Under Somerset Skies

2008-05-23T19:03:00Z

The sign advertising the “stopless topless bus” of Cheddar Gorge always gets a raised eyebrow and sometimes a giggle. Part of the Cheddar Caves Company Explorer Ticket, it’s an ace way to get a taster of the gorge and, if you’re lucky, catch a glimpse of the birdlife.

I was on the bus now, looking for inspiration for a bird ID sheet I was producing.

With the wind in my hair, I thought back to the last time I was in a topless vehicle. I was in African “Big Five” country, surrounded by a thousand snorting wildebeest that, at some point would - we were assured - sweep majestically across the plain.

In Cheddar the bus was passing Lion Rock. Silver-capped jackdaws glinted in the sunshine, diving into wafer-thin crevasses with twigs clamped in their beaks. A pair of buzzards – mischievously dubbed the tourist’s eagle in Scotland – circled on afternoon thermals. Buzzards are on the up, reclaiming the range that DDT robbed from them at a rate of knots. They’re everywhere. Even soaring majestically above Torquay.

The road was narrowing, the gradient sharpening, and limestone cliffs beginning to tower on either side. To my right, three carboniferous pinnacles pierced the sky. Halfway up, so precipitously placed as to lodge a seed of doubt in even Isaac Newton’s mind, a wild goat seemed to be … sunbathing? I shielded my eyes against the glare of the sun and peered upward. Perfect timing. The jackdaws clacked and chattered, skittering off as a raven – with a wingspan to match the buzzard’s 165cm - lazily launched itself with a “korrrrp, korrrrp, korrrrp”. It’s an impressive bird anyway, but when it comes to ravens I can’t escape a slight pang of jealous rivalry – I’ve spent far too many hours shut in a room trying to roll my rs for Swedish exams, not to reserve a certain respect for a crow whose got it sorted. It’s when ravens start dabbling in flatpack furniture assembly that I’ll get worried.

The bus turned around, the Cheddar Cave guide’s endless stream of facts whetting our appetites and firing our imaginations as we began our descent. We slowed. We stopped. We watched. This was peregrine territory but – to misuse a Take That lyric - it wasn’t to be. To give nature its dues, the time-tabling so far had been text-book, and you know how it is with peregrines – you wait all day then…

Back on the bus, still looking for inspiration. Four peregrines. The very next day. Two breeding pairs? Last year’s kids back to visit the folks? A hostile take-over bid? No matter, I’d got the full Cheddar set. The buzzard, the raven, the peregrine. I’d seen them all. The three biggest wingspans of the gorge from a topless bus. I thought back to Africa. It was obvious. The Cheddar Big Three. I can’t believe it took me so long.

Enraptured by raptors

2008-04-19T21:19:00Z

When it comes to writing about dinosaurs, I've noticed a typical formula for the introduction. It goes something along the lines of... 'imagine a land of towering forests, shallow lakes and sauna-like temperatures.' I've always found it an odd approach, as very few of these tales are actually set in Sweden. Nevertheless, that environment is where our tale begins – a tale which sees me holding a plastic triceratops, priced £1.75, two hundred and six million years later.

Cheddar Caves and Gorge begin their story then too. In the warm shallow marine environs of the Jurassic, creatures with shells thrived. They lived and died, and as they did, their remains began to accumulate. It's those remains that now form England's steepest inland cliffs - a gorge three miles long, towering to 400 ft in places, carved by the last ice age and the Cheddar Yeo, England's longest underground river.

So, there's a historic case to be made for the £1.75 triceratops I'm admiring outside a gorge souvenir shop on my lunch. And a case for the bargain raptor... and the 'cheap as chips' bumper pack of six Tyrannosaurus rex.

Yes, there's a lucrative trade to be had in the extinct reptiles of the Upper Cretaceous – which prowled around 141 million years after Cheddar's Jurassic birth.

I'm beginning to understand why it's such a regular occurrence that a kid, with a raptor under their arm, will sprint up to my stand and stare goggle-eyed at my life sized peregrine then rush to tell their parents about the bird that dives at 230 miles per hour.

'The peregrine is a raptor,' I'll begin, 'just like yours…'

Not that door-opening peregrines have made it onto the silver screen. But... a peregrine is a raptor…

'A bird of prey, or raptor,” I'll explain, 'is a bird that hunts for food primarily on the wing, using its keen senses, especially vision; it has large, powerful claws called talons and a beak adapted for tearing or piercing flesh…”

Then, after the 230 miles an hour fact, I'll explain where our very own raptors are hanging out.

The truth is though, an uncomfortable similarity of raptors past and present has loomed on the horizon for a while. Peregrines have teetered on the brink of extinction, the legacy of pesticides in the food chain and egg thieves. We very nearly lost them in the UK and if it wasn't for the RSPB's public education and round the clock nest watches in the 1980s, I think we probably would have done. And, although the peregrine is back from the brink, there remains an unfortunate truth that many of our raptors are still poisoned, trapped and shot from the skies.

So, if possible, I'll explain a little of the Wildlife Explorers club to the kid with the raptor under their arm. It's the RSPB kids club and for £15 a year you'll be enthralled, educated and amazed. The money will go straight to conservation, like saving these terrific birds. And all for £1.25 a month. A cracking bargain really - and a saving of 50p against your standard discount triceratops.

Cheddar Gorgeous Birds

Under Somerset Skies

Enraptured by raptors