Tag: Photography

Something new

Daniel Greenwood4 Comments

Fly orchid 4

Farthing Downs & New Hill, London, July 2013

On the Downs the butterflies are immediately evident, the week old broods of meadow brown ferry amongst the long grasses, rarely stopping to feed on flowers. Breeding season is ending but still the song of skylarks comes from over the slope, some ancient language remembered, its translation lost. Greater yellow rattle blooms now, the spring buttercups lost to a swathe of Yorkshire fog and other grasses I don’t know. The suntan lotion on my arms acts as an adhesive, my skin covered with seeds. The grasshoppers are conjuring up their rickety, wooden percussion. I am hopeless in finding them, except for one that hops between seed heads, a micro Tarzan in this meadow jungle. But where are the people? A man drives a BMW sports car along the lane, revving its engine. I know where I’d rather be. Men in England are bare chested at the slightest chance and here a couple stroll along the lane drinking from big bottles of water. The tattoo stamped on the man’s back stands out in this simple landscape of slopes and flowers.

Lovers

Ghostly day-flying moths spread at my every step through the long grass. Bumblebees forage on clovers, dropwort and yellow rattle, small heath butterflies appear again, two fly together, eager to fulfil their short lives with as much fornication as is possible. I cut back on to the path I know best. A chiffchaff sings in the hedgeline at the bottom of the hill, a single blackbird and a whitethroat, too. There’s no sign of spring’s willow warblers or their clutch of young. A crowd of peacock caterpillars munch through nettle leaves, leaving only the dreadlocks of flowers. A yellowhammer appears from across the lane, landing in a small hawthorn bush, its strong yellow plumage brighter than dandelions, a South American yellow, and at its brightest here. I take a few photos. Along with skylarks, this is a bird I have to travel to see, when once, before my time, you might have woken to it flocking in the hedges and fields.

Peackock caterpillar

Leaving the Downs I enter the chalky wooded hollows at the bottom of the slope, with tor grass growing along the track, an indicator of the calcareous soil. My sweat cools with the breeze that slips through here. In the dappled shade I scan the path edges for orchids, black bryony creeping out from the darkened hedges. And there it is: the fly orchid. I change lenses and struggle to get the image right, sweat dripping, bringing lotion down my face. But it’s beautiful to look at – a bit like a bumblebee pinned and proffered by the long spike, with its little eyes and short antennae. A family are passing behind the hedge, discussing how to control the dog.

‘She’s pulling me down into these weird places,’ says the mother.

‘Just let her off the lead, let her off the lead,’ the dad says.

They arrive on the path heading down hill. Their daughter warns the dog to stay with them. I only see the mother, she’s dressed in an apricot coloured dress and heeled shoes. She’s young and glamorous, so fitting with the array of flowers bursting from the hillside.

‘Who needs Box Hill when you can come here, eh?’ says the dad. They disappear down towards Happy Valley.

Speckled wood egg crop 1

I carry on along the ridge and settle on the desire line drawn down the hill and through the flowers. Ringlets move through the meadow, the first I’ve seen this year. They move at the same time and, stitched together, they are a tapestry of flickering wings. In my silence and stillness wildlife begins to move around me, perhaps more trusting. I see more plants now: twayblades, common spotted orchid, salad burnet, marjoram, ox eye daisy, rough hawkbit and bladder campion with its inflated, balloon like calyx-tubes. The wind blows through the trees. A speckled wood butterfly flaps about me, its wings audible as it hits my khaki shorts and leaf stalks. It clasps hold of a spear-like grass stem and curves its abdomen, laying a tiny pearl of an egg. This, for me, is something new.

