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Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 127)

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A strange plant; voices recorded for posterity; Ricky “will get every encouragement”; farewell to good neighbours; bad behaviour at Bournemouth; a Glossy Starling; Lady’s Slippers to paint, and monkeys and soldiers.

The edge of the Pinewood by the Lake at Hiltingbury – loved by Gran, and the playground of the family.  Image by Jo Quint via Flickr.

It is Easter-time, 1968, and the Brenan family spends some of the holiday at The Ridge, arriving on April 8th. Gran escorts the increasingly bird-keen Stuart around the Pinewood and the Lake on 9th. She discovers a strange plant:

In the mud at the end of the Lake I saw a surprising sight.  Scattered about were about half a dozen Arum Lilies – they must have been garden escapes, but how they got there I cannot imagine.  They were inaccessible, streams all round and the mud deep, but I ran home for my Wellington boots and managed to reach the smallest one.  They are a clear yellow, faintly touched with green and some very large though the whole plant was quite short.  I can find no definite mention of them in any book, except that there are species of African Arums and they may be one of these.  But what are they doing here, open in a rather cold April?


Here there is a note in the journal, added in 1975, which says, “Identified as Skunk Cabbage!”

Skunk Cabbage – it still grows commonly downstream of the Lake.  Image by David Stanley via Flickr.

The next day:

Jane and family went to Beaulieu to see the Montagu Motor Museum… Katherine and Andrew drove several miniature cars and motor-bikes and they all came home most excited.  Julian arrived from an RAF course at Leeds, at half-past three and had not had any dinner.  I fed him and, of course, had to put up a camp bed in the dining room, but he was very welcome.  This evening he and Stuart went to the football match in Southampton and were late home.

Stuart made a tape-recording of our conversation at tea… the excited chatter of the children about the motor museum and our comments and questions.  It was amusing to hear how alike Jane and I speak, and was nice to have a record of Greaty’s voice.  She was amazed when it was played back.

“Excitement! Excitement!” she begins her entry for the 11th.  “At ten minutes to eight this morning I heard the first Cuckoo!  He flew over and called five times.  Mother heard it too and so did Stuart”.  The Brenans leave for Pattingham later that day, but Julian remains at The Ridge, unwell and spending time in bed, and, Gran writes, “Ricky arrived from Bushey, having cycled.  He was tired”.

April 12th: “Good Friday and I was unable to go to Compton for any part of the three hour Service, much to my regret”, she writes, presumably because Julian and I need to be catered for.  While preparing breakfast she watches a pair of Great Spotted Woodpeckers in the garden:

The cock was on the bird table trying to draw up the bacon rind hanging there but every time he got it up to the table it fell down again.  He did not hang onto it as this species usually does.  The hen was clinging to the trunk of the tree… Ricky watched them from his bedroom.

“A restless afternoon”, she writes on the 19th, continuing:

…knowing that the Hockridges were leaving on the first stage of their journey to Canada, to a hotel in Winchester, and it was a somewhat tearful Jean who finally came in to say Goodbye.  I was not much use myself and was unable to say all that I wanted, but I shall be able to write to her.  It will seem very empty without her, but I suppose that I shall get used to it.

Ricky came in later, glad to have heard Grasshopper Warblers at Farley Mount… He went up again this evening and heard them again, and is going out at six o’clock tomorrow morning in the hope of seeing them.

Sometimes these skulkers climb a stem and give good views while singing.  I was delighted to see my first at Farley Mount.  Image by ianpreston via Flickr.

April 20th: “I heard Ricky go out just before six o’clock this morning and he was back soon after seven, having had a perfect view of his Grasshopper Warbler”.

Gran reports at some length on my enthusiastic birding activities, borrowing her binoculars, at this time.  She says that I see four new species in three days – the Grasshopper Warbler, a Lesser Spotted Woodpecker at Nursling, with Norris, a Woodcock in Cranbury Park and Wood Warblers in the Pinewood.  “What a good thing it is that he has this growing interest in birds, something so much in common with Barry, Brother and me.  He will get every encouragement”, Gran enthuses.

Joan Adelaide Goater - her journal about Chandler's Ford.

