Burnished Copper

Burnished copper glinting in brilliant mid morning autumn sunshine, a cock pheasant strutting deliberately in slow motion on his way back from my feeding point under a lone hawthorne bush. Between the stems of the broken hedge line between winter wheat and lush green rape he was following his path until Emma appeared in the sky. The cock disappeared, had he clamped, had he retraced his steps? My female peregrine climbed hard, 300feet on her first pass into a huge out swing downwind, climbing back into the wind from nearly a mile away she was over 1000 feet on her second pass but still not satisfied she took another circle and was half as high again when she held station, beating with half closed wings into the southerly breeze above the working dogs.

The younger cocker ran up the hedge but nothing appeared, he disappeared into a bramble patch, the obvious retreat for our cock but still nothing appeared so he took another beat and repeated the exercise. Meanwhile his older brother, more experienced and used to this part of our ground where he had flushed several birds during his eleven years, he waited until he found fresh scent, then slowly, working deliberately followed across the short grass of the mown headland and on out into the rape. Well grown this year the foliage was almost up to his shoulder, overnight dew sparkling as he disturbed the leaves in the sunlight until with a spraying clatter and cackling call up sprang the cock flushed outwards across the huge field of rape. It was fortunate for us that he was not sure of his direction and drawn by safety he turned a banking arc to the left taking him back over the emerald green freshly germinated winter wheat, powder blue feathers on his back spectacular as he banked in his turn, rocketing upwards to about 100 feet, making his best pace for the small copse half a mile away. 

Over the years it has become my habit to count the seconds of a stoop. A descending teardrop falling, falling, falling through crystal air Emma took fully twelve seconds before she came into attack, enormous roaring speed, outpacing the fleeing cock, she stooped behind and below before she threw up from underneath him, no doubt in his blind spot, talons extending at the last moment to bind to him with ease, the head in her left and breast in her right foot. He was 1400 grams of solid muscle and slashing spurs but her rowing backwards now protected her from the collision with the earth as the cock became her cushion but then quite some adversary on the ground. Emma's grandmother once took a similar bird in almost the same location, it had broken both wings and both legs in the impact but once on the ground it sill managed to give the falcon a serious pasting! Not so today, Emma held firmly to the struggling bird for a few chaotic moments and with an expert bite behind the skull it was soon all up for the cock.

Open mouthed, panting from the exertion, she stood proudly over her prize. The younger cocker sat by her side admiring their conquest, ready for any sudden escape. No need to run, all well in control, circling crows soon left as they saw me approach. A few minutes to regain breath and composure, then plucking began.

East Anglia, end of October, the last of this years pheasant poults are now fully feathered and uniquely this year it still seems like summer!

Transitions!

Weaning with our pups has always been a simple process at a time when the mother is pleased to have us take over responsibility for her youngsters. It is a leisurely process over about ten days so that when the moment arrives it is hardly noticed. With our hawks it is a similar process at fledging when the falcon has worked herself extremely hard for a few weeks and is only too pleased to be taken out of the chamber and leave finishing of the eyasses to us. I have developed a system of adjacent chambers so that the door can be opened for her to choose to sit out of sight of her youngsters which she readily does for relief from their constant screaming for food. When the day arrives it's a very simple process to just close the door and her period of parental duties is done.

However weaning our horses has always been a more stressful time for all concerned, not least for us when kept awake at night by the sound of confused horses shouting in the darkness. The process is somewhat easier with fillies than a single colt. Last time, a couple of years ago our filly was just left in a stall next to mother and nobody seemed to notice the milkbar had closed but this year we have a single colt and his change of lifestyle is set to be very different.

Sound carries in the stillness of night, mother and foal can still faintly hear each other at opposite ends of the yard in separate buildings. Barking muntjack, bulling cows echoing for miles on still night air, owls from screachers to hooters, moorhens and roosting cock pheasants, all join in the cacophony when usually peace and tranquility prevail under the starlight.

