Fanshawegate fields

Despite the snow, flappy rooks inspect their nests just outside Greenoak Park. Up on the White Lane, two great tits are flirting. Do they know it's a new year?

From Fanshawegate Lane there's the kew-kew of a kestrel. It sails over to settle in the very top of an oak - lacy brown back, dark band on tail.

Tiny sledgers crump-crump up Sheps Hill.

The oak and ash....

Yesterday a late afternoon walk with Maisie up the White Lane (or White Line as Rony's family call it).

Towards Woodthorpe is one of my favourite trees - it marks the top of the hill against the sky. I have decided to keep a photo journal of this tree too, along with the oak tree outside Greenoak Park. See my Flickr site to look at these as they accumulate over the seasons....

Back through the darkening Gillfield Woods. Robins sing out their territories.

Rookeries and oakeries

The rooks just outside Greenoak Park cawing away this morning with the occasional chack from the smaller jackdaws. How do they know it won't be long until they have to renovate their nests? The little rookery in the beeches here is just by the council houses. Some residents - including my friend Barbara, love the rooks and feed them all sorts of scraps. I bet they're not universally valued though - the decibel level must be pretty high at times.

Rookeries tend to be extremely ancient - many hundreds of years old according to England in Particular," the marvellous encylopaedia of all things "commonplace, local, vernacular and distinctive." This book especially singles out Ranmoor Cliffe rookery which has been recorded by Sheffield Bird Study Group for the last forty years. I keep meaning to check it out. Evidently the residents there are appreciative - "They really make you feel that you are somewhere other than the suburb of a large city."

Back at our end of the park I try taking pictures of the oak tree at the entrance - also pretty ancient although how old I don't know. This area used to be known as Greenoak but this venerable tree is pretty much the only one left. Lots of oaks in the woods although most of these are American red oaks planted in the 1950's I think. This last remaining oak here was recently threatened by possible widening of the park entrance. Luckily local people stopped this happening. I think I might have a go at keeping an ongoing record of this tree over the seasons.....

A surprise sprinking of snow......

.........over Greenoak Park from our window this morning. St George's Farm (where Ruskin set up some squabbling bootmakers to grow fruit) winks from its hill.

Later we take the chesty car up to Dick's garage at Dore. We walk the old coffin route alongside the trickle of the Bushey - an old path which I am sure many residents don't even know about as it is hidden away between two suburban streets - Busheywood Road and Devonshire Road. The robins sing wistfully.

Here's another old Derbyshire squeezer stile at the end near Tesco Express.....

I truly hate Tesco's.

Across the Baslow Road and up a very slippery bank past the flats and up stone steps onto the top of Prospect Road, Woodland Place and Queen Victoria Road. The view across to Houndkirk Moors sparkles this morning:

Back down Queen Victoria Road and I take a picture of Woodland Villas which I recently discovered by a process of deduction was briefly lived in by Edward Carpenter, the gay Victorian radical and simple-lifer (recent fascinating biography written by Sheila Rowbotham). He wrote to Walt Whitman from here, describing the view.

At the bottom of the road I suddenly notice (and how many times have I walked past here?) the old grindstones set each side of the driveway of the flats on the corner of Queen Victoria Road and Mickley Lane. Perhaps there were grinders on the Totley Brook here? Certainly George Hukin, Carpenter's friend and unrequited love lived a few yards from here and was a razor grinder.