Private Fishing



Pied wagtail waiting for insects at the waters edge

Spring has arrived with a vengeance this past week as fine weather has prevailed and migrant birds start to arrive in force. Chiff chaff’s are blasting out from every copse and the first martins and swallows are here, another week or so and the dawn chorus will be in full swing.


Spring is a great time of the year for other reasons too especially in the valley woodlands of the rivers Wansbeck and Blyth the spring flowers can be quite a treat. However, a quiet stroll or other activity along either of these rivers may give you more than an aromatic treat.

Both valleys are blessed with some very good stretches of semi natural ancient woodland. Get up early and brave the mists and the woods can be a noisy place first thing with little or no traffic noise the dawn chorus is startling loud, scatter a roe deer and the air will be filled with unearthly barks as they prong off indignantly.

On the woodland floor some of the real beauties lie tucked away beneath the hazel coppice; wood anemones and dog violets sway and as the season continues the air is filled will the sometimes over powering aroma of ransoms or wild garlic. In May of course you will be treated to blue bells that add an azure blend to the new spring greens.



Wood anenomes on a woodland floor

Keep going down to the waters edge and the water crowfoots will come into view and within the tumbling waters the first stoneflies and mayflies will be dancing over the waters surface where the trout will be crashing into their half submerged bodies taking their fill while the bounty lasts.
Spring woodlands are magical places but we have so few in the UK, we have the lowest percentage woodland cover in Europe, most of ours is dominated by commercial conifer plantations so the woodland of the Wansbeck and Blyth valleys are extremely valuable resources. They still contain our native red squirrel and in the rivers one of the best if not the best populations of the endangered white clawed crayfish in the world on the Wansbeck catchment.

I like to do a bit of fly fishing in the true J R Hartley sense of the word, imaginary! As most of my fishing involves standing motionless in the river whilst the trout completely ignore every feathered offering I present to them. That ability to blend and stand motionless within the background though has its advantages as much that is about doesn’t notice you pretending to be a rock.

Over the years I have had roe deer come down to drink next to me and a memorable shrew train around my wellie tops, six or seven water shrews all in tow behind the mother, like a miniature Benny Hill cameo. Some however, can be quite un-nerving especially in the low light of dusk when the eyes play tricks.

Fishing late one evening on the river Blyth the hairs on the back of my neck quite literally stood up. I have seen many otter whilst fishing, they usually pay you little attention as they get about their business but on this night one was more than interested in my apparel.

thats 'Mr Otter' to you

I noticed him coming down the pool as I pushed myself into deeper water to get at a rather difficult fish under some over hanging trees and thought he had just moved on downstream. But as I started to re cast I felt something brush my legs under water (JAWS came straight to mind), then without a sound or hardly a ripple he surfaced like U29 right beside me no more than a foot away. Not having good eyesight I thought Jurassic Park style if I don’t move he can’t see me.

Wrong! This really was the closest encounter I have ever had with a wild otter he came right up to me and breathed his fishy breath on me, tugged on my shoulder straps, nudged me; he coughed like a heavy smoker and vanished.

The message was quite clear “private fishing here mate”, I never caught a thing! a quick check of the family jewels, a sigh of relief but what a moment, despite his bad breath.

'Fish breath'

The Poppy by Francis Thompson

Summer set lip to earth's bosom bare,
And left the flushed print in a poppy there:
Like a yawn of fire from the grass it came,
And the fanning wind puffed it to flapping flame.


With burnt mouth, red like a lion's, it drank
The blood of the sun as he slaughtered sank,
And dipped its cup in the purpurate shine
When the Eastern conduits ran with wine.


Till it grew lethargied with fierce bliss,
And hot as a swinked gipsy is,
And drowsed in sleepy savageries,
With mouth wide a-pout for a sultry kiss.


A child and man paced side by side,
Treading the skirts of eventide;
But between the clasp of his hand and hers
Lay, felt not, twenty withered years.


She turned, with the rout of her dusk South hair,
And saw the sleeping gipsy there:
And snatched and snapped it in swift child's whim,
With-- "Keep it, long as you live!" -- to him.


And his smile, as nymphs from their laving meres,
Trembled up from a bath of tears;
And joy, like a mew sea-rocked apart,
Tossed on the wave of his troubled heart.


For he saw what she did not see,
That -- as kindled by its own fervency --
The verge shrivelled inward smoulderingly:
And suddenly 'twixt his hand and hers

He knew the twenty withered years --

No flower, but thirty shrivelled years.


