Tag: Farthing Downs and New Hill

North Downs diary: The pendulum has swung

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Farthing Downs & Happy Valley, March 2016

A motorbike oozes across the road that runs through Farthing Downs, its deep, unsettling groan scatters woodpigeons and magpies from the branches of trees. When it’s over another sound breaks through: a male yellowhammer. Its song is never quite the ‘little bit of bread and no cheese’ it’s accepted as, but the mnemonic is so memorable that those of us who might not have known it ever existed can remark upon it, can seek it out. The bird is a silhouette, a blackhammer in a hawthorn bush against the bold march sun.

Winter’s decorations still remain, it is a time of flux. The cropped green grasslands and anthills look like a sheet, the racket of chalky wildflowers hidden below. If you didn’t know this was chalk grassland now you wouldn’t expect much else to come. Redwings dot the tree lines, their calls which were in October nocturnal now add to a soundscape that includes the spring skylark, high up above my head, marking out a territory that signals an intent to force new life. I see two of these birds. The skylark is one I hear or see only every few months. Its song has no hint of monotony. But one that I have missed this winter and can hear day after day in spring is the blackbird. From trees that separate Farthing Downs and New Hill it lights the valley with its gentle verses. The shadows grow long, reaching into the blackbird’s dreamy hedgeland.

In Happy Valley the hazel trees’ tails mass like wigs. Looking closely, the buds are cocked ready to leaf, some with the purple tongues of flowers poking out. The yellow grains of pollen that have come from the dangling tails can be seen. I flick the tails to help. The twigs of hawthorns are coloured yellow and blue by Xanthoria parietina. Trying to get a close up photo of the fruiting cups, the apothecia, I find the ‘roosting’ buttons of ladybirds. Who would ever see them here? Dogs, voles, mice, flowers, lichens. Surely only the most inquisitive birds would ever find them.

In the shelter of scrub the primroses bloom in old dogwood leaves. I love this time, the birds singing from the woods and trees, the first flowers breaking the rule of death and decay. No doubt, spring and summer have plenty of that to offer, but at least now the pendulum has swung the other way.

The cascading orchid

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Farthing Downs and New Hill, London, June 2014

In the towns swallowed by London’s urban lurch, summer is flowering knotweed, rosebay willowherb and lupins, all non-native, all bold and blooming along Victorian railway sidings. At Farthing Downs summer strikes out in meadows of yellow rattle, dropwort, field scabious, hawkbit, ribwort plantain and sheeps sorrel. The first meadow browns, ringlets and small heaths take flight, the latter locked in a pair, mating, flying as one away from my lens. Stopping to take in these grassy Downs, the sheer number of butterflies is clear.

But the birds have not retired just yet. I hear a cry from the blue sky and see a buzzard tucking in its wings and bombing towards Coulsdon. This is the first I’ve seen here, and its arrowing for London is without doubt. This is now officially the most common bird of prey in the UK. I also hear the songs of linnet, song thrush and chiffchaff. Spring and summer have clashed in a frenzy of yellow, green and the common blue butterfly. On New Hill pyramidal orchids cascade across the slope, the leaves of spring cowslips now tucked in under the shade of orchids, rough hawkbit and yellow rattle. The bed of marjoram bounces, its fragrance only felt when touched with the fingers. On the other hillside jackdaws flock with two sheep grazing, their medieval world clattering along with their calls, like bullets ricocheting. The sheep go about their tasting, the meadows purpler still.

© Daniel James Greenwood 2014