Wildlife

James Lowen

Happy, we headed southwards to Cardiff, and enjoyed really good views of the Little Bunting at Forest Farm. I have an inordinate fondness for these birds. Perky, big-headed, short-tailed and dinky, with oodles of stripes and spots. Yum. It showed well. I took a few (hundred) photos.

So we moved elsewhere and searched other woods. Also in vain. The nearest I came was a ham sandwich and a Scotch egg. So we returned to the original woods and searched... this time with success. Another of the James's (let's not be modest; me) bumbled into three piglets rootling in the leaf litter. A whacked off a few shots, then phoned and radioed the others, who were dispersed over a fair area. Eventually everyone co-located and we watched what turned out to be two adults and nine or ten piglets until they started and fled. Ultimately a bit brief, but those first few moments were truly special - and I am happy with my images.

Meeting up in with the final James in a dodgy Home Counties layby, we wended our way west to the Forest of Dean. A modicum of confusion resulted when we realised we couldn't blend gen and map into the right site. However one of the James's put us right, and we found ourselves in the right place. This became all the more evident when a random householder confirmed that she had seen a sow plus piglets the two previous afternoons in the same place. Adrenalin spurting like a Polecat's mouth, we searched the woods. But in vain. There was ample evidence of presence - poo, rooting, prints - but no sign or sound of the perps themselves.

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7 March 2015 Not boaring

I have seen plenty of Wild Boar in Europe and beyond, but never in Britain. I have tried a few times, half-heartedly and mainly in the Forest of Dean. It was time to change all that, and to see British Boar. James Hanlon scored some decent gen - a sow plus piglets (boarlets?) had been seen on Tues and Weds in the same general area, near Cinderford. A crew was assembled, and everyone seemed to be called James. There was Hanlon and Hunter and Babbs (although, nominally at least, this one has a first name of Steve; it's just the first of his two middle names that is James) and me. Plenty of opportunity for confusion, then. "Where's James....? Has James seen it...? Whose car are we going in? So at an ungodly hour of Saturday morning, I drove into Cambridgeshire to meet Steve and one of the James's. En route, I was gripped by finding a Polecat at the end of James's street. Another hole on my British mammal list, all my three encounters have been roadkills in Cambridgeshire.