"Was never such thing until this hour,"
Low to his heart he said; "the flower
Of sleep brings wakening to me,
And of oblivion, memory."



"Was never this thing to me," he said,
"Though with bruisèd poppies my feet are red!"
And again to his own heart very low:
"O child! I love, for I love and know;


"But you, who love nor know at all
The diverse chambers in Love's guest-hall,
Where some rise early, few sit long:
In how differing accents hear the throng
His great Pentecostal tongue;


"Who know not love from amity,
Nor my reported self from me;
A fair fit gift is this, meseems,
You give -- this withering flower of dreams.


"O frankly fickle, and fickly true,
Do you know what the days will do to you?
To your love and you what the days will do,
O frankly fickle, and fickly true?


"You have loved me, Fair, three lives -- or days:
'Twill pass with the passing of my face.
But where I go, your face goes too,
To watch lest I play false to you.


"I am but, my sweet, your foster-lover,
Knowing well when certain years are over
You vanish from me to another;
Yet I know, and love, like the foster-mother.


"So, frankly fickle, and fickly true!
For my brief life while I take from you
This token, fair and fit, meseems,
For me -- this withering flower of dreams."


The sleep-flower sways in the wheat its head,
Heavy with dreams, as that with bread:
The goodly grain and the sun-flushed sleeper
The reaper reaps, and Time the reaper.


I hang 'mid men my needless head,
And my fruit is dreams, as theirs is bread:
The goodly men and the sun-hazed sleeper
Time shall reap, but after the reaper
The world shall glean of me, me the sleeper.


Love, love! your flower of withered dream
In leavèd rhyme lies safe, I deem,
Sheltered and shut in a nook of rhyme,
From the reaper man, and his reaper Time.


Love! I fall into the claws of Time:
But lasts within a leavèd rhyme
All that the world of me esteems --
My withered dreams, my withered dreams.


I love poppies me cant wait for the summer and the burnished red of the poppy fields:-)

Some people

A winter stoat or ermine with hard earned prey

 More often than not seen adorning the collars of royalty, this years early winter has seen a massive increase in the number of white stoats or ermine on view. I put a call out at work after we had a few calls from members of the public about their presence just to see how widespread they were at this time of the year. I was quite surprised as to the frequency; we received over 70 reports from as far afield as Berwick upon Tweed to Teesdale.

Largely they travel around unnoticed in their chestnut livery but now decked in white they stick out like a saw thumb, its surprising they manage to survive at all. Winter has all but ended now and so has the stoats white winter coat. My two local ones are now well on the change one looks very bizarre in a half and half look whilst the other has gone grey.

I have had some excellent views but too few with a camera in hand however I have managed to nick one or two. The best spectacle however that I encountered was up on the Northumberland coast. This little chancer who on failing to find any rabbits willing to play ball on the mainland decided to swim to one of the islands where the rabbits being blasé had grown fat and nonchalant. As he stormed ashore like the marines, after quite a lengthy swim for such a little fellow, the panic was clearly visible, with no where to go but underground or run in circles.


Stoat in partial ermine killing a rabbit

 The stoat’s first attempts failed as I guess he was still feeling the effects of his cross channel swim. But after a quick rest at the waters edge he was at it again this time successfully bringing a large rabbit to bay where he set about administering the coup de grace with fine aplomb.

The reaction from some who witnessed it was, well let’s just say silly if truth be told it was embarrassing, feeling more affinity to the plight of the rabbit rather than that of the stoat, there was anger from some that the stoat had succeeded. I will never come around to or understand these feelings as much as the so called birders who constantly harangue us about sparrowhawk and garden birds. This was brought up in the midst of the shenanigans as one of the rabbit friends declared all predators should be shot especially sparrowhawks.

I sometimes personally will the prey on in typical human, support for the underdog fashion but when predator succeeds I feel no malice toward it the feelings are soon replaced by ones of relief that nature has run its course.

Sparrowhawk and prey

The misplaced feelings toward sparrowhawk predation in and around the bird table are as a result of over sentimentalising our relationships with nature which is so common as result of the post ‘Life on Earth’ world of wildlife documentaries. If you feed birds then you create a honey pot which eventually attracts the attentions of predators, if you don’t want it to happen don’t feed the birds!! If you do then except it all 'red in tooth and claw' that something’s eat other things to survive it called nature, get over it.

Some of the reactions from ‘well meaning’ members of the public bordered on the hysterical and ridiculous, screaming with disgust instead of marvelling at the ingenuity and fortitude of this fantastic little predator.