I cycle back to Bushey on the 23rd, the same day as Gran’s new neighbours arrive.  “The house was a blaze of light”, she says on her return from a Badminton match,  “I wonder what they will be like.  They will not easily replace the Hockridges”.

There is exciting tennis in Bournemouth towards the end of April, which Gran watches avidly on television.  It is the British Hard Court Championships and she writes enthusiastically about the great play of British Mark Cox, early on “beating the experienced professional Pancho Gonzales in five wonderful sets”, and he, later in the tournament, still “playing a splendid game, lost to the World Champion, Rod Laver”. She tells us that Ken Rosewall won a rain-interrupted Men’s Singles Final against Rod Laver; that Virginia Wade won the Ladies’ Final against Winnie Shaw, and Emerson and Laver won the Doubles against Gonzales and Gimeno.  “The last”, she writes on the 28th:

…was marred by a bad example of ill-temper and bad sportsmanship by Gonzales, old enough and experienced enough to know better.  After a questionable line decision he did not even try, and let down Gimeno quite deplorably, capping his shocking behaviour by storming off the court alone at the end without waiting for the presentation.  Gimeno made himself many friends by his good temper and cheerful wave to the crowd at the close of the ceremony.

Gonzales – Gran was not impressed with his attitude.  Image by Neon Tommy via Flickr.

That day she records that “yesterday, when I went into the kitchen to get the tea, there was a Robin on the cupboard and there were beak-marks on the butter!  He came in again this morning”.

Gran manages several outings during late April and early May, most of which are local in order to record birds for the proposed Bird Atlas.  On May 7th, though, she and Norris undertake a longer journey to see Jimmie and cousin Marjorie in north Wiltshire.  As usual, she writes little about the family meeting, saying only how sad she is to see Marjorie “becoming so very crippled, but she is wonderfully brave and cheerful”.  Also as usual, she describes the route they travel and what she sees during the journey in some detail.  This time she relates her and Norris’ experience of seeing an unusual bird.  She writes:

Near Mottisfont, Brother and I were startled to see an extraordinary bird, certainly not one on the British List.  It flew up from the road ahead of us and alighted, low down, in a tree.  Brother immediately stopped and we got out of the car and, oblivious of passing motorists, who must have thought us quite crazy, we watched the bird through our binoculars for several minutes.  It has a bright royal blue breast, iridescent blue-green nape and head, bright yellow eye, short tail and dark legs and bill.  It was the size and shape of a Starling, perhaps a trifle larger, and it behaved much as does a Starling.  It was still in the tree when we went on, full of amazement and wonder.

A Cape Glossy Starling.  Is this what Gran and Norris saw?  Image by Brian Ralphs via Flickr.

“A great thrill today!”, she writes on May 9th:

A member of Southampton Natural History Society, Mrs Hepplestom, brought her father to see me and he had two plants of Lady’s Slipper flowering in a pot!  Two years ago, his host at a Swiss hotel had given them to him and they had survived and this year bloomed for him.  He agreed to lend them to me to paint and I twittered all morning waiting to get at them.  This afternoon I painted the Lady’s Slippers and was pleased with the result.

Gran appears to have written a description of the strange bird seen at Mottisfont and sent it to the Ornithological Department of London Zoo, for on the 18th she receives a letter from there, identifying the bird as “a Glossy Starling, from Africa, escaped from an aviary most likely”.  In spite of this announcement, Gran always harboured the hope that the bird was a wild vagrant, because it was seen shortly after a strong wind from the south, which brought with it a quantity of red Saharan dust.

Book 121

We had been alone in Cranbury Park except for a distant view of the Keeper and a man feeding the Pheasants, and a man harrowing one of the fields.  It had been completely peaceful and indescribably lovely.

So writes Gran on May 22nd after spending time there with Norris, recording birds for the Atlas.

Gran writes that it is Katherine’s fifth birthday on the 29th, and also that she meets the family, that has moved into the Hockridge’s place, saying:

The little American boy, Earl Loser, now living next door to us, became very friendly this morning and was talking to us over the fence.  Later I saw him and his mother over the road and friendly exchanges were made.  Nobody will take Jean’s place but it is good to be on friendly terms with one’s neighbours.

