Create with Nature

Nature in the city

Hello! while I’m sitting writing this, Cery Matthews on the radio, my attention is distracted by the blue tits who have finally found the new window feeder! Great to see their fabulous blue mohicans at close range! Onto my week.

Noticing

Snapshots of joy - forgotten crocuses in my garden, drifts of them in the cemetery, first blossom on my neighbour’s tree, the sun creeping back into my north-facing garden.

This week’s noticings prove that you don’t have to be in wild faraway exotic places to experience joy and awe in nature. The local community orchard provided so many moments during a short dog walk. The sky was blue and calm, the hat and scarf had been left at home. Within moments of stepping beyond the roadside hedges, there was a low drone, a flicker of movement and a tiny black ball stood out against the sky. My first bumblebee of the year confirms it is indeed a spring day. She (because the first bumblebees are the Queens waking from their winter sleep) was desperately searching for food but I hadn’t found many options, other than the oasis of an early dandelion. Further on, another buzzing bumble, quartering low over the undergrowth, searching for a flower? A cosy hole for her nest? I remembered the forecast and hoped they all find something before tonight’s below-zero temperatures. In the end, I lost count of how many stripy bundles I saw, all busy, none resting long enough for a photo. This is their crucial time, until they lay eggs and workers can take on duties, the future is entirely down to her.

The last treasure in the orchard revealed itself as we left, more magenta tiny wonders, even tinier than the first. These required all my noticing skills and plant brain to find.

As I was giving myself a dizzy spell to get a decent photo, my brain actually managed to multitask (one of my superpowers that long covid often takes away). It wasn’t just a chorus of unidentifiable bird alarm calls in the air, but a song thrush, in the very thicket I was photographing! Almost timid at first, practising maybe? As we moved away his voice, volume and confidence grew, broadcasting to the whole orchard. I think he’d been hanging out with the local starlings as there were some definite attempts at beatboxing! Then just as we returned to the roar of traffic, another great harbinger of spring floated in the air, my first “teacher, teacher”. While Great Tits don’t leave over winter, they have now decided it is time to sing.

Fatigue and muscle weakness mean I miss out on a lot of my usual activities. One of these is joining the awe-inspiring seasonal spectacular that is the Brighton pier starling murmuration. I’ve both swum and paddle-boarded under them and both give such an all-encompassing sensory experience. If you haven’t seen it already, there was a segment on Winterwatch with Megan recently. In Brighton, just before sunset, flocks arrive from their daytime foraging grounds around the city and surrounding Downs to roost on the Palace Pier. However, before tucking themselves up for the night, for reasons still only speculated, they fly in huge, mesmerising groups, drifting, soaring and dancing across the sky. On Wednesday, some fortuitous parking and clear skies enabled a good opportunity for me to at least watch them from the beach. Tracking them through binoculars meant I could see each bird, all moving together but twisting and turning as individuals. Oh, I need a better lens for my SLR camera! The flock moves as if directed by an unseen conductor. One of the hypotheses for these dances is that it gives them safety in numbers against opportunistic aerial predators, the constant changes of direction giving added protection. We saw this in action as a bird of prey swooped in, forcing the swirling ball into even more intricate dances. Unfortunately, that evening, this was the only moment of the classic murmuration, as the rest arrived in small groups, having first congregated at the derelict West Pier, then flying across low to the water like flowing mercury.

What does this remind you of? I see an aeroplane.

While Brighton is one of the most accessible places to watch this ballet (along with a few other Piers such as Aberyswth and Blackpool), the local population is decreasing worryingly, following national trends. They are now a red-listed species (of greatest concern). Numbers are boosted by winter migrants, but the size of the flocks are nothing like what I remember even ten years ago. There are many factors to this decline, but they are all the result of human action.

If you have a murmuration site near you, I urge you to wrap up warm, make a flask of tea and seek out some avian awe. Go to Starlingsintheuk.co.uk to find a spot near you. Remember the countryside code!

What have you spotted this week?

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Creating

I’m going to need a new green sketchbook! The brighter drier weather has meant it’s now more appealing to sit and sketch outside, now my fingers don’t threaten to drop off! I’ve got much better at carrying my bag around with me (rather than shoving everything in my coat pockets like a hamster) which means I always have my sketchbook. Short bursts of drawing are about the limit my brain can handle anyway at the moment.

Sometimes I might just have five minutes to sit on a log by the side of a road. Last Sunday, D was parking the car so I grabbed the opportunity, just a bramble escaping from the hedge, but a better use of time than scrolling my phone.

Green sketching in action, thanks D

I can find something to draw in most places. While the walk in the orchard produced many treasures, I hadn’t found something I wanted to sketch. However, sat waiting for the birds to return to the feeder tree, I realised the tree trunks intertwined rather pleasingly. So ten mins of sitting in the sun, B next to me, sketching. My patience was rewarded, as by the end I could add birds to the feeders in my sketch.

And now to prove that green (or blue) sketching doesn’t have to be serious. At this week’s swim gathering, as I started sketching a bit of seaweed, my lovely friend decided they needed some embellishment. So I present a new Seabirds* speciality ‘Cheese Savoury topped seaweed’! Now forever commemorated in my sketchbook. Apparent further variations are being planned involving Giant Wotsits!

*my swim group was started by the wonderful women that run Seabirds Ltd, a not-for-profit online shop that supports those that need it to get ‘salted wellbeing’. through swimming and being by the sea.

Look carefully, the seaweed and their toppers are just to the left of the sketchbook, they blend in with the pebbles!

I’m at my parent’s in the countryside for a break for a few days so I’m going to attempt a (green) sketch a day. Watch this space - you are my accountability!

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Reading

I’m actually stuck into a fiction book for my book club this week, the first fiction book I’ve been glued to for a long time but it’s not nature-based! (If you’re interested it’s Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides)

So instead I thought I’d explain why I include a book/reading part in these letters. Nature writing - books, articles, blogs and even Instagram captions - are just as much a part of my nature world as being out in it. As well as what they can teach you, the writers I recommend are extraordinary wordsmiths, who conjure not just visual representations but a full sensory experience. Reading them reminds me of places I’ve been and adds to the list of spots I want to visit. They show me plants and animals I didn’t know about. Writers that weave part of themselves into their narrative, deepen my own connection to nature. British nature writing has developed as a genre of its own over the last few years, separate from scientific or memoir writing, weaving both of these into their pages. I’m so pleased that women writers are part of this rise. Hopefully, there will soon be more voices from the minority groups that are often excluded from the countryside. I hope these books and stories help fuel a greater interest in nature and the great outdoors. That it builds an understanding of the wonders the British Isles offers and how it needs our help as much as we need it. I hope that the more it appears in mainstream media, the more people realise that nature can be for them.

I’m intending on writing more in-depth reviews of books that have influenced or resonated with me so watch this space, I just need my brain to be able to do the books and writers justice. I’m also going to start an affiliate booklist on uk,bookshop.org as a way to share the nature writing love. I’ll post more once I get it sorted.

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So, that’s my week, shoehorning moments of nature joy and creating in between resting, a perfect wellbeing recipe.