The PC world and soap culture we live in has now invaded the world of nature and the documentaries that portray it. We anthropomorphise everything, we have made nature sanitised beyond belief. As another extreme example my brother was in Kenya last year on safari and could not believe what he witnessed, people (UK citizens mainly though three Yanks joined in) trying, indeed begging the guide to intervene in a lion kill that they had paid to hopefully witness. Saying things like, “why do they have to do that”, “its cruel!!”, “you should get rid of the lions”, “it’s disgusting and inhuman” and much more. The guides were mystified and did not understand the outrage that is increasingly common.

The Spring/autumn watch culture now delves increasingly closer into the lives of wildlife as they seek to continue the annual events and have an ‘edge’, some of it is intuitive and interesting footage but most of it is lost with inane drivel with ill informed commentary speculating and offering subjective views from the same old faces oohing and arrghing over natures perils and pit falls.

Fat as butter and very much alive a Farne Isle seal pup in December

A few years back I had to recover a situation on the media after one of their once widely respected presenters was nearly in tears with the situation on our Farne Isles, as the population of grey seals teetered on the brink of oblivion as a natural disaster in the form a ‘a storm’, in the ‘north sea’, ‘in winter’ threatened the entire grey seal population. His pathetic performance for cameras had everyone thinking this was a cataclysmic one off and there would be no more grey seals. When I was asked for comment on the news later after they had picked up on the 'tragedy' of the story, the shear disappointment in the newsreaders voice, when I said this was totally natural and happened every year and it is a way of dispersing and regulating pup numbers, was palatable, oh he said a complete no storey then, yep I said I reckon so.

Wildlife and nature is truly amazing but its cruel in the coldest sense it does not feel as we do the loss of a loved ones passing it ponders for a while, confused then gets on with life, only we see in their actions the way we want to see them. The reality is stark but simple the next time you see a sparrowhawk snatch cock robin from the bird table, instead of lambasting him think just for a second if those talons hadn't sunk home its very likely that sparrowhawk would not see the light of another day such is the finite line between survival and death in the natural world.

Anyway I digress suffice to say it gets on my nebulous ends and does nature no favours in our often polarised society as the real star of the show was the number of stoat in ermine around the region, a creature that never ceases to amaze me, all I can say is I'm glad I'm not a rabbit or that I am even more happy that stoats are so small any bigger and humans (I wish) would be on the menu.

A swimming stoat




Aerial acrobats are back

These are exciting times for our twitching friends as a new round of migrants are on their way dowitchers will be mingling with yellowlegs and phalaropes as we bid a fond farewell to the whooper swans, the fieldfares and the redwings and welcome to the warblers, martins and swallows.

I saw my first butterflies and a bumble bee last week as the temperatures became almost tropical but as the temperatures rise it is the swallows, swifts and martins that make the summer months for me.


Sand martin will often use man made structures to nest in this is in the bridge walls in Dumfries over the river Nith

First to arrive will be the sand martins - industrious little birds that are never stray far from water. They usually turn up around mid to late March. Sand martins, as their name suggests, enjoy nesting in exposed sand banks, these are somewhat of a premium in many places these days but im lucky in that quarries quite close to me offer excellent opportunites for cliff nesting. I will be making a point of taking the camera along on some fine spring day in the near future.

An artificial sand martin wall on the Montrose basin, Scotland

Next to arrive are the swallows and the house martins, the former being one of my all-time favourites (oh to have the pleasure of a barn with swallows in it). The last but by no means least to arrive and with the shortest stay are the swifts, the greatest of aerial acrobats.

All these birds, that are so familiar with most of us and locked in our folklore, are under immense threat. Threats which are just as apparent on our home soil as overseas. Let’s not forget that some swallows fly as far south as the Cape in South Africa, which is pretty long way requiring many stop over points on the way. Their winter feeding grounds are becoming sterile waste grounds where pesticides long since banned in the developed world are used to eradicate insect pests and boost production - the vital oasis across the deserts are drying up and turning to dust compounds. If that wasn’t enough, facing dehydration and starvation many get shot and trapped as they cross the Mediterranean.


A swallow on the barn roof

The first time you see a chattering mixed group of swallows and martins pass over-head or better still, lining abreast along a telephone wire, you know the summer is here; but still the threats continue on reaching their breeding areas. I remember watching columns of swallows, martins and swifts rising above the roof tops as high as you could see, hawking for insects way into the sky. Years of pesticide abuse mean we just don’t have the insect populations anymore, likewise, the culprit lies in a lack of nesting opportunities.