Somewhere between the woods and the water

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Image 2

First published on Caught by the River

The River Avon, Bristol, June 2013

I walk along the floating harbour in search of the woodlands I know are further downstream of the Avon, high above the city of Bristol. The harbour is a story of new developments in a variety of different colours and states. One sign by a small park warns of its private nature – no sunbathing, no dogs. Another building is skeletal, multi-storey car park-esque. It always makes me laugh how the images of what a development will look like become less a promise and more a threat when they’re in this half state – it will be finished. Together, these buildings are gently grotesque. The death of England’s once great ports is a boon to the property development industry. Just like in Liverpool and Manchester, old buildings which once provided lifelong employment and were a focus of global trade have become bars, shops, restaurants, apartments and offices, transient spots for the aspirational middle classes and upward to work, frolic and recover. But that’s not the whole story. There’s a revolt against the tidying, the ornamental planting, the exclusivity and boredom. At the water’s edge is red valerian, a Mediterranean flower that has escaped into walls and pavements across England and grows here in the cracks between the stone where daisies also blush pink. Together these plants are the punks of the gentrified waterside, the Pussy Riot of the floating harbour. I clench my fist and salute these wildflowers.

Image

The Avon bends north and in the distance I see the mighty Clifton suspension bridge bursting from the wooded limestone cliffs. But I’m getting lost on my map in trying to locate the path to Leigh Woods, confused by the A370’s spaghetti junction. I cross a footbridge and then a few roads and find the river itself, a prehistoric mud swamp that’s brown in its entirety. Gulls are making prints, lesser black backs, herring and common gulls, they rule this city totally. When I opened the door to the room where we’re staying I looked out of the window and met the fierce eye of a gull. I cross a bridge plastered with posters protesting against plans for buses to pass through. Gulls below see me and act a little tentative – I wonder if they get any trouble from people up here, in this well hidden spot, maybe kids with air rifles. Parkland opens up, the suspension bridge now clear, I aim for the trees. The Avon and I both flow in the same direction. The wheel of a trolley reaches from beneath the mud, as does a traffic cone and a road sign, fragments of a world of transport now mired. I pass underneath the bridge and its black strip across the sky catches in my vision through the leaves of the trees. Up ahead comes a left turning and the entrance into Leigh Woods.

Clifton suspension bridge CBTR

The path appears carved from the gorge. The banks are denuded of trees, covered in hartstongue fern, panting as they soak up the light. The path is steep and wild, riddled with chunks of the limestone that defines this landscape. The slopes become more wooded as I climb, hazels grow amidst single ash trees, with a good number of wych elm and some oak. A chiffchaff sings somewhere, as does a blackbird, a song thrush pipes its beginnings. A month ago there would have been much more, but the breeding season is beginning to take its toll on the songbirds, they are growing quiet. That said, a moment of rest and silence brings more songs: the aborted music of a coal tit, a robin squeezing its thin medley out through the thicketed scrub of young trees. A trio of East European students pass me where I sit, a young woman speaking pointedly. They don’t notice me, so involved in their conversation. The Poles I know all speak in their native tongue with such passion, you’d think their world was at stake.

Image 3

I happen upon a settlement that the interpretation board renders some 2300 years old. The banks were perfect for the defence of the river. I walk along the ridge lit by red campion and struggle to imagine the scene. Farther over on the other side I find the first common spotted orchids of my summer, taking them by the throats with the tips of my thumb and finger.

Back amongst trees, the wind blows through and I notice the rumble of the city, the searing sound of cars around the River Avon. I wonder how the hunter gatherers would have lived in dense woods like these. People today are enlivened and stressed by the proximity of others, as well as their distance. The woodland peoples, before they began exploiting the clearings at the edges will undoubtedly have been driven by a fear of wolves and bears, creatures that were made extinct in England. I ask two ladies and their dog in passing if they know how to get back onto the riverside and they shrug, they don’t know: ‘I think you just have to find a slope and go for it.’

I head on down a side track and the limestone rocks return, cutting out a steep, rugged path into the wooded hillside. At the end there’s some light, colours move across the gap. I’ve found the edge. The view opens out and the murmurings of vertigo appear with the river, the road and the gorge. It is a bizarre and beautiful sight. An oak is dead and beheaded above me on the precipice, how frightening for the woodlander who had to cut that off. Slick ferns grown from its mossy trunk like attempts at wings and feathers. The track isn’t at an end here and so I sense an exit. On the way down it crumbles under foot and so I’m thankful for the fistfuls of hawthorn wood that I can hold as I descend. And as I do I think of the settlers rushing to defend their land from an invasion on the Avon, flying down to the river with spears, arrows and other weaponry to hand. You see, I only have a camera and binoculars. I live in the age of observation.

