Drought and fickle nature

click photo to enlarge

A casual observer might wonder how parts of the UK could be in a state of drought and suffering from such a shortage of water that the use of hose-pipes has been banned. After all, haven't these offshore islands been famous for millennia for their clouds, all-enveloping mists, regular rainfall and verdant pastures? But, much of eastern and south-eastern England is in that situation after two years when rainfall has been significantly less than usual. The fact is, of course, that the prevailing south-westerly winds bring water-laden air off the Atlantic which then falls as rain mainly on the west side of Britain and on the adjacent hills and mountains. By the time the rain does get to the east side of the island precipitation is often much reduced or non-existent. The natural dryness of the east is not helped by the fact that it is flatter and water storage in the form of lakes and reservoirs is much less practical than farther west.

However, sometimes nature is fickle and there are times when it seems to be having a laugh at man's expense. The very day the hose-pipe ban came into force it rained, and it has rained on most days since. It isn't enough to compensate for the many months of dryness, nor will it significantly impact on ground-water levels, but as gardeners we have been pleased to see it, and as a photographer I've welcomed the fine, cloudy skies that accompany the associated changeable weather. On a Fenland walk I framed a few landscape compositions that wouldn't have worked without the towering clouds drifting by overhead. Today's photograph shows a Georgian farmhouse that I've photographed before in winter. On this early spring day it looked quite different with leaves starting to appear on the trees that surround the building, onion shoots in the nearby field, winter wheat thriving beyond, and those billowing, mountainous clouds and blue skies above.

photograph and text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Canon
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 82mm
 F No: f7.1
Shutter Speed: 1/800 sec
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation:  -0.33 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Photographing the commonplace

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One of the achievements of photography is to draw our attention to the commonplace - to the everyday, the banal, the humdrum, the mundane, call it what you will - that is part of everyone's experience. Some photographers devote their time to nothing else and produce work that the man in the street often characterises as dull, boring, prosaic, vapid - again, choose your own word. However, framing a selection of our everyday surroundings is a worthwhile undertaking because it allows us to see it afresh, "elevated" through the attention given to it by the act of photography. It's a process that helps us to better appreciate what we've previously taken for granted and can enlarge our understanding and appreciation of our surroundings. Of course one man's commonplace is another man's exotic: what an inhabitant of, say, the Gulf states sees as banal will be viewed as alien, almost otherworldly, by a North European, and vice versa.

I was reflecting on this as I took today's photograph. It shows a view of the edge of a smallholding seen from a narrow Fenland drove road. A couple of small oak trees, the last of their leaves still clinging on, frames part of the smallholder's plot that is ploughed and carries a small crop of brassicas. A couple of home-made bird scarers fashioned out of orange plastic sacks flutter over the vegetables. Beyond is a large field of brussel sprouts and on the horizon a village that is marked by a few houses, a low church tower and a cluster of trees. It's a scene of not a great deal enlivened by its contre jour character. But, I think it is as deserving of a photograph as anything else at which I point my camera.

Today's theme is one I've touched on before, as in the accompanying text to this photograph of a Lancashire seawall and this wet Fenland track.

photograph and text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Canon
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 24mm
F No: f7.1
Shutter Speed: 1/320
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation:  -0.67 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Farmland near Folkingham

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The other day I was reading a news article about the recent DEFRA report, "Wild Bird Populations in the UK". The state of a country's birds is a useful general indicator of the state of its wildlife across the board, and the data in this report doesn't make good reading. It compares today with the the position in the 1970s, and while there are some some encouraging things to note, such as the sustained increase in seabird populations, the species of other habitats, with some exceptions have generally declined, often markedly.

Water and wetland birds are a mixed picture - those that inhabit lakes, ponds and slow rivers have increased, but the birds of wet grassland and fast flowing rivers are down. Wintering wildfowl and waders are above the numbers seen in the 1970s, but have fallen from a 1990s peak. Many woodland birds, such as the wood warbler, tree pipit, lesser spotted woodpecker, song thrush, tawny owl are much less common. A few species including the great spotted woodpecker, blackcap, nuthatch, green woodpecker and long-tailed tit have increased in abundance. However, it is farmland birds that have declined in the greatest numbers. The grey partridge, starling, turtle dove, corn bunting, tree sparrow and yellow wagtail are down by over 70%, though a few, such as the wood pigeon, jackdaw and greenfinch, have increased by around 50%.

