Buzzards from my bed

cob pools
Originally uploaded by wherethewolvesare.

We’ve just got back from our holiday. We went to Anglesey and stayed in a cottage overlooking the sea, at Porth Nobla, just outside Rhosneigr. It was a naturalists’ dream, certainly ours’.

At the front of the house was a beach, flanked with rocks. There must have been a dozen species of seaweed of all shades of green, brown and red. It was swarming with crabs the size of your thumbnail. There was the usual assortment of waders, gulls and wagtails, plus the odd heron or two, and on calm high tides grey seals popped their heads out.

At the back was scrub and farmland, with buzzards and kestrels often in view. One morning I even saw two buzzards flying over the beach, from my bed – I shall have to start a ‘bed list’. Ravens were feeding in the sheep paddocks, and in these days of falling starling numbers, it was good to see around two hundred sat on the telephone wires. In the evenings, four to five hundred greylag geese could be spectacularly seen and heard coming in to roost on the nearby lakes.

A moving part of the holiday for me, was to visit Shorelands at Malltraeth, the home of the late artist, Charles Tunnicliffe. For those of you that don’t know, he was the original illustrator of ‘Tarka the Otter’, and he also illustrated the ‘Dig for Victory’ campaign posters and lots of the nature ladybird books, but his first love was birds. I felt privileged to see where he lived and painted, it has the most amazing view overlooking the Cefni estuary. Equally impressive are his original paintings at Oriel Ynys Mon, the museum built principally, I suspect, to house Tunnicliffe’s work, despite a local campaign in the late 80’s to prevent what was then seen as a waste of municipal money. Anyway, the museum is more than that now, housing displays reflecting all aspects of Anglesey life. Tunnicliffe’s art is breathtaking, all the more so as he never intended it to be displayed, it was done for pure pleasure. I hope the campaigners now see its’ worth.

Follow the link to see my Anglesey Sketchbook.