Autumn richness and worrying woodlands

Autumn Richness and Fierce Forest Faces

October events with Creeping Toad

As the season changes, if we still had bears they'd be heading for their deep cold caves for a winter of reaming. As it is, our hedgehogs are looking for good places for along sleep, the amphibians are settling into pond mud and tucking into hollows under old walls and fallen logs...the wild world prepares for winter.

As part of the Buxton Civic Association's Stronger Roots project, Creeping Toad have been coordinating creative events through 2021, inviting people to explore the woods of Buxton in new ways and remind themselves of the wonder and value that lives on our doorsteps

find a cosy corner....

Autumn Richness weekend

• Saturday 9th, Sunday 10th October, 2021
• 10:30 - 15:00
• at Buxton Country Park, Green Lane, Buxton , SK17 9DH
• The event is free and materials are provided
• facebook: @creepingtoad
• twitter: @creepingtoad
• book a space on Saturday: Autumn Richness - Family event Tickets, Sat 9 Oct 2021 at 10:30 | Eventbrite
• book a space on Sunday: Autumn Richness - Family event Tickets, Sun 10 Oct 2021 at 10:30 | Eventbrite

The leaves are turning golden, the berries are ripening and we’ll celebrate the changing season with a weekend of autumn activities. Join us at Buxton Country Park and make your own autumn wildlife book (then go exploring in the woods to see what wildlife you can find). You could also weave a panel of grass, leaves, wools and feathers. We’ll celebrate REC Theatre’s performance of Mr Fox (#fantasticmrfox) on Sunday 10th with our own woodland animal wall-panels decorated with leaves grass, and drawings sharp fox faces, rabbit smiles or clever crows...or you might prefer a colourful toadstool panel, a treasury of berries

Mr Fox performances: find out more on facebook: https://www.facebook.com/RecYouthTheatreCompany/

Fierce Forest Faces

• 26th October (Tuesday)
• Buxton Country Park, Green Lane, Buxton, SK17 9DH
• 10:30 - 13:00
• The event is free and materials are provided
• Here is a link for booking spaces but drop-ins are welcomed too!
• facebook: @creepingtoad
• twitter: @creepingtoad

Take a story from the woods home for Hallowe’en…inspired by our local trees, we will create some tree-people or animal masks. There will be faces that could fit in a window and glare at passers-by or you might make a mask to turn you into someone else... Will a fox face to keep your house safe? or a staring tree? A owl with wings outspread to chase dangerous mice away?

Lost treasures?

 By the Broch of Gurness

I was just sitting there, finding a quiet corner out of reach of the persistent wind and being steadily dribbled on by a half-hearted rain shower (it looked great as it swept through in trailing curtains over the hills, just not so much to be in).

Rain

Listening to a spring morning. skylarks, skylarks, skylarks. Every field, it seemed, sprouted larks (not soaring as high as less windswept southern cousins). And curlews. The combination of lark-song and curlew piping could have been all the enchantment I needed.

But I sat there with the broch behind me and the fields beyond that and the swell and sigh of Eynhallow Sound in front of me. It took a few minutes for my eyes to understand those patterns of grey and silver and breaking white, and the shifting shadows that told the story of the dangerous currents of the Sound. I had some binoculars but they were hardly needed.

Razorbill

Lying low and barrelling their determined course through the waves, black scoters ploughed across the scene which suddenly exploded into life. There were birds everywhere. Goosanders, as low in the water as the scoters but sleek arrows to the ducks’ solidity. Eiders on the rocks, and cormorants. They always sound like they’re squabbling but maybe all those wheeling terns are just talking very fast. There is a gull. And another. No, I’m no birder. That is another gull, but a different one. And that is a fulmar. Gliding, sliding along the wind with barely a wingbeat between Midhowe Broch and this Gurness edge. A skua on patrol, dark wings and dangerous thoughts. And two martins, new come from those long migrations, blown sideways into the shelter behind the broch.

The sea, grey, racing, laughs itself into waves and breaks; but turn a corner and there is peace and the bay is still with pale turquoise clear water over graceful sea wrack meadows. And everywhere, always, watching everything; dark eyes, bobbing heads and the sudden roll and splash of a fat body as the seals invite us to play.

In 10 minutes of sitting there on a stone, I felt that i had seen more wildlife than in a day’s walk at home. Is this what we’ve lost from the southern counties? Maybe not those actual birds but that richness of life, that sense of a world bubbling with activity at every level, at every intersection of a habitat…..

Broch of Gurness, 8th May 2016

Raven at the Brough of Birsay

Pictures: no, I didn't take any when i was just enjoying the birds, so these come from before and then later in the day when it sort of stopped raining for a bit