The probable cause of the decline in farmland birds is the intensification of agriculture, increased drainage, the removal of trees, bushes and hedgerows, and the conversion of scrub and "rough" land to pasture or arable. The changing weather and climate has probably added to the loss. During a recent walk over an area of low Lincolnshire hills given over to arable, pasture and small woods the loss described in the report was palpable. I saw a buzzard, a few kestrels, rooks and jackdaws, a single group of about 50 lapwing, a few gulls, starlings, house sparrows, fieldfare and redwing, some robins, a few chaffinch, some red-legged partridge, pheasants and 3 skylarks. I could list many species that I'd expect to see but didn't, birds such as the yellow hammer, sparrow hawk (though that has become more abundant), grey partridge, jay, linnets, redpoll, mistle thrush and meadow pipit. Interestingly much of Lincolnshire farmland is subject to stewardship schemes of one sort or another designed to conserve and promote wildlife whilst allowing efficient food production. The major bird conservation organisations make the point that, though the decline in bird populations is severe, we do know how to manage farmland to reverse the trend. Perhaps a starting point should be reviewing the terms and scope of those stewardship schemes.

Today's photograph was taken late in the afternoon in the area of Lincolnshire where we walked, near the village of Folkingham. Sterile areas of winter wheat dominate the shot, but a few trees, bushes, closely cropped hedges and an area of pasture can also be seen: not very conducive to thriving bird populations. But, the raking yellow light of the low sun as it shone through a gap in the clouds did transform the scene for my photograph, and made the foreground contrast nicely with the village that was still in shade.

photograph and text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Canon
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 175mm
F No: 7.1
Shutter Speed: 1/160
ISO: 160
Exposure Compensation: -0.33 EV
Image Stabilisation: On 

Guardians of the countryside?

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I remember hearing, many years ago, a representative of the National Farmers Union (NFU) being interviewed on the radio. He was defending the actions of his members against criticism that their practices were largely responsible for the massive reduction, during the past fifty years, in farmland bird species and wild flowers. He argued, very cogently, that farmers had responded to the demand by retailers and consumers for cheaper food, and that lower prices had come about by increased efficiency, including mechanization, a smaller workforce, and larger farms and fields. And, whilst he acknowledged that this had changed the character of farms, and to some extent, the appearance of the countryside, he was at pains to point out that the landscape was something farmers cared about and conserved. He felt it was wrong to characterise them as destructive. However, he then went on to describe his members as "guardians of the countryside", a description that I felt was more than a little flattering.

I have come across, and known, farmers who thoroughly deserve this title, people who do farm with landscape and wildlife as more than an afterthought: clearly there are many such people. Unfortunately, there are also those who pay no regard to biodiversity, who see wild flora and fauna as competitors to their main business, and seem to conduct a campaign of despoilation in the search for ever higher yields. A few days cycling in the Nottinghamshire countryside have recently highlighted one of these practices. We passed mile after mile of hedgerows that had been smashed ("cut" does describe the way they were savaged), often with a powered grass flail rather than a purpose-built hedge trimmer. A farmer, still busy in the distance pulverizing the hedges, had littered the verge and road we were navigating with splintered hawthorn debris. But then, by way of pleasant contrast, we came across hedges that had been sensitively cut, at a time of year that didn't destroy nests, and fields such as the one in today's photograph, where oak trees had been left to grow despite the inconvenience that they must present to tractors, ploughs and combine harvesters. We were left to wonder what made farmers act in such clearly different ways?

Our time away coincided with some unsettled weather, and this image was taken as we pedalled home in the knowledge that rain was imminent. The lone trees, tractor lines and the brooding clouds made for a simple landscape that appealed to me, and I used the LX3's 16:9 format to capture the sweeping undulations of the stubble covered field.

photograph and text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Lumix LX3
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 9.3mm (44mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f5
Shutter Speed: 1/500
ISO: 80
Exposure Compensation: -0.33 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Yellow

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It struck me as somewhat odd that the Conservative Party's slogan in the recent election campaign was "Vote for Change!" Isn't conservatism about resisting change, about lamenting the disappearance of the "good old days" when the Great in Great Britain was an adjective as well as a noun, the streets were a safe place to park your Bentley, and the poor tugged their forelocks and raised their flat caps to their Tory-voting betters?

