Book #7/2019 The Ghost Fields

The Ghost Fields: The Dr Ruth Galloway Mysteries 7 by Elly Griffiths
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I love the Ruth Galloway series by Elly Griffiths. The Ghost Fields is number 7 and it really is as well to read them in order as there are threads that run through the series that lock your interest and enthusiasm for the characters.

Dr Ruth Galloway is a professor of forensic archaeology at the University of North Norfolk. She likes cats (an endearing trait for me!), Bruce Springsteen, bones and books. She does not like organised religion. She has a now five-year-old daughter, Kate, fathered by DCI Harry Nelson after a brief extra-marital affair. Nelson is married to Michelle. He leads the Serious Crimes Unit in Norfolk. Michael Malone is a lovable character, also know as Cathbad. Born in Ireland and brought up as a catholic he now thinks of himself as a druid and shaman. DS David Clough (Cloughie) is Nelson's bagman, born in Norfolk - a tough, dedicated officer who dislikes political correctness and graduate police officers. He likes food, football, beer - and his job. And then there is DS Judy Johnson who now co-habits with Cathbad and has just given birth to a daughter. I have followed their lives since book #1 with great fondness.

In a blazing heatwave in Norfolk a construction crew unearth a World War Two plane. The body inside isn't the pilot. A television company discovers bones on their latest shoot on a pig farm. They're human bones... One local family, the Blackstocks, links the two grisly discoveries and Ruth must solve the mystery of the ghost fields. With an inevitability she finds herself in harms way in a finish that has the pulse racing - a fabulous page-turner - that left me quite breathless come the end.

Hats off to Elly Griffiths. You have done it again!



View all my reviews

Book #63 The Betrayals

The Betrayals by Fiona Neill
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

A family friendship betrayed with a deception to reverberate through the years. Rosie and Nick appear to be happily married with two children, Daisy and Max. Rosie’s best friend Lisa is married to Barney with children Ava and Rex. The two families share a week’s holiday on the Norfolk coast in the cottage where Rosie grew up. But tensions mount between Lisa and Barney, a failing journalist in the music industry, who dwells on past successes as he hits the bottle. And, that summer, Lisa had an affair with Nick.

The repercussions have a terrible affect on Daisy, whose fragile hold on reality begins to unravel. Her level of OCD is chronic with repetitive actions she believes are necessary to protect her mother. Max blames himself for all that happened that summer with his cruel deception…. There is a flavour of Ian McEwan’s ‘Atonement’ here.

Recounted by four principal characters - Rosie, Nick, Daisy and Max this is an accomplished novel depicting a family in crisis. Four sides to a story, who to believe.

And then the letter from Lisa to Rosie, years later, that exposes dark secrets…

A family drama with much to recommend it although I did find the ending a little disappointing.

View all my reviews

A Tiger In The Sand

A Tiger in the Sand: Selected Writings on Nature by Mark Cocker
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Another wonderful collection of distilled articles by Mark Cocker, one of my favourite writers on nature and wilderness. The book contains over 100 articles originally published in The Guardian and Guardian Weekly during the nineties and noughties. This is a hugely varied and most enjoyable selection, the writing evincing qualities more usually associated with poetry than with prose. He covers the vast skies and wildlife riches of his home county of Norfolk along with stories of his encounters with penguins, whales, lions and elephants; blackbirds, thrushes, mountain gorillas and the one-horned rhinoceros. His attention to detail and the precise use of language is a joy. Highly recommended for lovers of nature and conservation.

View all my reviews

Bewick's Swan Numbers show alarming crash

The UK's smallest and rarest swan has suffered an "alarming crash in numbers", the Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust has said. The Slimbridge-based charity said more than a third of Bewick's swans have disappeared since 1995, when the total population peaked at 29,000. The latest figures show that, by 2010, there were just 18,000 left.

Scientists believe illegal hunting, power lines and lead poisoning have contributed to the drop in numbers. The charity said it feared the next census, due this winter, would reveal a "further, more worrying decline" in population.