Like the declines in our house sparrow and starling populations, there is a definite correlation to be made in modern housing and the refurbishment of older housing with plastic soffits and sealed guttering. even traditional sites such as barns and old farm buildings now have their doors closed or are turned in second homes.

All the houses where I lived when I was young offered a place for starlings and house sparrows - where the eaves over-hung, house martins too in their replacement cliff ledges - now there aren’t any or very few. I still see where people have knocked martin nests from under their eves or from outside public places like the loos at Kielder water, sighting the mess they make or the pathetic repeated attempts by swifts, starlings or sparrows to gain entry to a past nest site in the new guttering. For the sake of a few months inconvenience, or putting out a bird box, or better still just turning a blind eye and enjoying the spectacle. It is of course illegal to do these things but it happens every year and it never ceases to amaze me how frequently it ocurrs.

There is nothing better than a warm late spring evening witnessing the chasing throng of screaming swifts at top speed around the roof tops, or just the chatter of sparrows from the gabble end.

The humble house sparrow

These are the sights and sounds of what summer is all about. There are still places where you can see these spectacles and a spectacle is what it is, you don’t need to see herds of wildebeast tramping across the Serengeti to make a spectacle, a walk by many a farm yard in summer will give you views of swallows darting in and out of the byres with the aerial precision that would make the Red Arrows envious but for most of us like so many things it has disappeared from common view.

Last summer I waited and waited for these birds to appear over my roof top but slow they were in appearing and few in number too, very depressing indeed because after all one swallow does not make a summer and what sad place this would be without them.

One swallow does not make a summer

Brock's back

Brock's back

Just a quickie, walking the dogs today it would appear that badger have finally returned to my area after nearly 30yrs absence.

Nice and fresh badger poop

Although there has always been one or two loners about occupying safe rock setts they have never really appeared to be doing well merely just existing. Today however, I am heartened by the evidence on display. Plenty of tracks, latrines, well worn trails, fresh digging and bedding and some classic hair samples trapped on the barb wire fences.



Badger hairs on the fence lines where trails intersected

This despite years of abuse, in the last two years there has even been some digging into the cliffs with machinery but fingers crossed they are back and they will stay and spread as there are still the remnants of nearly ten setts in the locally all dug out by largely bored miners during the pit strike.

On a sour note there was a dead vixen where I watched cubs last year, doesnt look suspicious just strange and somehow un-necessary I must be getting old and soft I just felt really sad looking at her, still there may be some badger cubs to look forward to.

Dead vixen, the location bares the scars of many years interference

Away from it All

A distant place away from it all is what we all crave for at times

“Few people in this overcrowded country have not some favourite heath or common or moor to which they retire when they need solitude, unpolluted fresh air, the glimpse of wildlife, or the sound of water falling over stones.”

So wrote the landscape expert WG Hoskins over a generation ago and they still ring true today as they ever have, we will as a species always need special places where we are able to contemplate the natural world. Granted it is more evident in some than others but that basic need for space is always there.
Where people find that space depends on many circumstances and one mans space is another mans phobia. We are fortunate living in the northeast of England that we are still blessed with miles of open hills, moors and river valleys where we can not see a single other soul all day. However, you do not need to travel far to be alone or find the tranquil surrounding of solitude. Many of my favourite places are within the urban fringe and even here, sometimes, if the wind is in the right direction or the time of the day is early you can escape the drone of traffic and rush of modern life.

But for real solitude you have to get up and go, one Sunday afternoon last year, I suddenly felt the need to escape from my busy urban surroundings and to get a dose of solitude, wildlife and unpolluted fresh air. So it was into the car and off up the road for some blessed heaven away from all the numpties that treat my street like Le Mans. This spot is great its about as far as you can get from a well used road so background noise is minimal, and the other thing is that any body else who does come along rarely walk far from their cars so stretching the legs can often get you away from most and alone.


You need solitude when you look like this

Well almost alone, my dogs are never ending companions and once the initial rush around discovering new smells, holes and any other nook and cranny is over they now fall regularly to heel just as interested as me to discover what is around the next corner, well there might be a rabbit to chase? This area isn’t the easiest place to see wildlife but in late spring there is an abundance of new life out there that can be so naïve. Skylarks sang high in the sky, a meadow pipit launched into the air and parachuted down to earth, singing as it fell and a family of stonechats scolded us as we drifted by.