That imagined past, of course, was a time when oilseed rape wasn't the feature of the English landscape that it is today. There are many - mainly conservatives with a small "c" - who deplore the yellowing of England's "green and pleasant land" and see the crop as an alien intruder. However, anyone who thinks that Britain's landscape always looked as it did fifty or even a hundred years ago - the usual time frame when gazing fondly backwards - doesn't appreciate that our farmland is constantly evolving. In the past two hundred years Lincolnshire has increased its arable acreage and reduced its pasture: animals are much less in evidence than formerly. Fields have, on the whole, increased in size, and thousands of miles of hedges have disappeared, with those that remain being much more manicured than previously. Farms have increased in size too, so fewer farmsteads are to be seen. Some crops - hemp, woad, flax for example - have either disappeared or feature in greatly reduced acreages. On the Fens the growing of flowers commercially is a relatively recent phenomenon, as is the use of plastic on vegetables to hastening growth in spring. A farmer of seventy five years ago, surveying Lincolnshire's landscape today would notice enormous changes. But, if he were sent back seventy five years before his time he would see similarly great differences.

I like to see the yellow fields that are currently in full bloom. I find them uplifting in the same way that I do a field of poppies. Moreover, as a photographer I find their bright glow extends the palette that I have to work with. In a couple of weeks the oilseed rape will have faded to green, but while the fields are here in their day-glo brightness I'm taking advantage of them. I hope you like yellow! Today's shot is a detail of a few oilseed fields in a gently rolling piece of countryside where they abut hedges and land that is given over to winter wheat. I liked the contribution that the tracks through the crop made to this image.

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 150mm (300mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f5.6
Shutter Speed: 1/1000
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: -0.7 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

A pleasant lane

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Householders vary in how they present their property to the world. A few seem oblivious of the state of their fences, gardens, paintwork, etc, the whole appearance being barely a step up from the municipal tip. Most take a pride in making something that is pleasing to the eye, tidy, and easily managed. Then there are a few where you suspect the owner is at some point on the autistic spectrum: houses that are obsessively pristine, regimented, with not a blade of grass out of place, alyssum and lobelia alternating alongside the path, and concrete that has been repeatedly power-washed until it is as clean as the day it was laid.

So it is with farmers too. Wherever I've lived I've seen the odd farm that is a complete eyesore, with redundant vehicles rusting behind dilapidated barns, pot-holed tracks, gap-toothed hedges and scruffy famhouses. One wonders whether someone who takes so little care over such things manages to farm with anything approaching efficiency or profitability. Most farms, of course, are tidy and efficient. Where there is an owner who places a value on environmental management, as well as crops and livestock, it is often apparent in hedges that are allowed to grow in a more natural way, or in carefully managed, uncultivated field border strips. And quite a few farms are very well-presented, with pleasant entrances, care taken over the planting around the farmhouse, farm buildings that are well-maintained, and fields that show the mark of regular attention. I may be wrong, but where I come across these I often suspect the influential hand of a woman.

I was reflecting on such things the other afternoon when I went out to take a few landscape photographs. I drove to this particular lane because I'd seen it on a couple of previous occasions and felt that in the right circumstances it might offer an image. What had struck me was the pleasing line of trees by the road-side. They are mixed species and relatively recent. It's not unusual to find roads and lanes lined with trees, but in England these are usually in the vicinity of towns, villages and hamlets. The example in the photograph put me in mind of France where this is a more common sight in open country of the kind found around Folkingham in Lincolnshire. Whoever planted the trees is to be commended because they enhance this lane. I was pleased to come upon it with yellow oilseed rape adding a touch of vibrant colour and a cloudy sky with fast-moving clouds revealing the sun and throwing shadows on the fields. It allowed me to gather a photograph that I - and maybe you - find a welcome change from my recent output.

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 40mm (80mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f6.3
Shutter Speed: 1/800
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: -0.7 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Birds, man and the plough

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Today I was looking at the bird box in my willow tree. I placed it there two years ago in the hope that a blue tit (Parus caeruleus) would nest in it. Unfortunately it has been spurned each season; as was the other one I put in the cherry tree. So I've decided that I'll enlarge the hole to make it suitable for the slightly larger great tit (Parus major): I've had better luck with that species in the past.

