Sanitised Neighbours

After days of gazing into the sky, a house martin finally flies over the garden. It was only one, and it may have been on its way further north, but it more than cheered up my annual clear up of the garden. The first one always seems to catch me by surprise; a brief call, a quick glimpse, and its gone. The moment instilled new energy into my gardening, and I can now look forward to lazy summer evenings of entertainment watching our little ‘torpedoes’ mastering the twilight sky. With swallows already busy, I now wait for the first swift in a few days time.

House martins nested under the eaves of next-door’s house for years, but alas no longer. Droppings from the nest finally proved too much for our sanitized neighbours, and plastic tails were attached to the apex of the roof by the nest site resulting in the birds deserting. I secretly vowed to put extra effort into my conservation work that summer to make up the loss, but how does one evaluate possibly three priceless broods of house martins? Thankfully for both the martins and us, the neighbours moved house and the new owners took away the plastic, but alas the birds have not returned.  There are similar houses in the village they could use, and on the face of it there’s quite a choice, but who knows their exact requirements for a nest site. Is it the amount of overhang of the eaves, the colour of the rendering on the wall, white certainly looks to be the favourite, or maybe the texture of the rendering?

They’ve been back elsewhere for some time and pairs were already nest building under the eaves of one of the Penrice cottages yesterday. I hear that they’ve been increasing over large bodies of waters in the past week, but there are still just a few over our village. It will be a some days yet before they’re over the garden each day, but even then they come and go, and during periods of poor weather are absent altogether.

Who needs the Carmargue?

It’s getting late in the season to count rook nests. Once the leaves are on the trees, they’re much harder to see and the annual counts should have been finished by now. It’s impossible to miss the rookery at Frog Lane. The sloping path down to the marsh echoes to their calls, which is so much a part of spring. I can still see the nests, and can only make out about 20, but they’ll be hidden in the canopy in a few days time.

Hidden deep in the wood by the lane a nobly old stonewall is completely covered by moss. No stone is visible, just ivy and celandines sprout from its soft green cover. It’s a wrens paradise, their extraordinary sound vibrates across the little valley and out to the sunlit bank on the other side. I could be nowhere else but in Britain. Celandines, wood anemones, primroses, violets, a single early purple orchid, my first red campion of the year, and little patches of bluebells, decorated here and there with orange tip and peacock butterflies, it’s wonderful. As if on cue a cuckoo calls from the hill behind, my third of the morning, and raises hope that maybe this will be a better year for them.

The seawall is a white wash of flowering blackthorn, each branch covered with grey-blue and orange lichens. Whitethroats launch into their bouncing song flights. A few days ago there were none, now hedgerows are alive with them. Welsh blacks graze inside the seawall reminding me of the Carmargue, but without the mosquitoes. The real reward for the long walk is on the salt marsh near the sand dunes, where a pair of displaying lapwings checks me out, tumbling in the gin-clear blue sky. Who needs the Carmargue?

400 Pairs

Like little floating corks, black balls of fluff follow a pair of moorhens close by the reeds at Oxwich Marsh. A soaring buzzard sends the chicks scurrying onto land; seemingly all legs, vestigial wings and punk feathers, they appear reptilian. The first brood of yellow ducklings keeps close to a female mallard and from secret nests others will gradually appear, and if the season is kind, large crèches may eventually form. In contrast noisy greylags stand around in pairs and may not even have started nesting. They’re recent colonists to the marsh, and are increasing here, as in most other parts of Wales.

Sedge warblers have arrived now, and are singing well in the rough patches of gorse near the village, and the reed warblers are trickling in. If I can get myself out of bed early enough, the marsh will be alive with song at dawn in a couple of week’s time. Since the early 1960s, reed warbler numbers have increased at Oxwich to about 400 breeding pairs, amazing since they are very near the western edge of their range here. Sedge warblers have not fared as well, but Oxwich is still the best place to find them on Gower.

Resident birds have been busy.  Some early blackbirds and collard doves have fledged, and the first naked starlings are falling out of nests, but mostly the season is getting off to a late start. Blue tits and robins built nests in our garden weeks ago, but now wait to soft-line them. Eggs will only be laid at the right time, since they need to have their young when caterpillar numbers peak.

