Horton observation

Yesterday morning, it being a bright day, to Horton Country Park for a spot of lockdown exercise. What seemed like plenty of cars in the car park, but quiet enough on our round walk. Most of the dog walkers must have gone the other way.

In any event, we were able to check up on the Nilgai, spelt Nylghaie by some authorities, including Maurie Burton of reference 1, which seemed to have been breeding. More of them than I remember from last time, that is to say reference 2. Readers with sharp eyes will be able to pick up both them and a Bactrian camel from the snap above. Another Bactrian camel had, rather incongruously, a magpie perched on its rear hump.

The observation came after that. There was a youngish couple out walking their dog, a black Labrador, going in the same direction as ourselves. The dog was carrying a stick in its mouth, not particularly big as such things go, perhaps two feet long. Every little while, perhaps every minute or so, the dog would put the stick down so that it could go and investigate something, perhaps the smell around the base of a post, perhaps ten or fifteen feet away. Investigation complete, it would come back, pick its stick up again, and resume its walk. Coming straight back to its stick, without seeming to need to cast around to find it.

If this had been a person, one would have taken this for purposeful, conscious behaviour. The person had the stick in mind, remembering after its investigations to go back and fetch it. But what can we say about the dog? Is it right to project purpose and consciousness onto it, or would one be guilty of gross anthropomorphism? Not to say animalism?

I think one can say that the behaviour involves memory. Both as to the carrying of the stick and as to remembering where it was. 

Grabbing things with the mouth is no doubt an instinctive activity in a hunting carnivore like a dog, but instinct notwithstanding, maybe the dog was conscious, on this occasion, when something was not in its mouth, thus prompting it to go back for the stick. But then, why go back for the stick, rather than pick up a new one? There were, I dare say, plenty of them about. How does the dog get so attached to this particular one?

More thought needed. But I don't suppose I shall go so far as to buy an experimental dog. I am better with other peoples' dogs than I used to be, but certainly not to the point of wanting one of my own.

PS 1: an enlargement of the snap above, in which hopefully the livestock is more visible to those with tender eyesight.

PS 2: the nilgai are the penultimate land mammal listed by Burton - who points out that they (Boselaphus tragocamelus) are left alone by the Hindus of India on account of their resemblance to sacred cows proper (Bos indicus), a long list of which is to be found at reference 3. Most of them seem to have humps over their shoulders.

Reference 1: psmv2: Dalhousie.

Reference 2: psmv4: Horton Country Park.

Reference 3: Native cow varieties of India - Biodiversity of India: A Wiki Resource for Indian Biodiversity

Wellingtonia 30

After a number of false alarms and near misses, have finally made it to Wellingtonia No.30, a young tree in the middle of the roundabout at the entrance to Bockett's Farm (reference 2). This last being a place intended for families with young children, rather than farming. I thought we had made an exploratory visit ourselves, but there seems to be no record of same.

In the same part of family leisure space as the rather nearer Hobbledown (reference 3), once the farm attached to the Epsom cluster of mental hospitals. Perhaps noticed as there were some children in the frame to provide an alibi.

In the bright sunlight, I could not see what I was going with my telephone, so thought I would take my snap from the shady side of the tree. First problem, getting onto the roundabout, at this reasonably busy junction. Second problem, getting a reasonable amount of tree in the snap without falling off it again. But the telephone does seem to have coped with having the sun behind the tree. And I am pretty confident that it is a Wellingtonia.

The roundabout was also home to an impressive range of wild flowers. Hopefully the council won't feel the need to cut them down too fast. One cut at some point during the summer ought to be enough to keep things shipshape.

PS: thinking of Hobbledown reminds me of the nonsense whereby, in the 1960's, mental patients were stopped from working on the farms attached to many mental hospitals on the grounds that it was either or both of slave labour and taking the bread out of the mouths of honest farm labourers. So they were shut up on their wards instead.

Reference 1: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2021/03/wellingtonia-29.html.

Reference 2: https://www.bockettsfarm.co.uk/.

Reference 3: https://www.hobbledown.com/.

Reference 4: http://psmv4.blogspot.com/2019/08/hobbledown.html. Visit to same. As opposed to peeping in at the camels and nilgai through the western boundary fence.

Group search key: wgc.

Horton Country Park

Being at Hobbledown (see reference 1) reminded us that we had not been to Horton County Park for a while. So to make up we went two days running, doing the short walk on each occasion.

A warm, sunny day. But this did not stop the runners, of whom there seemed to be quite a lot. Some quite old, some quite fast.

The hedges seemed to have grown quite a bit since we were last there, in my case in the days when the park was an occasional extra tacked onto the Horton Clockwise, a walk I stopped doing, for no particular reason, a few years ago now, in favour of the Ewell Village walk, usually anti-clockwise. Some signs of elm hedge trees still trying, despite being regularly knocked back by Dutch Elm Disease.

A pleasant sit by the pond. A bit down but well supplied with dragonflies and damselflies.

One of the untended fields, looking well

Some polo action in the field attached to the equestrian centre. Some groupies, mainly girls, minding the spare ponies.

Some very tame swallows in the yard - tame in the sense that they did not fly off on my approach. Rather small and scruffy looking, but looking at their faces from the front, I was surprised how wide their mouths were. One supposes, all the better to catch flies with.

Plenty of grasshoppers in and around this patch

About two centimetres long in life

More

More zoom

More luck with grasshoppers on day two, finding a patch of grass with lots of them. I suspect that modern cameras are useful to naturalists, but I expect a downside will be that naturalists are all to apt to take pictures rather than to look, as they would have had to in the days when one drew one's find. Rather as statisticians are apt to stop looking at the numbers when they have got a computer to feed them through.

Field

One of the camels

Field

The nilgais

A bonus was a peep through the fence at the Hobbledown camel field. And next to them were some large fat deer, sitting in a line by the hedge. Pale brown in colour, some of them at least sporting short horns. So not llamas as we had first thought. Back home, turned the pages of Burton (reference 4), thought about nilgais, but decided against on the grounds that the males, according to Wikipedia (reference 3), were not brown but blue. However, this afternoon, I phone them up and a helpful young lady tells me that they were indeed nilgais. She seemed quite amused that I wanted to know.

Back to the polo area, where we were treated to a young man showing us the proper way to get off a polo pony: swing leg over and jump - none of this messing about with stirrups and lowering oneself down in the dignified manner of my day.

On the way out, a polo player of a certain age arriving in his MG, a sporty car favoured by smart young people when I was young. Accompanied by a blonde of uncertain age. Plus what looked like a proper Globetrotter suitcase strapped on the back, made before it became a luxury item sold in appropriate shops in Mayfair. A journey also made by the Belstaff people, once purveyors of outer clothing for serious biker boys. See reference 6.

Reference 1: http://psmv4.blogspot.com/2019/08/hobbledown.html.

Reference 2: https://psmv3.blogspot.com/2018/01/short-back-and-sides.html. Clearly still doing the Horton Clockwise often enough in January last year as there is no mention here of coming back to it. Perhaps the change over was more gradual than I now recall.

Reference 3: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nilgai.

Reference 4: Systematic dictionary of the mammals of the world - Maurice Burton - 1962.

Reference 5: http://psmv2.blogspot.com/2014/11/dalhousie.html. Where this Burton came from. And who has been both useful and entertaining over the years. Earning several notices.

Reference 6: https://psmv2.blogspot.com/2016/02/bells-of-bond-street.html.