Whitsun sees her in Bushey with the family, “…a quite fantastic weekend”, she says, and: “I had not been to London since the electrification of the railway and the speed of the train was such that I had little chance of making any observations on the way…”

Barry takes her on the evening of May 31st to nearby Whippendell Woods, botanizing and especially to see a new plant for Gran – the rare Coralroot, found only in the east Chiltern woods and in the Weald of Sussex and Kent.

Coralroot Cardamine bulbosa You can see the little black bulbils in the leaf axils by which it spreads.  Image by Fritz Flohr Reynolds via Flickr.

Now owning a car, Dad apparently uses his bicycle less often than he once did, and Gran records:

An interesting thing back at Reddings Avenue – there is a Blackbird sitting on eggs in a nest built on the saddle of Barry’s bicycle and she is quite undisturbed when Geoffrey takes everyone to see her.

“Very fine and warm today”, she begins her entry for June 1st, and:

Barry was most mysterious and refused to tell me what I was going to see today but said it was very, very special and Eric Classey was going to show it to us this afternoon.

They spend the day in the Chilterns, “Ricky came with us”, says Gran, continuing, “We went first to Rassler Wood which is a locality for the Ghost Orchid, but it is an extremely shy flowerer and today there was no sign of one”.  They meet Eric Classey at Goring station, and share his car for the short drive to “the special place”.  Gran writes:

We climbed over a stile, walked along the edge of a field and then went through a gap onto the downland hill.  Here Eric stopped and said to me, “What do you think this is?”  I knew immediately! Monkey Orchid Orchis simia, which I had long dreamed of seeing but never expected to.  It is known from only two places in Britain!  There used to be a colony of about a hundred in a field near here but the farmer ploughed up the field to get the subsidy and then never planted it up!  The orchids were destroyed and then, several years later, they were discovered on the present site.  But there are only seven and they are guarded most jealously.  They are beautiful and very variable in colour.  Now I could understand Barry’s excitement, for it was a new plant for him also.

One of the “monkeys” in the Oxfordshire population.  Image by David Evans via Flickr.

The following day is equally fabulous for Gran; she sees another orchid species new to her, as unexpected as the Monkey.  The whole family, joined again by Eric, visits Breckland, “…an area completely new to me”, she says:

…and one which I had long wanted to visit.  It was a great surprise to me, for I had expected an area of sand-dune and marsh, instead of which, it is inland, on the borders of Cambridge, Norfolk and Suffolk.  It is unique, both botanically and entomologically, a place of sand overlying chalk, which accounts for its very interesting flora.

She is introduced to several new plant species, and of the orchid, she writes this:

Next we walked along a ride and turned into the wood, where what I consider to be one of the wonders of the world was to be seen. We climbed a fence about eight feet high and there, in a little dell, was colony of about two hundred Soldier Orchids Orchis militaris in full bloom, in addition to many non-flowering ones.  This is an extremely rare orchid now known from chalk scrub in two places, here in Suffolk and one in the Chilterns.  There were some magnificent specimens, some over a foot high, and one with forty-five florets.

More normally called “Military”rather than “Soldier” Orchid.  You can see the little helmeted soldiers on this plant from the Suffolk population.  Image by naturalhistoryman via Flickr.

“Ricky”, she writes of that day, “was very happy to have seen a Little Owl, Red-legged Partridges, Stone Curlews and a Weasel”.

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Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 72) Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 73) Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 103) Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 109) Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 122)
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Comments

  1. Thank you, Rick, for another remarkable episode. I was spoiled for orchids when living near the Botanical Gardens in Kandy. They have the most exotic orchid house in the world. But then, there is nothing like spying an orchid in the wild of whatever species.
    I have a single Skunk Cabbage growing on the bank of the stream in our garden. They can become prolific and block the water flow but as long as it stays as one plant, it does no harm.

    Reply

    • Many thanks for your nice comment Mike. I know Gran was less impressed with the tropical orchids than her beloved wild British ones but though I partly agree with her, those showy ones you were familiar with at Kandy, I would have loved. What an ugly name is Skunk Cabbage!

      Reply

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