Glee at the glide of the Gleade

Apologies for appalling alliteration (sic), but is there a more joyful flier than the kite.

Gleade is an old english name for the bird as in Gleade Hawk or Greedy Gleade.

I will have more to say on this but here are some photos of this supremely acrobatic flier.

To the deer standing in the road

as I hurtled down the hill

without bike lights

after getting lost.

It could have been bad

for both of us

I finally got round to seeing Timon of Athens last night at the National Theatre with Simon Russell Beale and was struck by the haunting lines that the city-wearied protagonist utters just as he leaves Athens;

Mink are formidable and efficient killers. The rabbit which was squealing frantically was about three times larger than the mink.  Mink have colonised Mull having arriving by swimming from the mainland and are thriving despite a trapping campaign. There are theories that they are driven out by otters which are significantly larger and more powerful or that they have carried a viral infection that attacked an otter population that had a weakened immune system due to dieldrin and other organophosphates that decimated otter populations from the 1960′s onwards. No one really knows.

This morning in Richmond Park, Southwest London.

This is the carcass of a stranded Minke Whale on Mull.

It’s a poignant sight and one that is increasingly common, according to the Hebridean Whale and Dolphin Trust. (www.whaledolphintrust.co.uk). The Trust has a photo album of the whales seen in the waters off Mull.Current theories have linked strandings to the use of sonar by boats, or to general marine pollution, as stranded whales are often found with stomachs full of plastics or tangled in nets. A contemporary version of the finest nineteenth century American novel (Hemingway was wrong to vote for Huck Finn I reckon) would have to have a section on plastics now.

‘What a piece of work is a man’ indeed.

One of the delights and I can think of no more suitable word of the bivvy (which an incredulous passerby once described with an air of some distaste is ‘sleeping outdoors in a plastic bag’) is the dawn. Mornings like the one in the photo here have me swearing never again to sleep in a house ( which is, as the poet Gary Snyder put it ‘ a box to cage the biped in’.) This is a very early morning view on Mull of a fairly typical view of an otter. It is the long object above the rocks and directly below the T in my watermark. Most otter sightings in Britain are like this if you are lucky. A long series of ripples in the water, the faint swell of the head of the river god, and an eel spine arch to the rudder flick of the tail, as it dives again to disappear. A god of water, a riverine imp sliding under the surface into mystery to elude us like the beast itself.

I’ve just come back from a week on Mull. For those who don’t know it is one of the best places in Britain for the Otter, the extraordinary secretive mustelid that is the top river predator in Northern Europe. Otters are members of the Lutrinae, a sub-family of the mustelids the same family as the weasels and stoats. They are a weasel that has adapted to living a semi-amphibious life and have long had a totemic quality, by virtue of their appealing appearance. Given that they are crepuscular in habit and rarely seen in the UK during daylight hours it is astonishing to be able to watch them as ‘easily’ as this in Scotland. I say ‘easily’ as the photo above required quite a few hours and a degree of shikari ( which should be interpreted as a hindi euphemism for skulking in the bushes in camouflage at ungodly hours). Not to mention a midge or three. Otters are notoriously shy and secretive and most non marine populations are strictly nocturnal, but Western Scotland is the place to get good daytime views. The one above is eating a flounder, using the powerful back teeth to consume the fish. Here is another shot – I’m grateful to a passing Devonian fisherman (whose name I’ve rudely forgotten) for identifying the fish.

I’ve read a few books on otters this last week, by the flickering light of a campfire while the stags roared around me, and the milky way twinkled like it was twinkling for me alone (apologies for the overwrought nature-writing but I got to sleep out in one of the most beautiful places on earth and am still drunk on it ;’drunk on truth and beauty’ and to watch otters). I’ll blog on otter texts at a later date but wanted to invoke a couple of literary ghosts who were both obsessed with otters, or as James Williams in his book The Otter would have it ‘besottered’. I refer of course to Gavin Maxwell and Henry Williamson, whose works Ring of Bright Water and Tarka the Otter, respectively are such sacred texts for anyone spellbound by the water weasel. They’ve got me too, and watching so elusive an animal is what I’d call a numinous experience.Of which more later.

the bloat of a dead whale

jagged on a boulder field

gulls breaking skinshell

of flesh mines

overhead the guttural honk

of an unkindness sail in for death psalms

carcass warriers built for digging

they have no time for voyeurs

but in the eye-darks cunning the riddle of flesh

we are all prey