A Century Ago

Sybil Peel was a very special lady; a sharp mind even in her nineties, she would recall in great detail her childhood days in the Peel family house at Sunnyside overlooking Underhill Park in Mumbles. A direct descendant of Sir Robert Peel, she was the last of a truly great line. We became great friends, spending many happy hours over real Edwardian teatimes in her dining room, the walls covered with portraits of the Peel family. There were tales of corncrakes at haymaking time, father going to work on horseback in the town, and skating in winter on the flooded meadow below the house, which is now the local cricket pitch.

An old friend Paul has a late 19^th century watercolour of the meadow, with Sunnyside in the background. It’s marvelous. The haymaking scene shows an old horse-driven cart laden with hay, with farm workers gathering and loading the hay just as Sybil described to me decades ago. She remembered everything, and each year showed me the exact hole in the wall by the old lawn tennis court where the spotted flycatcher nested. There were many natural history artifacts in the house; books, paintings and stuffed birds, but best of all were her sister Violet’s nature diaries, written before the Second World War. Of no real value to Sybil, many of these were offered to me, but out of politeness I refused. She did however manage to persuade me to take the case of stuffed Pallas’s sand grouse, shot by her father during the famous eruption of 1888. What a mistake not to have accepted Violet’s natural history diaries, a treasure trove of what the countryside would have been like on Gower in the early years of the last century.

On Sybil’s death Sunnyside was emptied, bought and sanitized by the manger of a local supermarket.  The diaries and everything else disappeared. What irony.

Filling the Vacuum

I have mixed feelings about quarries. We need the stones and minerals they provide, but they can be very destructive to nature. Smaller ones can sometimes give back more than they take, and gravel pits are probably the best example. On Gower there’s a history of limestone quarrying going back centuries. Most were very small affairs on the south coast, extracting limestone to be shipped across the Bristol Channel to Somerset and Devon. All of these have been reclaimed by nature a long time ago, but their legacy remains in the form of small kilns hidden in the landscape, much sought after by historians.

By comparison, the one at Barlands Quarry dates from the second half of the last century, and ceased working only a decade ago. A great chasm of a place, its working are hidden from view, and it now provides peace even though near a main road. Already nature is beginning to get a foothold. Bare ground is soon invaded by common plants; daisies, dandelions, coltsfoot, great masses of buddleia, mats of forget-me-nots and wild strawberries, all beginning to hide the years of disturbance. In the shelter of the wind, and as spring gets warmer by the day, peacocks and green-veined whites give hope for a better butterfly year. 

But it’s the echoing jackdaws that star here. Like a colony of seabirds they enter nest holes in the vertical cliff face, and are never quiet. They’re spoiled for choice, continually carrying nesting material into a myriad of cracks. Peregrines have reared young here in recent years, and I’ve seen them around this year, but there are none today. A pair of vocal ravens mix with the jackdaws; maybe they nested, but it’s too late in the season to check. Swallows from the nearby farm stay well above the ridge, where fully-grown trees perch precariously as though about to fall. Lower down sycamore saplings, 20 or 30 feet high cling to the face, but seem to have a firm foothold; nature’s desire to fill this vacuum carries on relentlessly.

Earth Day

In 1969, a massive oil-spill off the Californian coast inspired the first Earth Day on 20th April 1970. In the words of its founder Gaylord Nelson, it is "designed to activate individuals and organisations to strengthen the collective fight against man's exploitative relationship with the planet". It also coincides with the year I first read Paul Ehrlich's seminal book 'The Population Bomb', which changed the direction of my life, and that of many others.  No treatise of this kind can ever be total correct, and the 'The Population Bomb' is no exception, but it alerted many to the importance of environmental issues, and helped to bring the increase of the human population into the forefront of the debate. The environmental movement has come a long way since then, but the population of the planet continues to increase out of control, and in reality we are losing the war.

As a mark of respect for Earth Day, I must not drive today. It's a long walk of penance to reach a secluded wet spot in the far corner of our common where I find grasshopper warblers each year. Even though I can hear the reeling song, it's always difficult to pin them down. I'm first convinced it's away in a dense copse, but eventually find it no more than 20 yards away singing in the open, and it's very easy to think there's more than one. The soft repeated drawn-out rattling sound, more like a cicada than a bird, seems to come from different directions and unless it moves, it can be impossible to find. It's well worth being patient and even though often described as a small brown warbler, there are subtle dark olive greens on its back, and the colour of its soft pale buff throat is delightful.

After living here for so long, I'm amazed to find a newly marked footpath. Wet underfoot, a world of dense scrub leads to an isolated five-barred gate and I could be nowhere else but Britain. Leaning over the gate, I marvel at the landscape we've unconsciously created, and wonder what will be here after another four decades of Earth Days.

