An ancient olive tree and a great mystery.

Olive (Olea europaea)

While working at the Chalke Valley History Festival in Wiltshire, I was lucky to meet the owner of a Hampshire farm and he told me a fascinating story about the ancient olive that he had in his garden. In early August, I went to see him and his lovely tree.

The owner has lived on the farm for most of his adult life, about 60 years. The property dates back to the Early Medieval Period; it is mentioned in Domesday. There is a fish pond that is also Early Medieval and a walled garden, yew avenue and coach house that are testament to there having been much grander houses on the site than at present. There is a long record of occupation on the farm which has kept the same name that it had before the Norman invasion. 

The story of the olive is that it was planted by a crusader in 1307. The tradition was that when a knight returned from the Holy Land, he would carve a cross on the door way of the local church. The knight would also plant a tree and one such crusader, probably one of the Chamberlain family who lived at the nearby Manor planted this olive.

"Crusader Crosses" on the door jamb of the local church.

It does not look 710 years , does it? But could this be the re-growth from an older, ancient bole? Or could it be a cutting taken from the first tree and planted in it's place? Has there been an olive growing here for over 700 years? Whatever the truth of it, it's a great story! The owner has cared for it and defended it. One enthusiastic and very well known botanist and TV gardener wanted to come and dig it up and take it to his arbortum, but the owner very wisely declined that offer. More recently, he has had sycamore trees removed from around it as they were over-shadowing the tree. As soon as this was done, the tree responded and put on much of the top growth that can be seen in this photo above.

The larger stem is hollowing, possibly where another stem has been removed. At 1.3m  above ground level (just below a swelling where the first branch bifurcates) the stem has a girth of 1.3m.

The smaller stem has a girth of 1.2m at 1.5m above ground level.

The sucker is 50 years old (according to the owner) and has a girth of 22cm just below the first branch, about 50cm above ground level.

The tree seems to be growing well. Two stubs, where branches have torn off, are surrounded with epicormic shoots.

I don't think that we will ever know the truth of this tree, but that is one of the great charms of old trees. We do not know their full story, but we are teased with hints and rumours, signs and faint tracks that we can follow to trace their long history. Sometimes, an ancient tree will give us a chance to lift the veil of time and peer into the deep past.

Adventure: the road to revelation.

There is a lovely Scots word, "stravaig", which means to wander without purpose. The natural history writer Robert Macfarlane calls such a wanderer a "Meanderthal". I neither stravaig, not am I a Meanderthal. I love to have a purpose and a destination when I walk. More often than not, I carry a heavy load with which to do things; cameras, tape measures, collecting equipment, binoculars, rifle.

Each walk must be a journey. A successful journey should have an element of discovery. That's what makes it an adventure. Adventures are about discovery. You don't have adventures until you feel the thrill, the wonder of seeing something new or spectacular, something that stands out in your memory, something you talk about and recall with friends.

I have always found that the natural world thrills me more deeply, touches me more profoundly, than anything else. Natural discoveries can be small, happenstance encounters. Last week I watched a raven performing a display flight over the chalk hills near my home. I heard it’s deep croak “prruuk”, and looked up to see it flip over upside down, then roll back again. It dipped and rose again, effortlessly surfing the great green wave of the downland escarpment. Or they can be more dramatic, profound encounters such as the journey I made last year to photograph tigers in Maharashtra’s Tadoba-Andhari National Park.

Raven


Lou and I often go out with the express purpose of a certain discovery: to find otter signs, to see the great bustards on Salisbury Plain or visit some hidden coombe in the folds of the hills. These purposeful walks are some of the best, they combine the art of the hunter with the hopeful expectation of the naturalist: I have a set purpose but am also open to a joyful serendipitous encounter that will divert me from my mission, leading to revelation and inspiration.


This is one of the great things about hunting for ancient and veteran trees. I know that I will meet a remarkable tree; that I will measure it, photograph it and know it. I also know that these trees hold many secrets. They have holes where bats live, mammals burrow around the roots and fungi gradually hollow their centres. So any meeting with an ancient tree holds the promise of meeting one of it's close family that will supply me with the joy of a surprise encounter.

Two trees, an ash and a willow, entangled one in another.

I remember meeting a wonderful ash tree in the Glyn Valley, Cornwall. It was a huge old tree standing near an old mill site. When the corn mill was working in the Nineteenth Century, the tree would have been quite venerable even then. When I encountered it, the top had blown out years before and new stems had sprouted up from it’s bole. The original trunk of the tree had hollowed out and I squeezed inside it to see what I could find. As I had suspected, it harboured bats and owls as evidenced by their distinctive droppings. But to my great delight I saw that the tree had started to grown internal roots. From high above my head, roots had sprouted and were writhing down through the rotting carcass of the old tree: the rejuvenated stems were feeding on the decaying remains of the original tree, extracting and recycling nutrients that it had first acquired in the previous century.

Such encounters open windows on the natural world, brief glimpses into lives and ways of living that are completely alien to humans. This is what makes purposeful walking so important to me. It is the mode of travel that enables the journey to take place. When I walk I am part of the world, I am in the landscape. In a car, or even on a bicycle, you travel over the land not through it. The Meanderthal on his or her stravaig will do so wrapped in thoughts of themselves, their mind free to dwell on their lives and loves past and present. My purpose consumes me, it removes all spurious cares and considerations from my life and focuses my mind on the job in hand. In my search for the designated target, I will inevitably come upon the unexpected revelation that brings delight as well as data.

