Friday 2 January 2009

Mowdyman

It's the end of the 2nd of Jan and I've still not been to Druridge.

We did get out west to do Janet's atlas tetrads before the end of the year, thye are two together near Raylees. It is the wild west out there alright, not much bird-wise though, a few small groups of fieldfares were all of note.



We did come across this gruesome sight by the A68, A line of dead mowdies...Mowdy is an old Northumberland (and Cumberland I think) term for moles and their molehills are called mowdy hawkins...not sure what the man who got these poor critters would be called, the mowdyman maybe?

The method of hanging the dead on the fence goes back along way, there was no way the mowdyman could show his boss how good a job he was doing, so he would hang the carcasses on the fence, you rarely see it nowadays. Seemingly one moleman in Catton in the South Tyne had a line of 478 dead moles strung on a fence that he had caught at one farm.

After we did the tetrads, I took these pics at Janet's feeders..


Tomorrow is bird race day, our team had done bugger all preperation, but it shouldn't matter cos we are always last even when we do prepare.

2 comments:

Warren Baker said...

Some nice photo's today ipin. Except the poor moles! I know what I call anyone who does that sort of thing......A C*NT

DorsetDipper said...

I thought dead animals and birds were hung up so the maggots would fall off and provide food for pheasants?