Those thoughts prompted a short reflection on the way in which birds have adapted to man. Our obsessive tidiness has reduced the number of naturally occurring holes that the blue and great tits formerly used, and nest boxes now provide a significant number of the sites favoured by these species. House martins (Delichon urbica), as their name suggests, have also found man to be a useful provider of nesting places. They get their name from the habit of building their cup-shaped mud nests under the eaves of houses. Before man built houses with eaves these birds built their nests under overhangs on cliffs. I'm only aware of one location in England where that still happens - Malham Cove in Yorkshire; everywhere else man-made structures are preferred. So too with swallows (Hirundo rustica), a bird that I've never seen construct its nest anywhere other than in a building. In the UK one of the key bird habitats is the man-made suburban garden, those that naturally frequent woodland edges finding it particularly to their liking. The food that friendly households put out for them is also a big incentive to hang around dwellings, especially in the leaner winter months.

Of course birds aren't infinitely adaptable to the activities of man, and many species - particularly those of open farmland - are in steep decline. However, today I saw a scene that must have been replayed every year since a farmer first ploughed a field: black-headed gulls (Larus ridibundus) (and rooks) following the tractor, picking up the morsels revealed in the turned soil: a symbiotic relationship if ever I saw one. It being February a few birds were showing their breeding plumage of a full head cap of chocolate-brown feathers, though none would be ready for nest building for another three months. I took a couple of shots of the tractor and plough working the Fenland field, one as it headed towards me, and this one that shows the birds to better effect after it had turned away and started its next set of furrows.

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 150mm (300mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f7.1
Shutter Speed: 1/250
ISO: 200
Exposure Compensation: 0 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Harvest done, swifts gone

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Towards the end of my third summer living on Lincolnshire's Fens may be a little early in terms of formulating theories about the region, but one did occur to me yesterday.

I've been watching the cereal harvest come to its end. Over the past few weeks wheat and barley fields have been falling to the combine harvesters, and already quite a few have been turned by the plough. Here and there the odd field is still being cut, but with less urgency than earlier, giving the tractor drivers who haul away the grain the chance to get out of their cabs and have a chat, as in my photograph above. The summers of 2007 and 2008 were much wetter than this year, and the harvest continued well into September, with machines kept off the sodden ground until it had dried. Cereals were left standing to enable them to get as dry as possible, and when they were harvested the grain sheds thundered to the sound of the electric dryers.

However, this year Eastern England has experienced much more typical weather with light but regular rainfall and fine weather. As the harvest winds down at the end of August I've been watching the skies trying to note when I see the last of the swifts (Apus apus). This interesting, fast-flying bird arrives in the UK in May and leaves at the end of August. It is a species that spends almost all its life on the wing, even eating and sleeping as it flies. Its stay in our country is long enough to raise a brood in its nest under eaves and in church towers, the only time it spends on terra firma. So what is my theory, you may be wondering? Well, perhaps it's the case that, in this part of the world, in a typical year, the end of the harvest and the departure of the swifts coincide. Not an earth shattering theory, I'll grant you, but one that I'll test each year. Incidentally, after two "swift-free" days I saw a lone bird yesterday when I took this photograph.

Note 1: The church on the extreme left of the horizon is St Mary, Swineshead, that features in yesterday's post.
Note 2: Today the wheat field opposite my house was cut and I saw one swift.

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 40mm (80mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f6.3
Shutter Speed: 1/500
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: -0.3 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

The staff of life

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Britain's farming population is in long-term decline. In 1996 there were 616,000 people employed in agriculture. By 2007 this had gone down to 526,000, the result of increasing mechanization, the amalgamation of farms into ever larger units, and the declining profitability of the sector. Over the same period the age profile of those employed in agriculture increased.

Changes in wheat farming are fairly typical of the sector as a whole. Over the same period the area devoted to cultivation declined from 1976,000 hectares to 1816,000 hectares, and the volume produced also went down.The income generated by milling wheat and feed wheat slumped, and the amount of wheat produced as a percentage of UK use fell from 125% to 106%. There was, and is, money to be made by producing wheat, but of the 60,000 cereal farmers in the UK it is principally the large landowners and corporate bodies who can benefit from larger subsidies who are making it. The smaller, independent farmers have seen incomes fall drastically, then rally slightly recently. A consequence of this is that a significant number of cereal farms, with hundreds of acres under cultivation, are now worked by the farmer alone, assisted by no permanently employed farm hands. Family members, friends, and occasionally some bought-in contract hours, are the only additional help. It's true to say that the main ingredient of the "staff of life" is grown and harvested with virtually no staff at all! Not surprisingly, since as much of the work as possible is mechanized, the land (and landscape) where these crops are grown is tailored to be managed by farm machinery.

