Thoughts from a hide

Some years ago, we visited the Galapagos islands where the variation in beak sizes among the finches was a factor in Darwin's conclusion that they were all descended from a common ancestor and had developed to take advantage of the different food sources available. This led to his great work On the Origin of Species.

Castle on Lindisfarne

We have our own little Galapagos islands off the Northumbrian coast where the terns, puffins and seals breed in safety. On a recent trip to watch the wintering birds,the Brent geese, ducks and waders, it struck me that Darwin could have arrived at the same conclusion on the muddy shoreline of Lindisfarne.

Watching the waders probing the ground for food, each has a bill beautifully adapted for its particular needs, for the depth at which its prey lives and the type of terrain. The sandpiper family ranges from the turnstone with its short strong beak for flipping over stones on the beach to find food beneath to the long bills of the curlews and godwits with their sensitive tips probing soft mud for worms and invertebrates.

Turnstones

All obviously derive from an original wading bird and, further back, there was probably a common predecessor with the stilts, plovers and oystercatchers.

They are monophyletic, all coming from the same distant ancestor bird that picked up scraps from the ground after it had evolved from an even more remote reptilian creature. 

Surf coming in on the shore with Bamburgh Castle in the background

 

Did Darwin have to sail to the other side of the world to see what was under his and everyone else's nose? The voyage probably just clarified what he had been thinking about prior to his trip but would it have received the same acclaim if he just popped along to his nearest seashore or just observed our native finches from hawfinch to crossbill?

 P.S. On the day I was watching the Brent geese on Lindisfarne, another much more experienced and better equipped observer was doing the same and apparently spotted the tag on a goose that showed it was 23+ years old and had flown 100,000 miles in annual migrations !

  https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/holy-island-s-old-goose-has-flown-total-of-100-000-miles-9gz0mqj3k?shareToken=af6d44ac5726642cc2111dd04e51ddc8 

The Flo'ors o' the Forest

Flodden monument

 A cold winter's day for a walk around a bleak windswept hillside is not the most enjoyable of outings but it seemed fitting for a visit to the site of the bleakest day in Scottish history.

Branxton Moor...Flodden field...the defeat inflicted on the armies of James IV by the English forces of Catherine of Aragon acting on behalf of her husband Henry VIII who was fighting in France defending Italy and the Pope from the French. The Scottish war wasn't even the main campaign.

Scotland had been in a "golden age" under the cultured, clever young king. The Highlands had been brought under control and diplomatic relations  had established an uneasy peace with England and support for the "Auld Alliance " with France. The arts and science flourished, seats of learning were established and enhanced. All was to be lost in the greatest blunder in the long list of blunders in Scottish governance.

James for all his attributes was not a good commander being brave but, at times, foolhardy and impetuous. In a chivalrous but unnecessary letter, he gave warning of his decision to invade. His progress was slow giving his opponents time a-plenty to prepare.

The superior force of the Scottish army was ranged on the top of Branxton Hill armed with fifteen foot long pikes which were used like a giant hedgehog allowing the schiltron to advance against an enemy which couldn't engage them behind their jagged exterior.

Looking up the slope of Branxton Hill

Looking down from the position of the Scots army.The dip between the two slopes is discernible.

After the battle had commenced, troops commanded by Lord Home on the flank had success against the English with this tactic and, encouraged by this, the main body moved down from the hill to engage the centre.

Unfortunately, they didn't know that at the foot of the slope just before the ground rose again was boggy morass into which they plunged knee-deep unable to make progress while the rest came crowding in from behind. Their wall of pikes was a now hindrance and they were slaughtered by the billhooks of the enemy.

James bravely rushed into the fray and became the last British monarch to die in battle. With him died the flower of the Scottish nobility, the clergy, the legislature, clan chiefs and nobles as well as thousands of his loyal subjects.

This left the country with an infant for king and a near collapse of the administration. A country that didn't really recover from the disaster of Flodden until James's grandson, James VI, united the warring kingdoms ninety years later.

James's body was never properly identified though Lord Dacre took what he believed to be it to London where it was embalmed but later lost during the Reformation.

The Kings Stone

There is a Neolithic or Bronze Age standing stone called the King's Stone near the A697 road to Branxton where James is said to have died but it is quite a distance from the battlefield and the brave James is almost certain to have died on Branxton Moor among his troops.

Some of the dead were buried around Branxton church

13th C chancel in Branxton church

As I walked around the battlefield, the place still a desolate emptiness about it that couldn't be entirely due to wind chill.

The drainage ditch

The line of the ditch marks the marshy killing ground of the battle

Taking the trail to the top of the hill I passed over a muddy, reedy ditch. The ditch that now drains the marshy ground between the two slopes, the ground were thousands of young men struggled to pull their feet from the clinging mud while their compatriots on the wet slope behind slithered and slid into their backs all the time wrestling with the now useless pikes. A ditch that marks the spot where they were butchered. How ironic that the Flo'ors o' the Forest were a' wede away because in 1513 there was no ditch to drain the bog

A nation devastated for want of a ditch.