Coal tits seeped their notes from the canopy

Further on we passed through a small copse this too alive with bird song, chaffinches sang their almost monotonous impression of a fast bowlers run up. Coal tits and goldcrests seeped their notes from the canopy, and in the distance, a green woodpecker lolloped off laughing all the way.

By now it was almost seven o’clock, and the sun was low in the sky, bathing the whinny bushes and the heather in a golden light. We sat back and watched the insects dance in the columns of sunlight with nothing but natural sounds filling the air.

A tiny movement to my side and the sudden alertness of the dogs said there was something there. At first I couldn’t make any thing out but then the movement became clearer amongst the fronds of dead bracken where the last rays of sunshine illuminated the antagonists. Standing upright and weaving around each other were two adders, obviously male because of the behaviour. We watched intrigued as I have never seen this activity before despite having seen countless adders over the years.

The much maligned common adder

The jousting males were soon joined by a third much larger and almost black male who clearly had the edge on size and weight so he soon displaced the too smaller snakes, which rolled down the bank leaving him to seek what, had drawn them to this spot. And there she was, a beautifully marked almost red female curled at the base of a gorse bush no more than three feet from the contest. A chance encounter of a very special nature if not to every ones cup of tea. It was time to go but one brief moment I had shared the life of a small, often un-noticed, creature.

Frog S(pawn)



The frog chorus has begun

 It’s significant what a difference few days of warmth can make at this time of the year not least of which is its affects on some of our wildlife experiences. At this time of the year one of the most obvious spectacles is the awakening of amphibians from their winter slumber. My diaries tell me that the first of these awakening usually occur around the last week in February. Frogs are the first amphibians to make it to their ancestral ponds in what appear bleak featureless puddles suddenly transform into writhing seas of frog pawn.
From quite literally nowhere frogs march on their ponds to complete their cycle of life, you have to wonder where they all come from at times.


Froggy went a courting


This year it took me a little by surprise but whilst locking the chickens up the first rounds of the frog chorus were clearly heard through the evening hum of traffic. The following day hundreds of frogs were in the pond, where they come from nobody knows? What I find amazing is that as soon as they have finished they disappear back to whence they came.
It often surprises people that frogs, indeed most amphibians spend relatively little time in the water, the bulk of their time is spend in damp areas of undergrowth where they do an excellent job keeping down garden pests such as slugs. It is also a stark realisation of the plight of our ponds and wetlands that more than 75% of frog spawning goes on in back garden ponds, a reflection on the fact that most rural ponds have been either drained, filled in or turned into other functions.

So spare a thought for amphibians as they are good indicators of a healthy environment, if you have some space consider a pond or leave that corner in the garden untidy with some deadwood or branches and be sparing with the slug pellets or better still use beer traps or other alternatives.



Otter with a bipod

For some creatures this is also a time of bounty after the lean winter months. Hundreds of amphibians descending on any available waterbody also attract predators. It is the reason why their numbers are concentrated at this time of the year to buffer the inevitable mortalities of both avian and mammalian predation.
We get many calls over the year regarding advice on ponds, how do I stop herons etc. eating fish or frogs and occasionally you get one that makes you smile. One such came from a location near Hepscott. The caller was somewhat dismayed to find frog spawn all over the lawn when none was in the pond and that this was increasing every night. What or who was the culprit they enquired?



Underwater action after frogs

 With lots of frogs in a very ample pond they were also now finding dismembered frogs and more spawn scattered about the grass. I asked if they had any close circuit TV, they did but had not checked it. The next call was what I expected, otters!

At this time of the year frogs and other amphibians are traditionally major parts of an otter’s diet. With the hard winter months over they can look forward to a protein rich bonanza of frogs and toads to rebuild their strength. What often looks like a scene of total carnage is just part of life’s rich tapestry. If it wasn’t for these seasonal bonanzas otters would fare much worse, frogs return and spawn in numbers to absorb these events and from the thousands of tadpoles that remain some are sure to reach adulthood and start the whole process again.

What both can not do without is habitat, a place to live and breed. With so many ponds lost in the wider countryside it is little wonder otters turn up in back gardens sometimes even taking the goldfish too.

It did however, come as a surprise to me and bring a smile to my face when I gave them this brief explanation and they asked where they could get more frogs from as they were now quite attached to the nightly antics of this wandering forager. They scooped the abandoned spawn back in the pond ensuring the bonanza would continue another year.

Frog time is bonanza time for otters, utter pleasure