© Daniel James Greenwood 2013

A profusion of buttercups

Daniel Greenwood2 Comments
Meadow buttercups
Meadow buttercup

Farthing Downs, London, June 2013

Stepping on to the Downs, a marked change has taken place in the two weeks since I’ve been here. The grass has lost its wintry edge and there grows a profusion of meadow buttercups. On the woody margins white butterflies steer themselves through the day, the slight of a cool breeze will no doubt register with them. A man is sitting on a bench taking pronounced drags from a spliff. I imagine ushering him to the gate as does someone wanting to be in a room alone. What is that link with landscape and human solitude.

A holly blue flutters about in a restless fashion, unwilling to perch, itself ushering me away, perhaps. I take the hint. The jackdaws are still here, so faithful to this place, much more so than me. This is why wildlife is so deserving of the land, perhaps more so than we. It doesn’t have a choice. Last time I watched them in a snowy sky but now they move through the ankle high wildflowers like shadows. They call out and burst free into the air when I enter into their field of vision.

Willow warbler crop 1
Willow warbler

I walk into the scrubby chunk of woodland that the path cuts through. I am struck by the change, the green, the lividness of the living. A woody, leafless hawthorn reminds me that both states remain all year round. Chiffchaffs are calling to each other up ahead, followed by the only slightly different voice of a willow warbler, a bird almost identical to the others. I sit in the shade on the edge of the path and listen. A willow warbler appears from the bush and lands on the branch of a young hazel tree. It has some insects in its bill and it whistles incessantly, huuu-eet. I take a picture and sit still. After a short wait a green woodpecker yaffles and the willow warbler dives into the long grass and bramble. Two weeks ago this bird did the same but without food in its bill. Now it’s feeding silent young down there in the thorns and tussocks. A couple pass me where I sit.

‘Are you looking for a lesser spotted whatever-it-is?’ the lady asks.

I explain the situation, pleased they don’t think I’m up to no good. Her partner turns to me: ‘I know you.’

‘And I know you.’

We remind ourselves of when and where from. We both agree things have improved since then. They leave happily, I get up and carry on through Farthing Downs.

Farthing Downs in June 1
Farthing Downs

The year’s first brood of small heath butterflies have hatched on the Downs. A pair rest on separate patches of bare soil created by livestock, conducting the heat of the sun. They live as adults for as little as seven days and I admire their freedom, their lolling and landing, they circle me, perhaps jittery when I move but not much bothered. They are orange smudges against the green downland. I sit with them. A soldier beetle clambers up a blade of grass and wrestles with its own weight, a clumsy, dim creature, it straddles the seed head, whirs its antennae and unleashes its wings from its black backpack, struggling into the air.

Soldier beetle
Soldier beetle

Chasing butterflies down stairs in Italy

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Positano
Forest fire above Positano

Positano, Italy, September 2011

I’m sitting out on the terrace of the pensione, complaining aloud in the full sun. Last night I’d peered over the ledge at the lemon and olive trees, the tiled terraces and bright white roofs. The faint voice of a thrush had caught my ear, and the familiar dark, scuttling figure of a blackbird darted across a building about twenty-five-feet below. But there was something unusual about the blackbird. The light was low and so darker tones fell to black. However, this was not a wholly black bird and I entertained the thought – could it be a blue rock thrush? I was unprepared for it, so unrefined is my knowledge of anything non-British and unfamiliar. From the viewpoint of our pensione, the houses, hotels, gardens and restaurants, immaculately packed together, are built like steps to the sky with the sweeping curve of the only road in the town cutting through them, linking Positano to Naples and Sorrento to the north and Amalfi in the south. Above all this stands dry, steep and rocky mountains with deep green woodlands below the peaks. Helicopters are taking turns to pour water from the ocean onto a forest fire that has erupted in the southern peaks. It has been going on all night, the choppers roaring, their sound unbearably loud in this mid-30 degree heat. On the terrace I watch the heat rise as the morning nears noon, the choppers ferrying water from ocean to mountain. From beneath me a butterfly emerges, and it’s the beast of European butterflies, the swallowtail, flitting between the railings like a twenty-pound note.