Not having bred horses for a few years and not having weaned a colt for 24 years one simply forgets what it was like but today our concern is much increased from our harsher youthful exuberance of many years ago. In those far off days of our youth we just bolted stable doors and left them to get on with it? I am sure we didn't do quite that but I don't remember this trauma we have now. Today our treasured colt has his hoof prints on the white walls around the eaves! He seems to have spent as much time on his back legs up against the walls as he has on the floor. Unseasonably warm weather has helped keep him dripping with sweat, his fine skin like dark wet silk, spectacular to look at but harsh on the nerves.

Obviously it was all extremely exhausting for him with unrelenting tension, his adrenaline kept him going and going, wet and dripping with sweat but by mid afternoon of the following day it seemed he was a little more thoughtful, not much but I sensed we could make a step forward.

Before we made our new stabling in the barn, where our colt had spent the first five months of his life with his mother, we kept our horses in our yard of loose-boxes adjacent to the house - an intimate arrangement that worked well for us. One of these stables was brought back into use for his weaning. It was after four days our colt Asti stepped confidently out of his new stable into the strange surroundings of the yard, house and garden. With some care he relied on my confidence and walked among the fallen conkers under the horse chestnut tree to the paddock where he was familiar with his surroundings. He stopped and looked back to the yard from which he had come, his mother called from her stable in the barn reigniting the fireworks and we had our first experience of lunging on the grass. For this I had been prepared with him already on the long lunge rein and with appropriate lunge whip just for guidance.

Only twenty laps or so and he refocused again, back onto me so we had a cuddle and set off back to the yard. He was still feeling the heat of this very warm day and was quite wet so a shower from the hose provided welcome cooling, cleaning and refreshment. The bath was not new to him as during the heat of summer we had taken care to ensure he got used to it as one of his additional experiences at his mothers side. The sweat scraper got most of the water out of his coat and without being in any way perfectionist about the process Jenny and I kept things changing and  moving along quite rapidly before is thoughts might get the better of him. As soon as he looked respectable again he willingly walked back into his new home, sharing the busy comings and goings of life in the yard.

Some brief neighing soon died down and when I looked about thirty minutes later he was flat out in the straw, fast asleep with his legs twitching as he dozed. The first sleep he had for several days. This evening the progress was remarkable, his attitude most welcoming, evening meal all finished up and obviously delighted with my company in his box, reveling in having his body stroked, shoulder scratched, ear pulled and head rubbed.

His mother also turned a corner, stopped pacing the box and was this evening chewing hay as fast as she can get through it. Of course hard feed was restricted now that milk is not needed, water had been restricted briefly but as the worst of milk production had eased, her bag contracting, she was composed enough to drink a full bucket.

So after a few days we now start to look forward to organising ourselves to the new routines and way of life that an extra occupied stable brings. Our stallions have always lived as part of the family adjacent to the house and for Asti, an unusually friendly foal from birth, the prospect is proving very welcome. After ten days or so he is happy to have a paddock to himself, to peacefully graze for three or four hours, visit the gate if we appear and now he responds to a whistle. With an Indian summer we are all enjoying unexpected sunny autumnal weather, Asti has learned to pick his own blackberries, dried leaves crackle under foot, fallen apples brighten up his evening meal. Pleasure of creating a new character in the family our daily joy. At last the trauma of weaning is over, another transition complete.

The blessing of autoimmune

The blessing of autoimmune!

There are many social network forums about autoimmune conditions. Answering somebodies question a few days ago brought to mind my lifelong experience of dealing with autoimmune implications first hand and it got me thinking about my autoimmune experiences over the last few decades. Since so many seem to be in shock upon their diagnosis, frightened, in pain and almost hopeless at the prospects, some of my experiences might help understanding and give some hope with something in which confusion is almost the means of its nourishment and perpetuation.

For a seven year old boy living in our home fronting the beach of a tidal estuary was simply an idyllic lifestyle until 2.30 one winters morning when mother woke me, telling me to get dressed in a hurry. We were leaving immediately as the sea was coming in! I looked out the window and sure enough, by the light of the full moon, the beach was submerged under storm tossed waves flooding over the sea wall not thirty feet from my bedroom. We left our home and the life I had known was completely lost along with all we owned and the drowning of my grandparents.

