away all at once. I felt sad to think, though, that in childhood days I could have heard something similar on farmland near my home - not any more.

Later on in the day, Ann and I walked a length of the Montgomery Canal to a point where we would expect to see kingcups in flower - one of the largest and showiest of the buttercup family in our countryside, and a marsh and poolside specialist, of course, the marsh marigold. And gold it certainly is, you could never describe this flower as merely yellow. The marshy bit of woodland where we expect to see them had been badly hit by the storm winds of the past winter, with some of the trees mangled and split apart - but the kingcups were well out, shining like golden beacons across the dark water.

Walking back along a newly laid path, I was pleased to see that the distinctive pale violets that are a feature of this section of the canal had survived the earthmoving process that had been taking place. In the water, frogs were actively mating, which will provide a useful food supply for the local fish, but also, one hopes, enough surviving tadpoles to give a new generation of adult frogs. The only fish we saw today was a dead pike, floating belly up a little way out into the canal; normally we see quite a few, but the water today was very dark and turgid.

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