Cuckoo Trouble

There’s a very tall metal post on the edge of the common; I think its some kind of beacon connected to the nearby small airport, but it’s rarely vacant. This morning a kestrel was perched on top and on my way home a buzzard displaced a loud carrion crow. These isolated posts are used all the time, particularly on the estuary, where there’s a series of wooden stakes way out from the shore, probably a relic of the fishing industry. I spotted my first spring osprey of the year on one of these this morning. If there’s a heat haze it’s often difficult to be confident of what’s there, but today’s early cool air presented no problems. Ospreys have been arriving for weeks now and many are already back at their nest sites. We have them on the Dyfi Estuary north of here, and a pair is already busy nest-building. It’s now their third year at this Wildlife Trust reserve, but they still haven’t brought off any young. State of the art visitor viewing facilities are in place, and we all keep our fingers crossed that this year’s birds will stay and oblige.

In Scotland, where there are now about 200 nesting pairs, ospreys are big news and big business. Radio tracked individuals have been followed from the nest to West Africa and back. Yesterday’s news from the Scottish Wildlife Trust reports the first egg laid at the Loch Low nest was between 7.30 and 8.40 am; I wonder what pioneering ornithologists would have made of all this.

Hearing my first cuckoo each year is very special. Soft and distant at Oxwich Marsh, it captures the magic of spring in a moment of pure exhilaration. A few miles away on Ryers Down another, hotly pursued by meadow pipits is soon out of sight. Such a fundamental part of our British summer, it’s hard to imagine the countryside without them, but unlike ospreys, they’re in big trouble. I can't imagine life without cuckoos, a bird woven into our culture in so many ways.

Signatures of Spring

After waiting for what seems like an age, it’s warm, and spring is everywhere in the park at Penrice. They took a while to flower this year, but the snake’s head fritillaries are now quite wonderful. Hundreds nod their beautiful delicate purple heads in the slight morning breeze. There are white ones two; en mass they take one's breath away. Mixed with primroses, celandines, daisies, dandelions and wood anemones, the meadow is covered with spring. A single bluebell flower harks to next month, and another piece in the jigsaw puzzle that is spring.  I’ve heard that nothing will grow under beech trees, but here on this slope the fable is bogus; there are flowers everywhere irrespective of tree or shade.

Wherever I look there are signs of spring. Chiffchaffs in the trees; brimstone butterflies, bumble bees, honeybees search primroses and wood anemones in turn for nectar. A plaintive sounding mistle thrush sings from across the valley, and there are house martins in the sky.  It’s been an odd spring so far, cold winds, late flowers and house martins before swallows; but then nothing is ‘normal’ any more in the natural world. A sense of expectation is palpable with the first two weeks of May only a few days away, when this wonderful part of Gower will be at its vibrant best. 

Long Grove

Wet woodlands are rich in wildlife, and Gelli Hir (Long Grove) is such a place. A mixed broadleaved woodland, it still has remnants of its ancient past. Grading from damp oak, birch and willow to drier ash, sweet chestnut, sycamore and beech, it surrounds a central pond; there’s also alder along the network of small streams, and hazel coppice in places.

On a bright sunny morning, dappled light shoots through the canopy onto moss-covered twisted roots of old trees, providing support for newly emerged wood anemones and wood sorrel, and, looking like clenched fists, young ferns shoot from the woodland floor.

Over the years the Wildlife Trust has put much effort into maintaining the pond and old shooting groves; dams have come and gone, but the final sturdy moss-covered stone solution will last for generations. A thoughtfully placed seat by the bank makes an ideal place to sit and watch. There have been grey wagtails here for the forty years I’ve known the wood; long tails wagging, they fly-catch expertly above the smooth water as it glides gently over the top of the dam. The pond is a stage set, waiting for spring actors to appear and moorhens are already here, carrying dead grasses to a nest site on the island of willows. With a noisy splash, a pair of mallards makes an entrance right; they’re immediately spooked and head for cover. Blackcaps, chiffchaffs, willow warblers, nuthatches and buzzards provide the music, as do all three members of the thrush family singing in turn.

Butterflies patrol sunny glades and the cleared groves. Peacocks, orange tips and a single comma are freshly hatched, and I hear the background buzz of bees and hoverflies. There will be other butterflies in their season, but the real star of these woods is the silver-washed fritillary, but I shall have to wait until June to find one.

