field notebook · no. 3 · fernbrook valley

The Moss Notebook

A year of forests, fungi, streams, birds & other small wonders.

March 2024 — February 2025 · kept weekly · ink, water & patience

p. 2
i.

Entries by Season

four seasons, one valley — pressed flat between the pages

March — May

Spring, kept quiet

  • Wren returns to the same hedge before the hawthorn opens.
  • First toadstools on the old oak — I number them.
  • The brook runs milky; the kingfisher is already fishing.
June — August

Summer, in full hum

  • Longhorn on dead wood under the log pile — No. 06 below.
  • Heat shimmer over the bracken; the whole bank smells of resin.
  • One ash tree, stripped by storm on the 15th. I sketched the gap.
September — November

Autumn, let go

  • Chanterelles in the birch — the first real harvest, 6 October.
  • The whole river gold for eleven days. I ran out of ochre.
  • Owl feather under the feeder; I did not touch it. No. 02.
December — February

Winter, held breath

  • Footprints only; the forest held its breath at minus three.
  • Icicles on the beech — I counted four hundred, maybe more.
  • Year ends mid-sentence, as the best ones do.
p. 7
ii.

The Habitat, Drawn from Memory

walked weekly; corrected with a shrug when the bracken disagrees

the pond is really a
kettle hole, I'm
pretty sure
112 m 96 Fernbrook birch kettle pond you are here (usually) N 0 200 m drawn from memory — roughly honest
p. 11
iii.

Seven Specimen Notes

small citizens of the valley, drawn while they were kind enough to sit still

No. 06 — I keep meaning
to learn its name. ask Margot.
No. 01

Chanterelle

Cantharellus cibarius
found: 06 Oct · in the birch, after rain

A yellow trumpet, one solid piece — no gills, only ridges. Smells of apricot. I ate two that night and regret nothing.

No. 02

Owl Feather

Strix aluco, probably
found: 11 Nov · under the feeder

One feather, whole and unbroken. I did not touch it. It belongs to the sky, and to a patient thing I only ever hear.

No. 03

Ladybird

Coccinella septempunctata
found: 27 May · on the nettles

Seven dots. I counted them. Twice. I trust it. It crossed my pencil and left the ink unharmed, which felt fair.

No. 04

Oak Leaf

Quercus robur
found: 08 Oct · the big oak by the ford

Deep-lobed, and firm. A beetle has eaten a question mark out of it. I have left the question there.

No. 05

Bracken Frond

Pteridium aquilinum
found: 30 Aug · south bank

Curls back into a tight spiral like a fern doing arithmetic. The frond unrolls all June — I marked the days. Forty-one.

No. 06

Longhorn Beetle

Cerambyx — (ask Margot)
found: 19 Jun · under the deadwood

Horns like thin crescents; moved exactly one centimetre in the whole afternoon. I gave it the honour of this page and the debt of a name.

No. 07

Map Lichen

Rhizocarpon geographicum
found: 02 Sep · the standing stone

Draws its own map of the rock — brown continents, pale inlets. Older than the stone's name. Grows one millimetre a year, I've been told. I believe it.

p. 12
iv.

A Featured Observation

The Kingfisher at Fernbrook — 14 April, 06:14

I went before the light, the way you go into a house when someone is asleep — slowly, on the far side of the doorframe. The valley was still one colour, blue-grey, and the brook was doing the only sound I know that is also a kind of silence. I had brought the notebook open and empty, which was mostly a promise and partly a dare.

Then a flash of blue, low on the far bank, no larger than a held thumb. It was gone before I could call it by anything; the stream answered with a single syllable — kree — and twice more, never three. The bird was a small blue promise the river keeps, and for the moment the whole morning was waiting on whether it would cash it.

It dived. Not a dive, really, a stitch — in and out of the water, and the water closed with a ring I could have measured. I counted to twelve because there is no other thing to do with twelve. Then it re-perched on the same branch, in the same tilt, and shook once with its whole body, as if to make sure it still belonged to itself.

"It dived the way one stitches a closed wound — in and out, and the water closed over it."

I wrote down the time, the temperature of the air, the fact that the willow overhanging the pool was in leaf exactly halfway, and I did not write down the nest, because the nest is not a fact I will help along. Some pages of the year I leave deliberately thin. This is one of them. I will be back before the light. The notebook will be open.

— W., pencil, at the ford

fig. 12 — the fern pool, 06:14; the blue is watercolour, mixed with the last drop of dawn
p. 19
v.

The Weather Ledger

taken at the same fence post, at the same time, whether I liked it or not

crossed out =
rain spoiled the ink.
kept anyway.
Date°CSkyWindNote
3 Mar4 / 11 NE 12first wren at the hedge
17 Mar6 / 13 W 18toadstools on the old oak
2 Apr9 / 16 SW 15Fernbrook running milky
14 Apr11 / 18 N 8the kingfisher (see p. 12)
9 May13 / 22 E 9ink smudged — lesson learned
21 Jun16 / 26 calmheat shimmer over the bracken
15 Aug15 / 24 SW 22storm stripped one ash
6 Oct9 / 15 W 14leaves — the whole river is gold
19 Dec−3 / 3 NE 7footprints only; held breath
p. 23
vi.

What the Valley Sounds Like

no recorder, only ears — transcribed the next morning while it was still true

p. 27
vii.

The Kit, Mostly

what fits in the coat pocket and survives the drizzle

In the pocket — daily

  • This notebook (21 cm, the one with the hole in the spine)
  • 4B graphite — the soft one, it smudges and forgives
  • Iron gall ink, half a bottle, leaking a little, accepted
  • Hand lens ×10 (Margot's, lent, overdue, treasured)
  • Cotton swab, for pollen and for accidents

On the bench — Sundays

  • Watercolour pans, five wells, ochre is running low
  • 15 mm round brush, the one named after the river
  • Soil vial with the cork that mostly works
  • Pencils, no eraser. (The rule is the rule.)
  • Compass — lending back to E. next week, promised
p. 31
viii.

About the Naturalist

self-portrait, drawn at the same fence post, 2 Apr

I keep this notebook the way I keep most promises — a little carelessly, and entirely. I am not a scientist, though I have been called that, which is a kind of compliment that arrives with rain. I am a person who stands at the same fence post more often than most, and who has learned that the same tree gives different lessons in April than it does in January.

Everything here was drawn with a soft pencil and a bottle of ink that is slowly losing a war against the drizzle. Some of it is accurate. Some of it is what the thing looked like when I believed in it, which I have decided is also a kind of accuracy. When in doubt, I leave the margin open — the moss grows in anyway.

Wren Calloway
currently: waiting for the chanterelles