Welcome to Matthew Peaster's Countrymans Diary.
Award winning wildlife photographer Matthew Peaster from Over Stowey writes about what to look out for in the natural world right on your door step. All you need to do is read this feature, turn off that computer and get walking — not always very far either!
Spring on The Quantock Hills
Bluebells & Chickweed
Spring Dawn
Pheasant in Daffodils
At the time of writing March is just about through and although the wild flowers, birds and mammals are all going through the motions of spring behaviour it appears that the weather is up to it’s old tricks. The Easter weekend saw snow, not just a quick flurry but heavy flurries as well as the passing flurries. Over three days I was out in snow fall, ok on two days I was on Exmoor where it often feels like it might snow in the middle of summer. On one particular morning on top of the moor I jumped out of the car, climbed up on top the bank, pulled my binoculars out from my pocket and proceeded to scan the moorland. Within seconds I thought I was mad, probably verging on the insane as the snow came down horizontally with a bone-chilling wind.
It’s at times like this when my thoughts turn to the wildlife. They don’t have the option of dicing back into a warm car and waiting for conditions to improve or going home to a warm house. With this in mind I donned several layers, sorted my camera gear and headed across the moorland. This terrain is unforgiving. Following the rain we’ve had this year everything is saturated and each footstep either goes sliding or sinks into the peat. With several kilos of camera gear this is made harder but the results are always more rewarding knowing I’ve had to work had for a set of pictures and get those truly wild images rather than rolling up to a park and firing off hundreds of images. To me wildlife really is that – wild.
While the rain continues to fall and the birds are tuning themselves every morning to the crescendo of the dawn chorus there’s a certain ‘feel good’ developing. Longer days, bird song and the familiar pattern of spring flowers. The snowdrops have come and passed, the wood anemone is starting to flower and there’s the imminent displays of Wild Garlic and Bluebells. With these flowers it really does feel like spring is fully underway but all to soon the summer days take over. Every year I return to favourite spots on the Quantocks for Bluebells and Ramsons. Whether this is for photographic purposes or just the cyclic colours I wouldn’t miss the opportunities.
Spring is also the time of the annual Quantock Deer count. Lots of volunteers are directed to specific areas to try and count the deer in that area and record the different age and sex groups. Again I’m sure the weather knows the date and throws it’s worst at us. However I think we just sneaked in the count in time this year. The day dawned clear and relatively good conditions for counting. By the time we had finished the count the weather threw it’s worst again!
The rain has been a feature of this diary. It goes without saying that we need rain but there seems to be a pattern of too much – either too much rain or too dry for too long. It’s been welcome though at work. Our tree planting programmes were late getting going so with the ongoing rain it is extending the planting season. If we were experiencing a dry spring like last year then we would almost certainly have had to finish planting. On one of my last sites I’m preparing to plant roughly 1500 trees on the Quantocks and have just bought some Reindeer. It seems a little early to be thinking of Christmas but the farmer is thinking well ahead. I’m not I must say! I will be back there later in the year to follow the story of Reindeer on the Quantocks, so until next time …..