Reality Check

We are spoilt for choice of Norman churches on Gower, but the stocky one at Ilston has a special charm. At the edge of the village, at the head of a deep wooded valley, there is peace going back centuries. The bridge by the gate crosses a gentle bubbling brook with grey wagtails, and reaches the sea just a mile or so downstream. The huge yew tree, its trunk standing on a mound of earth and roots, is thought to date to the age of the church. It dominates the ancient building; another, a baby by comparison, stands ready to take its place. Mistle thrushes, coal tits, noisy jackdaws, nuthatches and great tits all make the big tree home, and maybe the tree creeper, silently climbing the trunk has done so too. A great hum of bumblebees and the gentle cooing of woodpigeons provides backing for the music of blackbirds, robins and a song thrush in the village beyond.

God’s acres are havens for wildlife. There are no artificial fertilizers; plants and animals exist free from external pressures. There are no rare things here, just the commonplace, but when summer gets going it will probably be a botanist’s paradise. Snowdrops are finished now, and it’s the turn of lesser celandines, primroses and daisies to decorate the churchyard, whilst newly flowering wild strawberry and ivy-leaved toadflax cling to the limestone church and walls. Set in beech woods carpeted with wood anemones, the old rectory sits on the hill behind the church,  has been in private ownership for generations, and is part of the history of this place. At the back of the church, old lichen-covered 17^th century gravestones, many unreadable, lean against the tower; lost from their owners they may stay there for centuries.  

On leaving by the gate a modern reality check: ‘Beware of unsafe gravestones’. How ridiculous is that? I wonder what the incumbents are thinking.

Old Wives’ Tales

On an ideal spring morning, with bright sun and temperatures more like May, I would usually expect to hear skylarks above our dunes, fields and commons, but can find only one. They will appear in the weeks ahead, but it looks as though the bad winter, and their continued steady decline over recent years may be to blame. There are no parachuting meadow pipits, or perky stonechats either; perhaps I should be more patient, but Rachel Carson’s ‘Silent Spring’, climate change and modern pesticides ring uneasily in my head.

The woodlands and alder carr at Oxwich Marsh smell of emerging water mint. In sheltered glades, wrens, robins and nonchalant blackbirds sing; blue tits on the other hand are definitely few and far between. The distant yaffle of a green woodpecker reminds me that I read recently of their unexplained demise in Pembrokeshire, but not so here. Shining new brimstone and peacock butterflies make for the sun and settle; maybe this will be a better year for them.

On such a perfect day, no swallows or martins feed over the marsh; but they come and go at this time of year. Virgin shoots of reeds break the surface in the reed bed and the brown looking marsh is gradually wakening up. Grey herons glide towards open flashes, and at least half a dozen Cetti’s warblers pump out song from deep vegetation; these new colonists from the south have survived the ravages of winter too. There’s real spring song in the Garden Lane; willow warblers, chiffchaffs, a bubbling blackcap, and an early reed warbler. Invisible in deep cover, it delivers its non-spectacular song a good week earlier than normal.

There are so many reports of ‘first cuckoos’ at this time of the year, but there was a reliable one just west of here yesterday. Cuckooflowers in the hedgerows however are not to be doubted; there’s something believable in old wives’ tales after all.

Sunken Lane to Ilston

There are a number of secret ways to get to Ilston village, and one of the most lovely is along a rarely trodden footpath from the north. Kittle Hill Lane crosses the South Gower Road at an uninspiring cross-roads, and continues downhill as a muddy track, skirting Moorlakes Wood. I don’t walk this path often, but on sunny days it can be enchanting.

I tread carefully, there are no footprints; I may be the first along here for days. Under damp woodland, twisted trees with branches covered in shining moss, are engulfed by great tangles of ivy and ferns growing from the moss; it feels eerie. The lane drops steeply to a stream, which points my way for a while.  Little wind reaches here. Even though their pretty little white flowers have still to emerge, the air is full of the scent of garlic. Celandines decorate the edge of the lane and a clump of daffodils deep inside the wood could be the real thing. It’s hard to believe they were planted there, but they’re too far away to be sure. On either side of the now indistinct path, lonely fields hold a few cattle, but most are stock-free at this time of year. I need to climb over fallen branches, but it’s not too difficult to get through, and in summer the path can become impossible, when mats of bramble sometimes block the way.

