Websailor's Wacky Wildlife World
Created | Updated May 7, 2008
A quirky look at wildlife. To be taken with a pinch of salt, but with more than a grain of truth!
The Tolkien Connection
It is that time of year again when Tolkien fans look forward to the Tolkien Weekend and visiting the places where JRR Tolkien spent his childhood. The influences exerted by mysterious places such as Moseley Bog, Sarehole Mill, The Dell and The Dingles helped him envisage The Shire in The Lord of the Rings. Visitors come from all over the world to learn the background to the books Tolkien wrote.
Moseley Bog Local Nature Reserve is part of the recently-renamed Shire Country Park here in Birmingham, England and is one of the most atmospheric places you could visit. It would be particularly so today, as a gentle April shower patters on the dark leaves in the canopy and refreshes the bluebells carpeting the ground. There is something very spooky about this peat bog, perhaps because of its long history and its unique position right in the middle of the UK's second city.
This wet woodland is a genuine peat bog, with sphagnum moss (the kind that filters water clean) and wood horsetail being just two of the rare plants found here. If in doubt as to whether it is a bog, just get yourself over your knees in it, as I did, and you will need someone to pull you out. While doing so you will be wondering what dark secrets from the past are hidden deep beneath!
Sit quietly on a tree stump by the pool and you might see a grey heron take off in his clumsy fashion, or hear long-tailed tits gossiping. Blackcaps and wrens might sing and you could see treecreepers in the murky daylight. Sparrowhawks and kingfishers can also be found if you are really lucky. Woodpeckers drumming are a constant delight, especially early in the day. Frogs can be found in the pond during spring and dragonflies abound in summer.
Cold Bath Brook surfaces in the bog and flows down to fill the mill pond at Sarehole Mill, where Tolkien had such memories of the miller! There are many springs rising in the nature reserve from the River Cole valley. The area is boardwalked to accommodate walkers and wheelchair users and throughout the year much wildlife is to be found. Particularly fascinating is the abundance of fungi in the autumn, as decaying oak and silver birch also provide a habitat for any number of insects.
Bluebell walks around the bog are a joy, though there is a worry that the Spanish bluebell will hybridise with our native bluebell and eventually render it extinct. All the more reason to protect what we have. Another event that saw its birth in Birmingham is the International Dawn Chorus Day, the first International Dawn Chorus Day being
broadcast on the BBC World Service in 1984 from Moseley Bog.
This year it is on Monday, 7 May, a Bank Holiday in England and an ideal opportunity to get out and listen to the glorious sounds our birds make. Of course, if bed beckons a little too much, wrap a duvet round yourself at about 4am, open the window and drink in the sounds, together with a steaming mug of coffee.
Moseley Bog was saved as an important wildlife site in the mid-1980s, its existence at that time coming as quite a surprise to all but local people, who fought hard to save this precious oasis in the middle of the city.
For those with interests other than wildlife, a Bronze Age burnt mound was discovered on the site in 1980. Samples of charcoal from the streambank in Moseley Bog have been carbon-dated to somewhere around 1100BC. Burnt mounds are mounds of heat-shattered stones and charcoal denoting the remains of either cooking or sauna-type bathing. Nearby, Sarehole Mill still operates and the smell and dust from corn-grinding, together with the conglomeration of old tools, evokes the Tolkien period strongly.
In 2006 the area's Wildlife Trust, founder member of the Wildlife Trust movement, was awarded up to £500,000 of lottery grants to improve the Moseley Bog wetlands, with new car parking, footpaths and public art. It is to be hoped that in the process the spooky atmosphere will not be lost — that special atmosphere which is believed to have inspired the 'Old Forest' in Tolkien's books.
Websailor's Wacky Wildlife World Archive