About fifteen years later after sudden temporary blindness amongst other symptoms, my experiences of the medical profession started off with my diagnosis for sarcoidosis - over decades my autoimmune condition progressed to Isaacs Syndrome, Neuromyotonia and a couple of years ago I have been told I am up to Morvans Syndrome, what next? I am now coming up seventy and mother made it to 91, I hope to do at least the same.

Various forms of medication and management over many years helped me cope or so I believed at the time. Over recent years my viewpoint has evolved, I have come to see my changing conditions as my body doing its very best to protect me following many years of inappropriate self management, nurture and nourishment which of course amounts to abuse. My life had started off as a combination of childhood traumatic experience in a natural disaster, post traumatic stress, family crisis, unintentional emotional abuse and poor nourishment. Mine is not unique or even particularly extreme experience, just watch the news any day to see hoards of people being given life changing experiences, character building experiences, without judgment good or bad "what does not kill me strengthens me"!

Through this abuse my body became sensitised to many, many things it detected, some physical, some emotional, some what we have come to see as 'normal' in our world today. By its experiences my body had been conditioned to quite naturally be alert to even minor signals of impending abuse. It developed extreme sensitivity and responses to what amounted to my misguided management of myself, my choices driven by my current beliefs and values often ignorant of true consequences.

Progressively, as I became ever more 'successful' I also became increasingly very sick, very close to death at one point as I didn't know how to pay attention and respond to my body's messages. A pain in my side one day, it just needed some brandy so I could cope with that days meetings - it was only two days later, a ruptured gut with gangrene and septicaemia was more than an emergency! It can happen folks!

As my blood pressure ebbed away in my hospital bed and nurses were working hard to bring me back from going over the brink it dawned on me this very near squeak was a show stopper, unavoidable as a salutary message.

So I had to study up even more on my condition, learn to accept that things might not be as I had believed them, relearn how my body was naturally designed to function and how my expectations had exceeded, relearn about the medical profession and their medications and then learn a new management strategy that deals with cause. We are taught to deal with symptoms, doctors like to prescribe drugs to manage symptoms and this approach makes changes and provides some help for a while? But none got to any root cause because that is not the remit of this style of approach. Its all a matter of perspective and insight.

Like many other people I assumed and expected that I could drive 50,000 miles per year, fly around the world at will, plenty of people do it, drinking soda, snacking on convenience food as I travelled, itself designed to be addictive and disruptive of my bodily function. My whole life was structured that way and the whole support system is designed to enable me to do it. What a great life, I was a great success but my body was growing ever more insistent that it did not like what I was giving it, coming up with ever greater means of attacking me, attempting defence against the perpetrator, autoimmune in action!

My actions and lifestyle amounted to simple but comprehensive inappropriate self management. In a society with its own priorities making demands upon me and without limitation, the shocking truth was an inability to provide for my body in the way that it was designed to function. Slowly I have learned one technique after another to give my unconscious being and body more consideration, listen to its responses and act to look after it. Daily I fail in an environment no longer properly supportive of my wellbeing but overall I make slow progress to nurture and nourish my body with things it finds naturally in harmony with the way it was designed to function. I recognise that each man made fix is just another cause for autoimmune escalation even if it appears to offer immediate temporary relief.

The body is infallible with perfect self healing mechanisms when given respect and opportunity but it does require me to know its needs and design parameters. My body needs me to make choices for its support, nourishment and management in harmony with its natural world and values - anything else and it feels abused and attacks its abuser! That's me, it's real pain it attacks with, it hurts but is just a message to be understood.

Everybody has a unique character and individual way of being. It's taken 69 years to condition and train my body this way, it now has many unique talents and abilities, it even knows how to get my attention! It doesn't need curing, it needs understanding, respect and proper support so that it can support me. What others call chronic disease is my body's adaptation to its experiences of life dictated by my reactions as this unique character. There is no good in trying to drug me into what others see as 'normal' when my character just can't see things that way. If there are any normal people out there they have not had my experiences. By its choices of response my body unconsciously rejects their 'normality', ultimately having come to recognise medications as the next trigger for attack!

