Hardcastle Crags, 27th March 2010.
SPRING IS COMING!
The calendar said it was early spring when seventeen Rochdale Field Naturalists met at the Midgehole car park near Hebden Bridge, but nothing else seemed convinced. Our route took us up the sheltered valley and about a mile above Gibson Mill we climbed steeply out of it to the edge of the moors, and the wind met us. Definitely it felt like winter here, but there was plenty to see.
The valley leading to Hardcastle Crags is always beautiful and full of life. We could hear a green woodpecker in the car park, but none of us ever managed to see it. Dippers and grey wagtails flew along the stream and flocks of tits (blue, great and long-tailed) made their way through the trees, together with the occasional nuthatch or treecreeper. A single lesser celandine triumphantly opened the wild flower list, and further up the valley there were good clumps of opposite-leaved golden saxifrage – a mouthful of a name, but the only plant that seemed to think spring had arrived.
After lunch at the Mill we worked our way up past the mill ponds. A single lonely drake mallard made us wonder whether he had a mate sitting on a nest somewhere, but the real interest here was the amphibians. We saw at least twenty toads in the shallows, almost motionless in the cold water, but the frogs had already been busy; the reedbed at the top of the pool was full of spawn.
Fungi were also in evidence on the many fallen trees. Apart from various types of bracket fungi there were oyster mushrooms, candlesnuff fungi and a few attractive velvetshank. Of some concern was the number of fallen trees badly infected by honey fungus. This wasn’t fruiting, but on many of the logs the bark had peeled back to reveal great networks of the black ‘bootlaces’ that this deadly parasitic fungus uses to spread along, and between, trees.
Above the woods on the rough farmland the sightings changed completely. We had seen and heard one curlew at the mill, but here by the moors there were significant numbers; a flock of nearly twenty wheeled and whistled the bubbling call so evocative of the moors in spring. But winter was still here, and we saw both the winter thrushes – fieldfares and redwings. Meadow pipits fed in the fields, and while we still saw tits there were also finches, including greenfinches and a cock chaffinch in full song defying the wind. A single raptor flew across; first thoughts were that it was a kestrel, but the more we looked at it the more the long, narrow tail and broad wings suggested sparrowhawk. A few coltsfoot had struggled into bloom on the bank and with the celandine, saxifrage and a few wood anemones made a grand total of four spring flowers.
Lichens don’t have mass appeal, but are worth a mention here because two or three species that don’t like polluted air were flourishing. We apparently live in the post-industrial age!
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Images by Peter Francis
