Sightings of the Mortham Dobby and other winter visitors

However, due to the vagaries of the English weather, there is no guarantee the little summer will actually materialise but if and when it does, it will be enjoyed to the full by many of us.

One little known fact associated with St Luke's Day is that it is also called Dog Whipping Day. Dogs were whipped because centuries ago on this feast day, one of them misbehaved in York Minster by eating a consecrated communion host. At the time, it was the practice for dogs to accompany their masters to mass and each church had an official dog-whipper whose duty it was to keep all those canines in order during the service.

In addition, if any dog was found wandering unattended in the streets of York or Hull on this date, it was also whipped. There is some speculation that this odd custom led to the name of York's shortest street - Whip-Ma-Whop-Ma-Gate.

By this stage of the year most, if not all, of our summer bird visitors will have left for warmer climates although only a couple of weeks ago, I heard the distinctive sound of a chiffchaff. This tiny bird, a relation of the willow warbler and very like it in appearance, arrives in April and remains with us until the middle of autumn.

A very few, however, will spend the winter in the South of England and I would expect that the little chap I heard will now be heading south, either to remain with us somewhere near the South Coast, or else to head overseas to Africa.

As our summer visitors depart, so the winter visitors arrive and among the first are flocks of redwings. At first sight, redwings might be mistaken for song thrushes because their size, colouring and speckled breasts are very similar but, as the redwing's name suggests, it has splashes of warm red feathers beneath its wings. These are readily visible when in flight. When the bird is at rest the redness appears as distinctive body marking at the front edge of each wing.

Another means of distinguishing the redwing from the thrush is that redwings almost always appear in flocks, while thrushes tend to be solitary. Redwings come from Northern Europe, one of the chief reasons being their constant search for food like berries and grubs. They head south, often flying overnight when their thin, hissing cries can be heard in the clear autumn skies, and they will settle in a sheltering thicket or small woodland where there is a plentiful supply of berries.

Their favourites are haws, mountain ash and yew; along the route of my morning walk is a small clump of mature hawthorns, now heavily laden with ripe red haws, and this is always a favourite halting place for flocks of redwings.

Not far behind the redwings will be that other incoming member of the thrush family, the fieldfare, which also joins us for the winter. This is similar to our song thrush too, if a little larger, and it has the familiar speckled breast and brown back, but this bird has a distinctive grey head and grey rump with a black tail. It arrives from the north in large and noisy flocks and, like the redwing, will seek out heavy crops of berries upon which it feeds voraciously.

It will also take things like centipedes, spiders and grubs, and can often be seen moving around on foot in the fields, always seeking food.

Both the redwing and the fieldfare will cheerfully mingle with flocks of other birds while feeding and at times it is difficult to determine precisely which bird one is observing. If they feed together on the ground in large flocks, it is quite likely other members of the thrush family will join them, like song thrushes and blackbirds and there may even be other species of ground feeding birds too.

In the winter, various species of bird tend to gather in flocks because, quite literally, there is safety in numbers. It helps them find food and deter predators.

Both the redwing and fieldfare will remain in this country until the spring and some will linger long enough to nest and raise a brood, usually in the North of Scotland, before returning to Scandinavia. There is no doubt they add a splash of colour and interest to our bird life during the winter months as they help to swell the number and variety of thrushes in our countryside.

We may see song thrushes, mistle thrushes, fieldfares, redwings, blackbirds, ring ouzels and even robins, all members of our great family of thrushes.

There always an interest in ghost stories and I have come across one linked to the Rokeby area near Barnard Castle. To the south of the River Tees, not far from the Meeting of the Waters where the River Greta enters the Tees, there stands an old pele tower called Mortham Tower. It dates from the fifteenth century and once served as a border fortress.

The stairs inside this old tower are said to be the scene of the murder of a local woman some centuries ago, although some sources suggest she was killed in the glen below the tower.

For a long time, however, it was believed that rust-coloured marks on the steps were the remains of her blood, and her ghost later became known as the Mortham Dobby.

Her ghost was said to be trapped under the stones of a nearby bridge known as Dairy Bridge which crosses the River Greta just before it enters the Tees. The ghost appeared as a headless lady clad in floating white silk which trailed behind her, and it was said her spirit had been encased in the stones by some ecclesiastical power, presumably because she had committed a grievous sin or crime.

I do not know the full story of the lady in question, her name, the nature of her crime or the form of her death, but the story says her spirit was released when the old bridge was partially destroyed by floodwater. The hauntings ceased at that point.

Curiously enough, there is another reference to a water nymph in that locality. I have very scant details but I believe her name was Elania and there is a hint that she might been sacrificially killed as an offering to a local river. I wonder if there is any ancient link between these two yarns?

This is not the only such yarn associated with Teesdale. In the rising ridge of hills which separate Teesdale from Weardale, known to some in the past as the Great Limestone, there was a cave which became known as the Teesdale Cave. It was not upon the banks of the Tees, but deep in the fells about a mile from Ettersgill Beck. It had other names too, including the Fairy Hole and Hobtrush Hole, and I believe the entrance was eventually blocked or at least obstructed by the construction of a lime kiln.

It was inevitable that local people of the past would be somewhat frightened of this place because it was supposedly the haunt of fairies or evil spirits and although initial searches of the interior, in the latter part of the nineteenth century, revealed nothing more sinister than a few sheep's bones, a human skeleton was eventually uncovered. The skull was some distance from the other bones, having been jammed into a fissure in the rocks while the rest of the skeleton was hidden beneath several feet of rubble and soil.

Subsequent examination of the remains showed the bones to be female and rather small. The head bore marks which were never positively identified but which may have been the result of animals gnawing the remains, and experts of the time decided these were the remains of a cave-dwelling woman.

The cave also contained the bones of more than 30 types of animal including wolves, as well as many species of bird, clearly showing it had provided shelter over countless centuries.

I very much doubt, however, that the lady of the Teesdale Cave has any links with the Mortham Dobby, only a few miles downstream.