20 to 23 May

Yet more bluebells . . . and a redpoll.

Wednesday 25th May, 2016

Friday again and more rain was  expected but not until the evening.  There hasn’t been much rain so far this month but it comes in dribs and drabs and we try to avoid getting wet if possible.  It is still too cold for enjoyable rainy walks and the camera doesn’t like them regardless of the temperature.  

We set out after lunch for a brisk walk up through Brookdale plantation.  We hadn’t gone far when Tim noticed that one of the old overgrown paths had been cleared recently.  So we decided to experiment with a new route.  Apart from being a bit wet underfoot at first it was a great improvement on our old Brookdale route which was partly blocked when they cut down most of the larches a year or two ago.  Using the “new” path we can avoid climbing up a steep bank and scrambling over the trunks of some of the felled larches which block the old path. It also adds a bit of distance to the walk and zig-zags up the steep section at the beginning of the climb.

Another bonus of the new route is that it goes through an area of broadleaf woodland which we can see from our living room window.

And where there are broadleaf woodlands there are bound to be bluebells. The banks at the side of the path and the slope beneath the canopy of oaks, sycamores, beeches, wild cherries and rowans, etc. were a joy to behold.  The bluebells have put on a wonderful display this year.

After we rejoined the main track, I stopped to take a photo across the glen to the fields near the service reservoir where we walked last week.  

I felt a few drops of rain and put my camera inside a plastic bag.  The drops were reasonably big but there were very few of them so we continued up the hill to the view site and then carried on past the top mossy pool.  

I saw a bird which looked like a small hawk, possibly a sparrowhawk, fly across the track and perch on a conifer branch but it flew away before I could unwrap my camera.  We were thinking of walking all the way up to the top gate but the rain got a little harder so we turned back. Island weather is notoriously perverse, so the rain stopped soon after that and the sun came out before we got home.  

On Saturday we went for another fairly long walk in Skyhill plantation.  I wanted to walk along the rest of the mountain bike route through the northern side of the plantation as far as the Millennium Way.  It wasn’t a long section of the race route.  Most of the walk involved getting there and then returning home.  We started from the house and walked up our usual route through the plantation as far as the bridge across the stream before heading downhill to connect with the race route at the point where we left it on our Tuesday walk.    Before continuing, I stopped to take a nostalgic photo of a muddy puddle.

I think of it as Alice’s puddle.  We used to walk along the old earth wall above the path to avoid the puddle but the Schippies always headed straight for the water.  They never remembered that it was an unusually deep puddle and that there was a thick layer of almost liquid black mud under the water.  So they ended up with muddy legs and sometimes even muddy tummies and needed to be rinsed off in the stream.

I had thought the race route might follow the main path down to the gate by the Millennium Way but it turned off onto a lower path which used to be overgrown and almost blocked by rhododendrons in places.  We hadn’t walked along it for some years but used to refer to it as “the scenic route”.  A lot of work had gone into clearing it.  Most of the rhododendrons had been cut down to ground level but they are tough plants, seemed to assume that it was just hard pruning, and were enthusiastically sending up new shoots.  

A few plants, far enough away from the path to avoid the chainsaws, were flowering.  They are so pretty that it is a shame they are an undesirable invasive alien species.

After we joined the Millennium Way we passed the plaque describing the Battle of Sky Hill.  Perhaps I should say “The first Battle of Sky Hill” now that the mountain bike race has appropriated the name.

It reads:

BATTLE OF SKYHILL   1079

THE CHRONICLES OF THE KINGS OF MAN AND THE ISLES RECORD

THAT IN 1079 A NORSEMAN, GODRED CROVEN, MUSTERED A GREAT NUMBER OF SHIPS AND CAME TO MAN WHERE HE JOINED BATTLE WITH THE PEOPLE OF THE LAND.  DEFEATED TWICE, ON THE THIRD ATTEMPT HE LANDED HIS ARMY BY NIGHT AT RAMSEY AND HID 300 MEN IN THE WOODS ON SKYHILL.  THE NEXT DAY AT THE HEIGHT OF THE BATTLE THE HIDDEN FORCES ATTACKED THE MANXMEN FROM BEHIND AND VICTORY FOR GODRED WAS ASSURED.  HE TREATED THE ISLANDERS MERCIFULLY AND ESTABLISHED A NORSE DYNASTY THAT RULED MAN UNTIL 1265.

THE SOCIETY FOR THE PRESERVATION OF THE MANX COUNTRYSIDE

AND ENVIRONMENT.

These must be the wooded slopes where the Norsemen hid although not the same trees as they will have died or been cut down and replanted many times during the intervening 937 years.  It is hard to imagine a furious battle being fought in this peaceful field.

And this is another view of the woods above the Magher y Troddan (Field of Conquest) from Brookdale plantation on the far side of the glen.

The good news on Sunday morning was that I managed to mow the grass even though it was still rather wet.  There was only intermittent sun and no wind to dry it out.  The bad news was that the midges started biting - a little earlier in the year than usual. They love calm, overcast days.

After lunch the clouds departed  and we walked down to Poyll Dooey in warm sunshine to have a closer look at the trees in the Legion Wood.  It was hard to determine exactly which six species had been planted because the boundaries of the “wood” were not defined and there were other trees which had probably been growing there before the sixty Legion trees were planted.  We tried to find six varieties of tree that appeared to have been planted at the same time and eventually decided that the six species were most likely to be oaks, whitebeam, birch, Scots pines, rowan and flowering cherries.

Scots pine and whitebeams (probably Sorbus aria lutescens)

A group of trees including rowan, whitebeam, cherry and Scots pine.

On our way home we saw some Canada geese sunbathing on the far side of the Sulby river.

There were a few butterflies flying - some unidentified whites on the walk down to the river, some speckled woods and one small tortoiseshell in the park.  That reminds me - I saw a couple of white butterflies in the back garden a few days ago.  They were flying around together and then one settled.  It was a female green veined white - so perhaps the other one was a male.

On Monday morning I got very excited about a small bird.  I spotted a male lesser redpoll on the bird feeder.  We have seen a female on a few previous occasions but this was the first male that we have seen. I took some photos of him through the rather dirty kitchen window.

Then I noticed that he had company - a female was also eating niger seed that had fallen on the ground under the feeder.

We just did a short walk along the roads at the top of the glen after morning tea because Tim had a hospital appointment in the afternoon.  There was nothing new to photograph - so I took a snap of our newly mown front lawn when we returned from our walk.