It took many years to understand that I have a wonderful life with much fulfilment in which my 'disease' is my blessing! Yes its painful and very risky at times. It all depends upon how understanding and submissive I am to my individual needs which express themselves in this condition. What support I can get from others is dependent upon how clearly I can explain my individuality to them - its nothing like 'normal' and many can't hear it or want to cope with it - can't blame them, its often hard to see the joy in it all! My body is miraculous, adapting to whatever I give it but when my ambition or the ambition of others has not properly considered the demands it makes on me then I do become my own enemy and my body responds accordingly.

Spontaneous remission can occur for varying periods whilst long term damage may remain with ongoing changes, often leaving me wondering just what is going on? It is a never ending adventure in the unknown and unknowable as my life finds its own path from one uncertainty to the next. Some days I wake up to find it all exciting and enjoyable whilst other days blackness is hard to deal with, a lifetime of pain can do that. For me and people like me it's become obvious that there is no 'cure', no magic bullet or drug that does not have its own consequences,  just ways for understanding to cope with the current circumstance and move on, listening to the next message the body comes up with, the next symptom to be interpreted, usually pain. Others don't have this blessing, I must be the lucky one! Maybe you are too?

Weasels

Andy Ellis writes :

Recent sketch idea for a painting of a weasel trying to catch a wagtail . Seen a few weasels in the dry stone walls up here and my best view was a few years ago when I was sat in the car in a gateway when a rather athletic weasel proceeded to climb up the lichen covered gate right be my car window . You have to admire such tenacious little predictors as these . A weasels skull is said to be able to pass through a wedding ring , whether this is fact , I am not sure , ? ... Depends on the wedding ring I suppose ...?

Andy's spectacular accompanying sketch brings to mind a couple of related surprises.

A hazy, windless, hot autumn morning, a light greyish blue sky, the colour of the bloom on unripe damsons,  I was flying my female peregrine Judy on the local airfield. I suppose she would have been about four years old at the time and had turned into a good dependable gamehawk who on such days as these might mount to tremendous pitches and go out of sight upwards. Too high for practical hawking but a wonderful experience in its own right. On such occasions the only sign of her approach was a roaring, ripping canvas sound as she stooped. I love this time of year before winter has arrived and the dahlias are gloriously still in full bloom, blackberries a regular snack as we hawk, picking a few whilst the hawk gains pitch and again after the  flight is over. All seems perfect and complete somehow. 

For falconers in the lowlands this early autumn period, before the real hunting begins with the start of the pheasant season, is an enjoyable time of getting hawks fit, bringing on youngsters and enjoying the last of the warm weather, often in an Indian Summer preceding seasonal change often quoted in Jorrocks observation ' Hurrah, blister me kidneys! It's a frost - the dahlias are dead, now we can go hunting.' Master of the Handley Cross Hounds, John Jorrocks got so excited at the prospect he danced a jig in Regents Park, his relations concluded he had gone mad and had him committed to a lunatic asylum!

On this day Judy was off about half a mile and gently working a thermal off the Tarmac of the main runway. She had got to about 1500ft (500mtrs) with every sign of going much higher when suddenly she tracked towards me a couple of hundred metres before folding into a vertical teardrop straight at the paving below! Nothing had flown, our covey was still clamped in the fresh drilled soil, it was strange, there was no throw up and Judy was no longer in the air. Scanning with binoculars showed she had settled on the pavement. Swinging the lure produced no response and she just stayed there with no sign of moving. I could have walked to her but instead got into the car and drove to her location, swinging around to come up alongside her.

