Short-Eared Owls Hunting: Hawling Part Three

[@keithmason7481]

So good to see so much lichen indicating clean unpolluted air,as you would expect in such an environment, although there is one variety that only thrives in polluted air,such is natures way.

[@leslieaustin151]

Magic! Those owls were a wonderful watch, thank you. We used to live next to a chap who bred owls for release into the wild. Wonderful birds. Les

[@AllotmentFox]

Thanks Les

[@WC21UKProductionsLtd]

Enjoying the scenery in these. Cotswolds at its best: an ancient, English landscape. With the pigs and the cobbled lane, you could have been back in the Medieval period. The owls were beautiful and you are very patient.

[@AllotmentFox]

It’s too dark, I need sunlight for the camera. I’m pleased how the owls came out, I’ve never seen that species before

[@gaffysmenk]

We have short eared owls here in Orkney.. Known locally as "Cattie Faces".

[@JimBagby74]

I've seen many an owl in the woods or in a nearby tree, but I've never seen action like that. Seeing this display of hunting skills normalises them in a way. To see them simply staring back at you, as I seem to, before disappearing into the green is haunting and makes them seem like something else.

[@AllotmentFox]

Yes removing the sense of magic from Old England is something I do well in my videos. It is a well-honed skill. I too have never seen an owl hunting in the morning. I very rarely see any owls at all

[@mrmaje1]

That's my neck of the woods. I saw a short eared owl near Batsford ( moreton in marsh area) ten years ago.

[@AllotmentFox]

I'd say there are at least five now in Hawling

[@mrmaje1]

@@AllotmentFox I must get over there to have a look, i pass the turn to it all the time. Cheers for the info

[@WyeExplorer]

That was a real unraveling. Water courses have been moving and shifting for eons. I reckon it might just be possible their names changed as they meandered through different boundaries. Just a thought sparked by your debate. I'm enjoying your explorations. Have a good week ahead. Mark

[@Beez-III]

not seen that before thanks

[@AllotmentFox]

Me neither, thanks for watching

[@herdyhely3496]

I really enjoyed this video! I loved the music and the beginning and end, could you tell me what it is or where it’s from please? It worked great with the visuals

[@AllotmentFox]

It should show you the artists in the description. If it doesn’t I shall dig them out

[@herdyhely3496]

@@AllotmentFox yes they are in the description I hadn’t noticed thanks for that. You always pick great music.

[@TheDoctorhuw]

there is a welsh word that my father used about nature and I’m going to use it for this video, rhyfeddu

[@AllotmentFox]

I’m hoping it is a good word and so reply thank you

[@TheDoctorhuw]

@@AllotmentFox Means wonder or amazement, a wonderful thing!

[@willbick3]

Be interested to hear your views on the antiquity of the ‘country lane’ network. Is it feasible that much of the lane network is prehistoric? Surely there are many tracks/lanes that were around in the iron age and probably long before? (I dont mean the ancient ridgeway type long-distance tracks, merely any of the thousands of miles of local paths and lanes still in use today, and which used to be relatively car-free in my neck of the woods but less so nowadays to my despair!!)

[@willbick3]

I’m also intrigued by the age of various dry stone walls about the landscape. I don’t necessarily mean just the archetypal field boundary type but also retaining walls next to steep banks and the like. Is it not possible that some of these could be prehistoric in origin? Presumably after the ice age the landscape was littered with rocks of glacial debris which needed clearing (a monumental task!), but of course i could have my geology wrong on that. I suppose in a roundabout way I’m questioning the level of influence medieval people had on the landscape we see today. Was much of it laid out long before??

[@AllotmentFox]

We have put the long distant ridgeways on a pedestal when in fact they are just linked tracks along ridges. I don’t think of them as particularly important, it is the web of roads connecting them and communities that flesh out the picture. Any existing track or road that stays above springs and marshes has likely been used for thousands of years and it is likely some have been lost (one I can identify from a charter) because of increased control of land. But the country is covered in a network of local roads the spines of which are the ridgeways. This network is ancient and though could’ve changd in places you can still show the choke points where ridges narrow and where the road couldn’t have changed over millenia. What happened in the last couple of hundred years is that road building technology happened and it was no longer necessary to stay away from the river edge or the meadows. Before that you would’ve headed up to go any distance and the advantage of all the ridgeways is that you didn’t need to go uphill again, you stayed uphill for as long as possible, and you didn’t get caught by rivers and mud. So the problem is seperating the new roads from the old ones. Ancient is my opinion but not all of it. As an exercise look at your local high roads on lidar and look what deviations they take to stay uphill away from streams

[@AllotmentFox]

The royal forests distorted natural roads too

[@AllotmentFox]

There’s lidar showing Celtic fields near Lambourn, Berks in a wood. It is next to a footpath so you can see the stone walls the lidar has picked up. You kill two birds with one stone, you clear your land for ploughing and also make a boundary that is not easily shifted. Some of the fields in the Cotswolds are packed with stone and others next to them not, showing a tremendous amount of labour must have been expended to clear them. They have to go somewhere. I have given this a lot of thought, though and I can’t see how to date them. The Celtic fields though ae obvious but few and far between and those walls are collapsed and I suspect never looked pretty.

[@iainmc9859]

@@AllotmentFox Totally in agreement. I think we have to keep in mind that there was just a much smaller population in the pre-Medieval period when 'towns' developed due to Norman overlordship. Less people less need for food, less farming - less farming, less need for hard and fast man made boundaries, when natural boundaries would suffice. Craftspeople and tradesmen may have moved about quite a bit but I think most produce stayed fairly local, as did most people. Then comes along the Normans and serfdom, rather than a slave economy, and most people are stuck in one place because they're legally tied to the land. Beautiful video for a Sunday morning BTW.

[@Sheilanagig]

Feeding pigs up on forest mast. That's how you get Iberian ham.

[@AllotmentFox]

I was a bit naughty calling it because those trees I don’t think would produce mast but it was a good illustration of how woods used to be used

[@Sheilanagig]

@@AllotmentFox I'm not even sure you did. I'm pretty sure you said acorns, but that for me counts as mast. And yes, forestry used to be done so much better in the past. They extracted value from the forest, but they did so sustainably.

[@harley419]

Manganista pigs from Spain I think

[@AllotmentFox]

Weren’t they an anarchist militia in revolutionary Mexico?

[@harley419]

@@AllotmentFox I should have said Mangalica pigs.. My old brain was not connecting again

[@francisbarlow9904]

Harley I think you were looking for Mangalitza, from Hungary, Austria and Germany mainly, Sadly not the good old Lincolnshire curly coat which went extinct in 1972.