This article first appeared in "The Natural History of the Chew Valley" (1987) - "a very impressive resource" - Jonathon Porritt.

the poacher

Frank Curly Parsons (1901-1986) came from Timsbury to Chelwood in 1915 as a 14 year-old, to work at Bromley Colliery. His knowledge and feeling for the local plants, and animals, even though they were learnt through unfashionable pursuits like poaching, would have put many modern naturalists to shame.

Here is an extract from a tape of his recollections recorded in 1984.

You'd see birds at Timsbury you didn't see at Chelwood. There was yellowhammer, there was blackcaps, and there was a bird we called the butcher bird. It'd kill a young bird or a mouse or anything and hook it up on a thorn in a hedge, and we used to find a few of their nests, you know, in the nesting period. Then of course there was all the ordinary birds, thrushes, robins, different sorts of linnets, and there used to be tree sparrows.

They used to be a bit bigger than a house sparrow, and they built quite a big nest up in the trees. And there was different water birds of course, very often you had to go into the next village to find some of them. Moorhens and all that, we used to get some of all that was going. Course, collecting birds eggs wasn't against the law then. Some children used to do it for vandalism more than anything, but if you was really interested in it, you'd only ever take one egg out of the nest. I gave my three egg boxes to the schoolmaster when I left Timsbury, and he was so pleased! The only thing that was very hard to get was kestrel hawks. They'd get up in an oak tree as a rule, right up in the top. I never found a cuckoo's egg.

Lots of occasions I found young cuckoos in a nest. Once out the back here (Greens Folly, Pensford), Mr White called me over. He said 'can you hear anything Mr Parsons?'. I said 'yes I can, and I'll tell you what it is!', he said 'what?', I said 'a cuckoo!'. We got down and pulled the branches back in the hedge between his garden and the George and Dragon orchard - there was Mr Cuckoo, sat on the nest. Of course the nest was about as big as that! The most ugly bird you could see! His beak open about that much. Horrible looking little devils they are, when they're growing up. And you'd see the little hedge sparrows come there all day long carrying food. The baby cuckoos make quite a distinctive sound, you could find them by the sound.

A lot of people told me I was good at finding nests. After I was married, I had nephews come out from Bristol and they'd say 'Uncle Frank, take us out birds nesting'. And we'd go up the hill and get into the lane and go on up towards Fry's Bottom Pit, and we'd often find 20 nests. Not always different sorts, but robins nests, wrens nests, linnets. Only once did I ever find a longtailed tits nest, that was in a hedge up towards Harrisons plough ground (Chelwood), the bird with his tail sticking out the hole in the nest. That's a pretty nest, but chaffinches makes a pretty nest! You used to nearly always look in apple trees for a chaffinch nest. Of course they do build in other places I know, but they nearly always used to make their nest with lichen off apple trees.

I never saw any owl eggs at Timsbury but I did at Chelwood. Them barns out the back of Burnts Cottage, there's two barns out there, and a cowshed, and there was a white owl used to come out there. And I got up there and looked in and seen the two eggs, and I been up there when they've hatched out and seen their two little eyes shining out. Where the roof comes down on to the wall, that's where they do get, under there and make their nest. Wasn't much of a nest. There was always a pair hatched out there, yet they did go away afterwards, see, cause we never had but two owls there. There used to be some old pollard trees there, and there used to be an owl in them.

There was always two or three coveys of partridges down on Adams' Farm - that's all been bought by Lady Farm now. There used to be plenty of snipe and woodcock down by the woods, but they tell me you don't see them now. My grandfather told me that men used to get out in the wood on Red Hill, poachers with nets. Two men to a net and they'd have lead weights on one end, and they'd drag those hills for partridges, at night. When the partridge goes into a roost, they don't 90 in a tree or anything, they roost in little grooves in the ground, all in close together. Dragnets as they call them.

I can remember in Burnts Cottage when I'd get out in the middle of the night and close the windows because of the nightingales singing. The manager of the colliery, merge Smith, used to live in Chelwood House, up by Chelwood Bridge, he used to come down with his wife, in the middle of the night sometimes, and lean on our bridge wall, over the brook. They'd listen to that couple or three nightingales. At that particular time, the stream at the bottom of Burnts Cottage and Harrison's Farm, all down that slope there used to be oak trees. Oh I expect there was 80 or 90 oak trees all up through there, I think they belonged to the Earl of Warwick at one time.

Another thing you don't hear now is corncrakes. You never did see them very often, but you'd hear them. They got a proper call, a corncrake, mostly from cover. Then there was lots of flowers in the cornfields, I've seen them, I've seen them. At Lady Farm the goosey ganders used to grow that high! The proper name is orchids - they was pink in colour mostly, but down in that field opposite where the gateway used to go into Burnts Cottage, down in the far corner, there was three colours growing there, in profusion. There was this ordinary pink, and there was a dark purplish colour, and then there was a very light coloured one, nearly white. Of course they've all been ploughed up now, three fields made into one.

We used to get our cowslips there, it used to be yellow with cowslips in the spring, and we used to go and pick clothes baskets full. I don't think there's anything to beat cowslip wine, but, oh, it's a terrible thing to make. When you'd taken the little yellow bits out of the flowers, from this basket full you'd end up with half an ordinary bucket full. What with the trout from the brook - once I'd learnt to tickle trout we could always count on four or five for our tea - and the odd pheasant, we didn't want for much. Those were the happiest days of my life, at Burnts Cottage.

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