She was standing on one leg whilst looking into the other foot but there seemed to be nothing visible? Obviously the flight was over and so I dismounted, a pigeon breast in my fist I started to approach but suddenly recoiled as the acrid smell of her prize overwhelmed me - she had caught a weasel. I recognised it instantly recalling the time about thirty years before when I had been so delighted my Gos had caught a stoat! Little did I realise the power of that aroma until I had spent days trying to rid my equipment, my clothes, my hawk, my car and myself of its nauseous pervasiveness. No matter what I tried it simply did not work and in the end I had to replace everything possible whilst vowing to do all I could in future to avoid a recurrence.

Now here I was, years later, with a high flying game hawk who for some reason known only to her had decided that the novelty of this opportunity was just too much to resist! Judy's foot was clenched around a small, tan coloured, furry ball, clearly dead, but still with potential to ruin what had hitherto seemed such an enchanting day. As an imprint Judy was much easier to handle that that passage Gos of years gone by and as she was somewhat intent upon sharing her success with me I at least had the opportunity to take things slowly, wait a little until her lust subsided a degree or two, get her attention with the more attractive meal of a fresh pigeon breast. She was keen to get on the fist, flying to it and landing with one foot, the other still holding her prize and overwhelming me even more with the stench. A female peregrine obviously has little sense of smell even though their taste is sharp enough when offered different foods, Judy seemed entirely unphazed by the circumstance.

She was soon into her meal and as it became awkward for her to feed on one foot she adjusted herself, released her grip on the small body and I was easily  able to ease it over the back of the glove and let it drop to the ground.

A weasel is such a delicate and smartly dressed little animal, attractive to look at but potent in the extreme with its defensive aroma. We walked smartly away leaving it where it had fallen. The following day it had disappeared, cleared up by the crows no doubt, obviously they had little sense of smell either! We drove home with all the car windows wide open, I held the glove out the window in the wind and then  gave Judy a bath on the lawn, also showering her back with the garden hose! In the morning there was still a mild aroma in the mews when I went to the screen perch but by the end of the day it had mostly dissipated.

She never caught another! And now synchronicity takes a hand as I write, Jenny calling me out of the mews " its not every day you see this - there's a weasel on the lawn!" And it was, there outside the conservatory seemingly playing but more likely searching and working out some lingering scent. It was  the first we have seen in the garden in 41 years.

Swallows and our clean car.

All the buttons in us are pushed announcing summer is here with the arrival of our swallows. Some years they turn up in May to build adobe nests in our barn from the mud collected in puddles and the edges of the pond. The last few years they have come earlier during April. Its always thrilling when the first bird arrives and dives straight into the barn to check out last years nests and chatter greetings as he flies around the yard awaiting arrival of his mate. Awesome feelings well up when we stand in admiration after their winter journey to Africa and back, happy at last to greet old friends. 

One of our daily delights before breakfast is as we walk through the summer grass in the paddocks with dogs running and horses galloping through clouds of butterflies when we turn them out from overnight stables to graze, our swallows already skimming between the buttercups and wispy long grass stalks of seed heads, now around our legs and under the horse's belly. Daily routines intimately exploited by these elegant blue coated creatures of delight, they buzz our legs to snatch a flushed insect with unexpected audible thwacks when close enough to hear. Doesn't it hurt their tiny beaks?

Our bedroom, opposite the barn, from dawn is filled with sunlight and the happy sounds of our twittering visitors, so conversational, full of pleasure, joyfully raising broods of young, our early morning music as we come awake slowly drowsing early summer mornings. Usually each year at least one of the growing flock will make a mistake and fly into the house through our open window, needing rescue as it panics itself into clattering against glass panes trying to find an exit. One evening it was a bat whirling between the beams - Jenny dived under the sheets with orders that it had to be caught, no doubt it would have become entangled in her hair? Ever tried catching a bat? They know how to fly and in the end it was a case of opening all windows wide until it happened to find a clear path for its sonar and it was out in the yard again, no doubt feeding its young under the thatch.  

