Foraging

I went wild blackberry picking! Of course, I forgot to take a photo before I froze them, so if they look slightly odd it's because they have just come out of my freezer. Foraging is not something I habitually do... I usually forget and leave it too late. This year all the fruit seems to be early: blackberries don't usually start to ripen until mid to late August but this year they were beginning to mature by mid July in places. There are rowan and hawthorn berries, rose hips, and masses of beech mast. It seems, in an unusually hot and dry summer like we're having, as if the plants start to worry about the climate and decide to produce a lot of seeds in case of trouble ahead. 

I went for a walk up in Northcliffe Park and along the boundary of the allotments there's an unkempt border that, on close inspection, holds a mass of brambles. 

There were copious amounts of berries in varying stages of ripeness, so there are plenty left for other people to pick - and for the birds too. 

Talking of birds, I spotted a tiny vole scurrying along the pathway. I pulled my phone out to try and get a photo of it but, before I could, a sparrowhawk swooped down in front of me, not two feet away - and grabbed the vole and made off with it, presumably for a tasty lunch! Rather upsetting actually, and even more so because it was such a sudden and swift event, lasting only seconds, so that I didn't manage a photo!

Turn 180 degrees from the bramble patch and there's a wide open view across the cricket field towards Idle and Wrose on the opposite side of the valley. It was breezy enough for someone to be flying a kite.