One of the fascinating things about this residency is discovery how different people see \u2013 or read \u2013 the landscape of Bradgate Park.\u00a0 A couple of weeks ago I went for a walk with Sue Graham, one of the Park\u2019s volunteers, and a wildlife expert.\u00a0 Over the course of nearly two hours, she showed me evidence of badger activity, ant\u2019s nests that are a few centuries old, and oak trees that are even older.<\/p>\n
What fascinated me most, however, was her ability to hear, and identify bird song.\u00a0 Throughout our walk, she would point at a wall, tree or hedge and name the birds that were singing there.\u00a0 Immediately after we set off from the Deer Barn, she started telling me about the willow warblers that can be heard in the trees around the reservoir.\u00a0 These are summer residents in the UK, and had just arrived from sub-Saharan Africa; they are some of the earliest returners among our migratory birds.\u00a0 Their high-pitched tweeting was impossible for me to pick out, but Sue\u2019s ears located them before her binoculars did.\u00a0 Sue’s enthusiasm spills out into her descriptions: she referred to the sunlight on the reservoir as ‘dancing diamonds’ and talked about the planting of acorns as ‘the rebirth of the wild-wood’.<\/p>\n
As we moved towards the Memorial Wood, a new sound greeted us: long, haunting notes piped across the open ground.\u00a0 I recognised it from childhood holidays in Yorkshire: it was the call of a curlew. Sue turned with excitement: the curlew has never been heard at Bradgate Park before.\u00a0 An amazing coincidence for my visit, which had Sue taking notes and making phone-calls.\u00a0 I think there\u2019s a poem in there somewhere\u2026.<\/p>\n
As we crossed the range of terrain that Bradgate Park has to offer, Sue pointed out likely spots for Little Owls, which are diurnal (they come out in the daytime).\u00a0 Gaps and ledges in the dry stone walls around plantations are the places to look.\u00a0 We stopped to watch the lazy circling of a buzzard in the sky above Dale Spinney.\u00a0 Down by the Lin, we heard a goldcrest \u2013 also called a firecrest because of the yellow-orange strip on the head.\u00a0 Despite the high-status name, this is the UK’s\u00a0 smallest bird \u2013 I would never have seen it if Sue hadn\u2019t heard it first, and located its perch.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s amazing how Sue\u2019s knowledge allowed her to read the landscape in a way that is completely beyond me. \u00a0As someone who uses words to describe and communicate,\u00a0 I was amazed by Sue\u2019s responses to sounds \u2013 and how she was able to interpret them. \u00a0The volunteers at Bradgate Park know the place in different ways from the rest of us! \u00a0And of course as I returned her binoculars, she shyly handed me some poems.\u00a0 At Bradgate Park, anyone can be a poet.\u00a0 All that\u2019s left is for me to do is to find my remote-controlled curlew\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
One of the fascinating things about this residency is discovery how different people see \u2013 or read \u2013 the landscape of Bradgate Park.\u00a0 A couple of weeks ago I went for a walk with Sue Graham, one of the Park\u2019s volunteers, and a wildlife expert.\u00a0 Over the course of nearly two hours, she showed meRead more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":515,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[19,2,20,21,18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-69","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-birds","category-bradgate-park","category-curlew","category-landscape","category-wildlife"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.lboro.ac.uk\/poetinthepark\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.lboro.ac.uk\/poetinthepark\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.lboro.ac.uk\/poetinthepark\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.lboro.ac.uk\/poetinthepark\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/515"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.lboro.ac.uk\/poetinthepark\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=69"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blog.lboro.ac.uk\/poetinthepark\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":71,"href":"https:\/\/blog.lboro.ac.uk\/poetinthepark\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69\/revisions\/71"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.lboro.ac.uk\/poetinthepark\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=69"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.lboro.ac.uk\/poetinthepark\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=69"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.lboro.ac.uk\/poetinthepark\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=69"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}