Courthouse Wood is not yet green, just a few chestnut trees promise spring, which has been late arriving this year, but when the weather finally improves I’m expecting a spectacular show. I move on through avenues of bird song, passing huge undisturbed cobwebs that look as though they've been there for ever.

The decent into Ilston comes quickly, and I emerge at the rectory above the old church remembering Judge Rowe-Harding and summer garden parties in aid of the Wildlife Trust. The house remains in the family.

Warbler fall

Swansea is blessed with parks and formal gardens. A legacy from the Victorians, they provide solitude and wildlife experiences for young and old. Only a stone’s throw from the sea, Brynmill Park is a little gem. Tall exotic trees blend with natives above orderly, immaculately kept flowerbeds, surrounding a busy lake fringed with weeping willows and beds of shining marsh marigolds. Gulls, moorhens, coots, little grebes and tufted ducks bustle about on the water, tame after generations of visitors ‘feeding the ducks’. The bowling green, with its charming wooden pavilion looks out on the billiard-table grass ready for the season ahead. There are no serious white-coated players with black bowls yet, just smart blackbirds digging holes in the near perfect turf.

High up above the water, a ballet of swallows and sand martins goes unnoticed by families with prams and dogs. Alive with chiffchaffs and willow warblers, the small trees and shrubs by the lake edge provide a magical experience. Fly-catching for invisible insects, these delicate little birds quietly and delicately sally to and from the waters edge, sometimes four or five in view at a time. A few sing softly, but it’s not the serious business of territory, or looking for a mate, more a muted sub-song. There must be a hundred or more around the lake, forced down from their northward journey by recent overnight rains to this sheltered oasis. Unless they sing, they’re difficult to tell apart, but the bright spring pastel-lemon yellows of willow warblers sometimes stand out against the more dusky shades of chiffchaffs. This energy of visible migration never fails to inspire me; bumping into a fall like this is down to luck, as is the now resident ring-necked parakeet high in the trees overhead.

The Tongue of the Wave

The last two weeks of March were unseasonably cold, but at last there’s a real promise of spring. The soil is still cool, and flowers are late. A warming sun over the last few days has encouraged more gorse into flower at Hunt’s Bay. From my secluded lookout where Vernon Watkins wrote poems, I look down over a sea of yellow.  A couple of early swallows twist and turn, coming so close at times that I hear their bills snap as they catch an insect. They may be a pair that will nest in the farm at the head of the valley, but more likely they’re heading further north for the summer.

Vernon’s ledge is hidden from the cliff path; only locals seem to know it, and I’ve never been disturbed here. I look east towards the massive limestone cliff at Pwll Du Head. Below, the gentle slopes of the bay show the first signs of spring green amongst the dead browns of winter bracken. The constant crashing of surf on the rocks is the only sound; there’s a real sense of the wild.

As always at this spot, my thoughts turn to poetry. The Watkins family home is on the cliffs a short walk to the west, and I know Vernon came here with Dylan Thomas. From this magic place they must have composed together.  But it’s Vernon’s words, carved into a small marble plaque set into the rock-face that captures the spirit of the bay, and moves my soul each time I sit here.

I have been taught the script of the stones

and I know the tongue of the wave

George III

What a difference a week makes at this time of year. Warm sun and little wind makes for a perfect spring day.  Inside Penrice Estate, most trees are still without leaves, the snowdrops have gone, and just a few withering crocuses hang on, and in their place a great mass of celandines, wood anemones and primroses carpet the parkland floor.  A handful of violets hide in the shade of some trees, and dandelions are starting to spread.  More snake’s head fritillaries are out, but this is just the beginning; in a week from now they’ll be at their best.

In wetter places, clumps of marsh marigolds shine vibrant yellow in the afternoon sun, in normal years they would be growing out of water, but this year many are surrounded by dried-out mud.  Yellow flag, now about a foot high, won’t be out for weeks, and the reeds are beginning to poke green shoots above the water.  Flying insects are few, and I wonder how the distant singing chiffchaff is faring.  A Cetti’s warbler calls from deep inside the marsh; they’re resident here, and he too may be finding food difficult to locate.

The sluice at the end of the great lake drains out into a tiny waterfall creating the only sound save for a few birds in the trees above.  The path to the Jack Pond tells me that badgers were here last night, and at the pond a little more spring has arrived.  Willows are showing bright green leaves, and groups of tiny flies dance in vertical circles above the water.  The footpath ends at a stile leading to an old wet meadow.  I could walk to Oxwich village from here, but prefer the secret world of the Jack Pond.  Looking back through the bare trees to the great house I see water, reeds, woodland and the elegant Georgian house.  I’m back in the reign of George III.