*

Having had the shadow of a swallowtail pass over me, down into the depths of the gardens where the mystery bird had scampered, I decide to investigate its flight path. I’m here for my uncle’s wedding. It’s a big family holiday and so I have relatives scattered around all corners of the town. Had they all been ornithologists or lepidopterists things might be easier for me. There’s the rumour of a path or set of stairs that runs for nearly half a mile from our pensione down to the beach. My uncle, the groom, tried it and nearly died, apparently. My sister, fresh from travels in India, walked it the other day and says there are ‘loads of butterflies’. She mentioned colours which don’t even appear in my rubbish field guide. The image in my mind is of clouds of blues dancing amid the nu-rave hue of Mediterranean wildflowers.

Wall lizard

The temperature touches 35 degrees by 2 or 3pm, and so it becomes a time of hibernation. It feels too hot even to think, to speak. The steps down to the beach, some 400 or so, begin by a chapel outside the pensione. A black priest enters through the old wooden doors, sending an SMS with his mobile as he walks, never looking up. The stairs aren’t uniform, they dip and swerve, the height of an individual slab varying and inducing vertiginous feelings. Streaming between old, old walls the path echoes with the slap of thin, rubbery footwear and suddenly a burst of pink lanterns, bougainvillea flowers which are so evident, climbing across the blistering walls of Positano. It’s September so some are turning to seed, they appear tea-stained. The stairs descend past the front doors of people’s houses and iron gates which offer tantalising visions of Italian ornamental gardens. On the rough surface of the waist high walls either side, lizards rest and escape. They give themselves away quite easily – the sound of brittle leaves dislodged in the cavity of a wall, by neither wind nor gravity. Ants channel the iron handrails. The sun is so hot and so high, my legs tremble when I look up.

The steps snake round and flatten into a slope, I sit down in the shade of an olive tree and waft my hat about my face. A woman and a young man, probably her son, are climbing up the steps. She is visibly sweating, I smile at her and attempt a universal gesture for overheating. She’s a typical Italian mama, portly with dark hair and a cloth dress. She’s out of breath and looks at me like the stranger that I am. A man is watering his garden behind the iron railings. I sit and wait for butterflies. The olive trees pool at their bases, as if they’ve been melted by the sun. The larger oliver groves have nets tied around their trunks, ready to be rolled out in season to catch the falling fruit. It’s not time yet. In the sun of the path’s slope, a lemon tree dangles over from a garden, plump with yellow fruits. Great umbrellas of fennel grow on the perilous bank beyond the wall and a white butterfly lands to feed on one plant. I photograph it and zoom in on the crop. Positano is home to white butterflies as London is to pigeons, mostly the small white, Europe’s most common butterfly. The one I’ve pictured isn’t a small white, however. It has dark markings on the wings, a little like a marbled white, but more like a bath white. In my head I swiftly establish this perilous walkway as Positano’s first wildlife conservation area. Peering over the wall at the olives and dry grasses, there is the usual sign of plastic bottles and bags discarded. This, however, doesn’t compare with the crap around Naples airport.

Positano's first wildlife conservation corridor/stairwell
Positano’s first wildlife conservation corridor/stairwell

The heat is getting too much for me, I glance at the steep steps back up to the hotel. I let in the murmurings of hot panic. From the lemon tree garden the gigantic shape of a swallowtail soars down onto the path and over the wall, just like it passed over our terrace. I rush out to try and get a photo but it’s too quick and I’m too far from it. Against the rocky wall a brimstone glides, a flash of orange on its outer wing. This is no normal brimstone. I look at my field guide. It’s Cleopatra’s. The sun pulsates. I dive back into the shade. The Mediterranean glimmers blue in between the olive branches holding ripening fruits, Tunisia and Algeria beyond the horizon. People have been passing me, comfortable with the sun rays, on their way down to the beach. It’s 1:30pm, the hottest part of the day. I guzzle from my water bottle and make my way back up the steps to hide.

© Daniel James Greenwood 2013