In some winters, the Ouse Washes spanning Norfolk and Cambridgeshire receives 33% of the northwest European Bewick's swan population. Head of UK waterbird conservation Eileen Rees said swans were not producing enough offspring to replace the ones that have died over the year.

"We have two possible solutions - to find out and address what's hampering breeding, and to reduce the number of preventable deaths along their migration route," she added. "We have a plan in place to do both, and much work is underway already, but we need to do it all if we're to change the fortune of our wildest and most beautiful swan."

The Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust started studying Bewick's swans 50 years ago and it has now recorded in detail the lives of nearly 10,000 individual swans. The charity is currently working on the Bewick's Swan International Action Plan, which aims to stabilise the population.

Bewick's swans breed in the cold Arctic tundra of northern Russia. The western population winters in northern Europe, including the British Isles, while the eastern population heads towards China and Japan for the winter season.

Bewick's are a subspecies of the tundra swan and the smallest swan in Europe.

Mass Raptor Poisoning

Allen Lambert worked as a gamekeeper on the Stody estate in north Norfolk. On 1 October 2014, he appeared at Norwich Magistrates' Court and was found guilty of two charges relating to the killing of 10 Buzzards and a Sparrowhawk on the estate and possession of pesticides and other items capable of being used to prepare poison baits.

A key part of the case for the defence was the idea that the number of dead Buzzards found was too high to have been achieved through illegal poisoning in one area and that the carcasses must therefore have been ‘planted’ on Mr Lambert. When the experts were consulted, however, BTO (British Trust for Ornithology) quickly provided the robust evidence that refutes this claim.

Counts of Buzzards in north Norfolk from the same time period as the crimes took place (March–April) were extracted from BirdTrack and mapped.

On the map orange dots represent counts of 10–14, red dots 15–20. These counts were logged by birdwatchers (I submit sightings to Birdtrack) during their day-to-day birding. Who could have foreseen that the simple action of recording sightings in BirdTrack would realise the immense value of such ‘normal’ observations in this way?

As well as proving beyond doubt that double-figure counts of Buzzards are a regular occurrence in Norfolk these days, data collected by BTO volunteers was used in court to highlight the recent population increase and range expansion of Buzzard. Data from Bird Atlas 2007–11 and the Norfolk Bird Atlas were used to show the eastward spread and increasing population density since the previous breeding atlas in 1988–91, while CBC/BBS data spanning 5 decades helped emphasise the recent, dramatic population increase.

It's not unusual for birdwatchers' records, provided impartially, to find valuable applications like this, though it's the first time that BirdTrack data have been utilised in such a case. Fantastic!

Great Knot in Norfolk!

A Great Knot Calidris tenuirostris has been seen at Breydon Water in Norfolk and has bird-watchers racing to get there and see it. This is only the fourth recorded occurrence of this mega rarity in Britain. The first Great Knot was found in 1989 in Shetland, the second in 1996 in Cleveland, the third in both County Dublin and Lancashire in 2004.

The Great Knot

This species breeds in the subarctic and montane tundra habitats of north-eastern Siberia. It is migratory and winters along the coast of Southeast Asia and Australia. It has been very rarely observed on the west coast of Alaska during its spring migration and has also been recorded locally in Western Europe.

Quite a turn-up for Norfolk!

Twitchers flock to see Great Spotted Cuckoo

A rare bird seen in Wales just three times since the 1800s has landed in Pembrokeshire. The Great Spotted Cuckoo has been photographed in Penally, causing hundreds of bird enthusiasts to flock to the area. Experts have said the bird normally migrates from Africa to southern Spain but the warm weather must have caused it to overshoot continental Europe.

A great spotted cuckoo was last seen on British shores in Norfolk in 2009.  Brian Egan of Rare Bird Alert said the bird arrived in Pembrokeshire last week. He said: “We don’t know if it’s male or female but it is a young bird and inexperienced, so he’s missed the mainland [of Europe] while migrating from Africa.”

The British Birds Rarities Committee says this type of cuckoo has been seen in Britain 46 times since records began but this is only the fourth time in Wales.