Snakes Head Fritillaries

The long period of bitterly cold weather during the second half of last month is finally over, and it finally feels like spring. There are butterflies about, and flowers are appearing where a week or so ago the ground was cold and bare. The only place I know locally where snakes head fritillaries grow on Gower is inside the Penrice Estate. They’re at their very best now, growing close together in a small patch of grass under the shade of trees. Such an exquisite flower, these may be a remnant of earlier cultivation - they’ve been grown as ornamental flowers for at least five hundred years. This little group has been under these trees for as long as I remember and I prefer to believe they’re real.

It’s been such a long wait, but spring is appearing all around. There’s just a trickle of migrants, a few chiffchaffs and wheatears; the big rush will come at the end of the month, when the temperature rises. Trees are starting to green, hedgerows show patches of hawthorn leaves, and fields are carpeted with daisies. Daffodils are fading fast. and on woodland floors, the first garlic flowers are out. Wood anemones are at their best, and the green shoots of bluebells are appearing. It’s the time of promise and renewal, and the long cold winter will be forgotten in no time at all.

I sit on the cliff hoping to see a swallow come in from the sea. The afternoon sun feels good, and there’s a little warmth in the grass. It’s still too early for rock roses and bird’s foot trefoil, they’ll be here next month, but the tiny dot singing non-stop high in the sky removes any disappointment for a lack of swallows.

Burry Holms

Burry Holms feels old and remote. It’s easier to get on to than The Worm, but the views are not as spectacular. A long walk from Llangennith through the dunes, then north along the beach, a gentle scramble over the rocks and I’m on the grassy tidal island and as usual I’m the only one here.

Human history goes back millennia on this tiny piece of land, and although I see few signs, I can sense it. The few remains of a medieval church, now mostly overgrown, are a sure sign that this was once an important place.

The weather is still cold and there’s a bitter easterly wind. In some years I can be here without a jacket; this spring’s weather has felt more like January and I’m wrapped up with sweaters and a Barbour jacket. Underfoot there are few spring flowers, but when the soil finally warms up, the island will be covered in thrift and sea campion. At the westerly end I look out over the vast expanse of Carmarthen Bay, Pembrokeshire and the Atlantic. It’s wild out here. White spray flies back from the tops of myriads of waves, it feels raw and I sense the power of the sea.

Seabirds fight the currents flowing quickly out of the estuary. Cormorants and scoters make light of the rough conditions and the gulls seem to revel in the wind, alighting occasionally on the sea to take a morsel of food. There are no boats out here, any wanting to get across to the safely of the little harbour at Burry Port will have to wait for the tide, or maybe another day when the sea is kinder.

Marsh Road

There are four short lanes leading down to the Marsh Road between Llanrhidian and Crofty, all are quiet and mostly used by locals.  It’s a land of stunted trees and hedges, all shaped by winter gales. Old twisted oaks covered in moss give a feeling of remoteness.  The land looks poor - making a living from farming here must be a struggle.  Field boundaries are marked by untidy fences and neglected hedgerows, some growing from the remains of broken down stonewalls.  Even though we’ve had no rain for days, it feels damp.  There’s not much colour yet, but celandines border the paths, daisies bend towards the sun, and some blackthorn is in flower.  In a few hedges, goat’s willow and gorse brighten up the nascent greens, and the rough, wet pastures hold ponies and a few sheep.

From the road beside the marsh I can see for miles over the estuary, and to the east, late snow hangs on the tops of the Brecon Beacons.  It’s flat here and the landscape is mostly sky.  A warming mid-afternoon sun creates a shimmering mirage on the far horizon.  Distant poles, often used by ospreys on migration, seem to come and go in the haze.  Left and right ‘wild’ Gower ponies loaf about, but there are no sheep on the great expanse of marsh.  This is a place of cockles, and their presence is all around.  Farm drives are covered with crushed shells, which also peek out from the roadside verges.  I recall bent old ladies gathering cockles years ago with their pony and traps out on the sands, memories that are so much a part of the history of the estuary.

As if from nowhere, the sun glistens on a pastel-silver bird low over the marsh.  A male hen harrier glides by close and passes quickly.  Moments later a female; winter is still not quite over.