I gleaned this information some time ago from the Statistics pages of UK Agriculture, and from Corporate Watch, and it came to mind as I was looking at this photograph of a combine harvester. I took it a while ago on the Yorkshire Wolds near Weaverthorpe. The solitary driver, alone in his cab in the large, regimented, rolling fields of this cereal growing upland area, seemed to encapsulate the predicament of today's wheat farmer in Britain.

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Olympus E500
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 134mm (268mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f6.3
Shutter Speed: 1/160
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: -0.3 EV
Image Stabilisation: N/A

Fields and food

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It's surprising that food has taken so long to reach the political agenda in the UK. But, when the prime minister recently listed his priorities for the next couple of years food, or rather food prices, loomed large. Maybe I haven't been taking as much notice as I should, but I don't recall it figuring much in political debate during my adult life. I suppose I shouldn't be surprised that politicians only think about food when the availability and price make the voters squeal, but I do wish it wasn't so.

I'd have loved to have seen food policy a political priority when the move to intensive agriculture was driving down the numbers and diversity of our flora and fauna. I'd have liked to see it being the subject of more intelligent debate when genetically modified crops were being contemplated. So, I'd like to see the discussion of food policy today extend beyond rising prices. I recognise that it's difficult to balance food production, fair farm incomes, biodiversity, landscape and tourism, but I really get the impression that, as a country, we just don't make much of an effort. And the worldwide rise in food prices won't make it any easier or more likely. So, if you're a skylark, lapwing, wild animal or plant, clinging on to the odd patch of ground that isn't ploughed, sprayed, harvested, cropped or otherwise intensively cultivated, the future looks bleaker because mankind's insatiable appetite for cheap food and fuel means - we need your homes!

Today's photograph shows some intensively farmed land on Lincolnshire's rolling hills. During the afternoon that I took this shot I saw some old stubble fields providing food for foraging birds and mammals. However most of the ground was given over to cereal crops, legumes, potatoes and oilseed rape. The odd bit of pasture with sheep and dairy cattle still remains, but most of it is in small pockets around villages supporting the hobbyists of "horsiculture". Can it be long before this is turned over to food production too?

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 22mm (44mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f7.1
Shutter Speed: 1/500
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: -0.3 EV
Image Stabilisation: Off

Both sides of the hill

click photos to enlarge

I was driving through the rolling hills around Folkingham in Lincolnshire when the manicured, intensively farmed fields prompted me to look for some landscape images. There were rich colours and strong lines, and I wondered if I could make something of them. After a bit of searching I came upon a yellow oilseed rape field on a hillside. Some parts were yellow with flowers, but elsewhere the green leaves still predominated, and on the steeper slope, where the rape didn't grow as well, lines of brown soil showed through. These colours attracted me, especially against the blue and white of the sky. But what made me take the shot was a row of trees along the horizon that hadn't yet come into leaf. So I clicked away, then meandered on, not heading anywhere in particular, and turning up any road that took my fancy.

Soon I came to a flat area of pale stubble with a hedge, and beyond a field of green wheat with lines where a tractor had been spraying. With the sky above this presented three bands of colour. But once again it was a row of trees on the skyline that made me consider the shot. When I framed it a hare came bounding into the viewfinder. I pressed the shutter, and as I did so I felt a touch of sympathy tinged with admiration for this gentle animal. Here it was, an insignificant creature in a big landscape that is heavily controlled by man, finding food where it can, subject to regular disturbance by people and machinery, hunted with guns and dogs in winter, and yet still managing to eke out a life as its forebears had done for millennia.

When I got home and was processing the shots it dawned on me that the trees on the horizon were the same in each image: I'd captured them from opposite directions. I had been so engrossed in looking for photographs that I hadn't noticed I'd driven round to the other side of the hill! So, here they are, two shots of Eastern England's arable farmland, wonderfully productive of food, but not so good at growing wildlife.

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 1st image: 84mm (168mm/35mm equiv.), 2nd image: 150mm (300mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f7.1
Shutter Speed: 1st image: 1/1250, 2nd image: 1/320
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: 1st image: -0.3 EV, 2nd image: 0EV
Image Stabilisation: On