All quiet........

Well, we seem to whizz around today. Whether the distant and circling rainfall curtains kept us covering the ground, anxious that we may receive a brief soaking, or whether the stillness of everything in the parkland just let us focus on completing the patrol, I don't know.

The sheep were all in the lower parkland below Archer's gate and, in the main, settled. The deer too, in the parkland below the house, were also in a tightish group. The whole place seemed calm and quiet. Goldfinches punctuated the silence and the dead grey sky. They sprang out of the abundant flowering thistle heads in Broomroyd plantation. White tailed bumble bees, too, were feasting on the heads of thistles, almost one per flower cluster.

A handful of swallows swooped. Sparrows flitted from one near hedgerow to a further one. It seemed that, with each one, it was the last of the sparrows, but for quite a time, another would appear out of the nearer branches to flutter the few yards to the further cover. My feeling was that they were playing a game with us. Each, in turn, would fly back to the nearer hedge to emerge over and over again to make the escape.
Despite this passerine activity, at the Rotunda, as the work wound down to the re-opening, a few men were stood around, seemingly passing time as they seemed to have little to do.

It was, however, soon to be changed. As we walked towards the western edges of the Serpentine, an excited mallard racketing was the sound that drew Ian quickly to the water. Mallard of immature appearance were ganging together. There were no beautifully plumaged mallard drakes or any duller but quite clearly mature ducks.
As we approached the edge of the water, they formed three groups which, accompanied by much honking (my father, on a holiday on the Norfolk Broads, said mallard were like the sound of old London Taxis, their drivers squeezing the bulb horns), eventually formed one super flotilla. There must have been about one hundred marshalled into this paddling patrol. They were aware of us but wary. No beaching with the expectation of bread here.

In the drier part of the Serpentine, we disturbed a hare which, running in the long grass with its legs hidden and with its head, ears, upper body and rump visible, appeared to be floating. There are haws forming in the hawthorn, with their leaves beginning to lose their green, and ash keys hang in abundance.
It does not need saying.

Month seven

Well, I could have not more wrong. Rain, and a bit of it, has made the parkland lushly green. No sun today, but a very high humidity made the walk, however gently we chose to proceed, clammy and damp.

Not much stirred. Young fallow deer with velvety horny growths made a little show. Shorn sheep looked resplendently white. What struck us today were the many limping sheep. At first, they seemed to all have the right foreleg offering no step, but as we wandered on, other legs and sometimes, not just one leg came into play, or rather from the sheep's view, not to play.

Ian offered the view that the sheep had got up suddenly and were naturally a little stiff in one or more limbs, as we might be in the morning. But as the affected beasts were this season's lambs and not old giffers like us, we dismissed this conjecture. When something untoward is noticed, we, as rangers, should report it at the end of the patrol. The number of limping lambs suggested that if it was serious then the farmer would, by now, know about - we hoped.

Anyway we left it. I was more concerned with what was happening at the Queen Anne monument and an elder tree. The tree seemed to be forcing its way between the stones so much so that there was movement of at least two inches. The stone was being inched away from its role as pedestal by the intrusion of an elder tree. Now this was serious. Enough to mention it in our report.
The Queen Anne monument is an obelisk upon a square plinth. To the passer-by it appears squat and plain, having nothing to make it attractive. Some might say that this is the perfect monument to the Queen, the last of the Stuarts. But the Queen's influence on Thomas, the owner of the house, was immense. She raised his political status after his successful military career.

Her monument may might have been more elaborate and better positioned, but it gave Thomas a chance to show the outside world who he was, if not where he was. On the outer face of the obelisk are inscribed for all passers-by to note, are all his titles, achievements and political stance. He was left the titles but not the Wentworth-Woodhouse estate, which was inherited by his cousin. The engraving fails to acknowledge the Georgian succession. I once learned that to put the thumb to the nose and waggle ones fingers at another person was called giving a Queen Anne's fan. I like to believe that this obelisk is Thomas' own masonic Queen Anne's fan.
Already the horse chestnut trees are beginning to show fruit. The summer is doing what it does best. Preparing the world for autumn.