Great Bustards!

The heat haze was streaming across the fields. As I looked through the 600mm lens, the buildings on Netheravon Airfield shimmered and shook as if rocked by an earthquake. Hot air burst in gouts from the top of fence posts, roofs and the old farm machinery that was lying beside a trackway. In front of the wobbly air stood one proud, erect figure. Once extinct, now returned, the Great Bustards of Salisbury Plain are spreading out across England but the centre of the Plain is still the best place to see them.

A lone bustard on the wide expanses of "Schedule 1" farmland on Salisbury Plain.

There is a huge amount of public access on Salisbury Plain and all the best places to see the bustards are accessible on foot. Having said that, the signs on the military training area are not just 'wooden falsehoods'; you need to take note. On the day when we were out looking at bustards, we were not far from the "Impact Area" and we could hear shells landing over the hill.

Bustards are often seen as figures on the sky-line and they have usually seen you long before you see them. Their heads are raised like periscopes as they examine you, then they slowly walk away over the hill with a slow, stately gait.

As we admired the lone, distant male we could see, I suddenly realised that much closer, only about 75 metres away, there were three males, their heads just raised above the spring barley. The two older males stood up and began to walk away from us.

We watched them for some time before they decided to fly over onto a more distant field. The Great Bustard is the heaviest flying bird in the world, yet it flies with such power and speed. You might imagine that it would lumber into the air like a swan and then heave it's way across the sky flapping madly to keep its great body airborne. Quite the opposite, they are truly majestic in the air. To see bustards flying across the open expanses of the Plain is to truly understand why they are called "Great" Bustards.

A mature, bearded male Great Bustard flies across Salisbury Plain.

Kit review: baldness, a buff and camera stuff.

Lots of us wildlife photographers share some key characteristics: maleness, baldness and the incipient problems of middle age. I've never found my maleness to be a problem, but being a baldy (and absolutely happy with it, I may add) means that I have always worn hats to hide my shiny pate from nervous wildlife and keep my head warm. My belated discovery of buffs has been a revelation and seems to offer other benefits as well that I detail further below. My ageing spine has also been hugely helped with a new harness, but first: the problem of keeping a camera and large lens protected and camouflaged ....

My camera has new pyjamas. Well, that's what I call it. In the picture below you can see that I have fitted a cammo sleeve to a 300mm lens. It is water proof, insulated and covers the camera body as well. It even has a pocket for one of those hand-warmer things so that you can keep your hands and DSLR working in arctic weather. While severe cold is not usually a problem here in England's balmy southwest, sudden heavy showers certainly are. However, the insulation really came into it's own when I was on location in Maharashtra last year, photographing tigers in temperatures of over 50 degrees Celsius. The camera body was too hot to touch if left in the sun for more than about ten minutes. As I was waiting out for up to three hours beside waterholes, this could have been an problem, to say the least. If you have read the previous posts about my visit to Tadoba, then you will recall the enveloping clouds of red dust stirred up by my guide's enthusiastic driving and the traffic jams around the waterholes. The thick insulation saved my DSLR and lenses from dust and cushioned them against the inevitable bumps and thumps as we hared around the park.

The sleeve fits over the 300mm lens and DSLR and has space for a x2 extender.

The sleeve helps with camouflaging the outline of the lens.

I got mine from Kevin Keatley at Wildlife Watching Supplies in Devon. I have not found a comparable product and I have always had good service from them, even when I've had a problem (which was my own fault, in fact).

Recently, I have been finding that after about an hour with binoculars and camera bag (complete with two DSLRs and lenses) I start to get serious neck pain. To be honest, this problem has been getting more serious for a long time. I have a couple of injuries to my neck vertebrae from smacking my head pretty hard on unyielding things, or unyielding things smacking me on the head. After thirty-and-some years of carrying binoculars, rifles and back packs around the countryside suspended from my neck and shoulders, my poor old spine starts to complain. I was unsure what to do about this until I saw another wildlife photographer in India, wandering around with his camera and lens attached to a harness. "Now THAT," I thought, "is what I need". So I sidled up to him and picked his brains and it turned out he had similar spinal issues and had found that the harnessing was the best idea. So my Christmas present to myself in 2016 was a Cotton Carrier.

The Cotton Carrier has transformed the way I use my smaller lenses when I am actively searching for subjects such as plants, insects and photographing events.

I got mine from Speed Graphic, but there are other importers and other types of harness. However, I recommend the Cotton system if you are out in the countryside as most of the other makes are better suited to wedding or sports photography.

One of the great features of the Cotton Carrier is the belt-and-braces approach to securing the camera to the photographer. The additional 'idiot strap' proved to be vital for this particular idiot when crossing a stile: the camera and lens swung free, but there was no nasty, expensive crunching sound as disaster was averted!

I've discovered buffs! I know I'm a bit late with all this, but then I've never claimed to be a style icon. In the pictures above, you can see that it is not only headwear, but can be used a face-veil as well. I was sent this one from Kitshack and while I have lots to learn about how to wear it (style icon status continues to elude me), I'm a convert. There seems to be a whole You Tube genre around wearing buffs, so there's plenty of advice. It's been a great boon under a cap on cold days. In the summer it will get the ultimate test when we head up to Ardnamurchan on Scotland's north-west coast and I use it to keep the dreaded Culicoides impunctatus, better known as the Highland midge. This 2mm long terror will put the microfibre buff through it's paces. If it works, I'll be so delighted that I'm sure to mention it in a summer posting!