The whole place is busy at breeding time. For a few weeks in Spring background sound starts with my Jerkin calling for my attention long before I am out of bed, sometimes hecking at the early morning visit of muntjack raiding garden tulips and other tender shoots. In his seasonal excitement he often starts at 4.15 giving me concern that neighbours in the village might complain but nobody has. As the season progresses a month or so later the calls of screaming eyasses demanding breakfast from their mother take over but it is the sounds of swallows in their early morning conversations in the barn roof that cheer and unlock the emotions of summer. When the first brood nears fledging there is much excitement and swallow chatter, parents re-nest with excited mating for the new clutch of eggs, a second and sometimes even a third round of breeding. One pair might produce eighteen young to make the journey to Africa.

We often lunch under the parasol in the yard by the barn doors with busy swallows flying in and out, feeding their young. Our weather this year has been consistently warm and pleasant, farmers are delighted with harvest almost completed by the end of July and crop yields 25% increased. It is amazing how many changes agriculture has brought to our countryside. Sadly the village swifts have left early, along with the house martins and we are wondering whether our swallows are to follow on fledging of the second clutches? Unusually the first round youngsters have disappeared when in other years they have helped with feeding the following brood. Its unavoidable to notice that their food supply has gone as familiar insect life has been eliminated not by familiar sprays but by far more efficient seed dressings that change the whole plant. This summer we can drive around the county and come home without one insect having been splatted on the car! Not many years ago it was usual for my car lights to be dimmed by the buildup of dead bodies, the windscreen impossibly smeared but today we have clean lifeless air. Boys used to earn pocket money working at the filling station cleaning windscreens as customers filled up with petrol. We are offered comfort by one scientific research project after another assuring us of the well being of our countryside, of the amazing research projects demonstrating survival of wildlife, somewhere. 

Reality is the food chain is broken, our fields have become the factory politicians and economists dreamed of and all other life is eliminated whilst increased production is not for food but for energy. In Spring I worked my setters in the spring corn and rape as I have done for many years for the pleasure of seeing partridge, pheasants, hares, skylarks and many small birds living in harmony with our agriculture, our farmers known as 'guardians of the countryside'. But this year there were no points, vast acreages devoid of life, not even a pipit did we find. A silent spring.

Meanwhile our Swallows are driven away, in the evenings the sky is empty, screaming families of Swifts no longer thrive in our village, House Martins and  Swallows have no food, and silence prevails at the height of summer.  

Christmas Day

This post has sat in draft in my outbox for four months now so perhaps its time to get it out of the way and move on with the new season. Christmas day has now changed for ever in our memories as my close friend of many years left us.

Following the death of my friend Frank Bond, on Christmas Day, Robert Bagley sent an old photo he had taken on the occasion following Frank being elected president of IAF and my retirement from being Executive Secretary of IAF. As well as our being close friends Frank and I had worked closely together for many years helping others reform and expand the Association. At that time it had seemed to be completion of what we had set out to do, an appropriate time for change. It was for Jenny and I an emotional meeting in France when the President and assembled delegates presented me with a wonderful bronze sculpture as memento for my years of service marking my retirement.

This photo was sent after these intervening years as one of many recalling Franks presidency, following which I wrote:-

Tears on that occasion and now more tears today,
I will miss my friend Frank.
We have spoken with each other most days
By Face Time during this past few weeks
As we approached this inevitable moment,
Recalling our many adventures together
From when life brought us together twenty five years ago.
Each day during these last weeks we have shared my flights,
Often recalling memorable events from years past,
What else do falconers talk about?
And for those minutes life was normal, we were both happy.
However the time had come,
Last weekend he gave his remaining female Gyr to a friend.
The moment shared by the wonder of real time pictures on Face Time
We both knew its significance.
Frank died on Christmas day.
I am grateful for our friendship over many years,
For so much that now lives on in my life,
Even though we can no longer chat about it today.

And then somebody else sent this by Henry Scott Holland.

With passing season now it's Spring, our garden full of flowers, my falcons laying eggs with the promise of new life. Our new foal has arrived three days ago, Frank will not see him even though we talked about the dream of what he might be, his own horses moved on in their lives. The seasons move on relentlessly, new life all around us bringing joy in place of grief. All is well.