Tom Quick & Hoglet

“Well, this was a crazy idea”, I muttered to myself, annoyed that I had arranged to pick up an old desk I wanted to try and restore (with quite a lot of tutting from Geraldine and mumbling about “more junk in the garage”) on a Saturday in August. I realised the traffic was going to be awful as I turned into the pretty village of St. Mabyn. Suddenly the car in front of me stopped and then pulled onto the verge.

Stopping the Land Rover, admittedly curious, I saw the reason – a hedgehog was ambling across the road, so I positioned the Land Rover on one side to protect it from oncoming cars as the lady in the other vehicle jumped out with a handy blanket and picked it up, as it was clearly in no hurry, and put it in the hedge.

Hedgehog - Bill Fairs

It was quite unusual to see a hedgehog in broad daylight as they are mainly nocturnal. It may have been a late young animal, called a hoglet, out and about, but either way it carried on searching for slugs, snails, frogs beetles and so on to eat.

Recent tracking technology has shown hedgehogs can roam over a mile a night – a long way on very short legs. They are an ancient species, they have been around for about 15 million years and it’s thought there may only be 500,000 left in Britain – and there were nearly 40 million in 1950. No wonder you don’t see them often and it was will a much lighter heart after the encounter that I set off to do battle with Newquay traffic.

Later, as a method of de-stressing, I took Napoleon and Roy onto the moor, always the best therapy. I watched with interest as a male Winchat stared at me from a nearby fence post.

He’s a handsome bird with a bright orangery breast, less common than the Stonechat. The breeding season is almost over and the Whinchat’s, along with many other species will head towards Africa for the winter. The call is similar to that of the Stonechat but less grating and softer.

It occurred to me, a couple of hours later as I sat on the patio, having an excellent cheese scone made by Geraldine, that whilst the House Martins were still busy feeding the increasingly-noisy young, something was missing – the Swifts have gone. The Swifts don’t stay long and during August you will suddenly realise the screaming and wheeling squadrons have departed for Africa. Unlike the Swallows and Martins, Swifts do not announce their imminent departure by lining up on the telephone wires – suddenly, the air is silent and another summer is drawing to a close. The Swifts winter in central Africa, they don’t go as far as the Swallows that loaf around in southern Africa. We lived there for many years and I used to look forward to the “touch of home” arriving in November, with the very attractive Red-Rumped Swallows from Europe.

Swallows and Martins are incredible birds, making one of the longest annual migrations across oceans and deserts, covering about 200 miles a day. Growing up in the Pennines, I was involved in ringing programmes where small identification rings are placed on birds legs, long before the modern tracking system we have now, although ringing is still a major part of bird migration research. We were able to record Swallows returning to the same farm that they nested in the previous year and one male re-appeared in the very same barn every year for five years, each year a little bigger. About half the Swallows are believed to return to the very same nest each year, even though a mud pellet-built, rather scruffy affair hardly seem worth the effort. Still, home is where the heart is.

Late summer is a quiet time as most birds are moulting ahead of a migration to come or a long winter to survive – Swallows are one of the few birds with second broods still in the nest.. This is a dangerous time for small birds and most opt for a low profile and stay deep in the undergrowth with no flamboyant displays or singing.

This sudden realisation that silence was a theme of this time of year took me back to an incident in a village we lived in near Cambridge. Funnily enough, it involved the pub, a very small place the current landlord, Robbie, inherited from his father about a 105 years ago and not much has changed, least of all the seats.

A couple came in and mentioned they had just killed a deer in a nearby lane. In the corner, unbeknownst to them, was Tom Quick, a local character that was a good source of ….ahem……local game products. Living up to his name, Tom’s place was instantly empty, his drink and roll up still there, as was his jacket. It was like the Mary Celeste. Within 10 minutes he was back, sipping on his red wine in a coke glass (for appearances, he says) – and the deer safely in his van ready for the butcher tomorrow.

Waste not, want not and who doesn’t like a nice bit of venison.