Our walk on Sunday morning at St. Ouens Pond is the perfect opportunity to see some of the wonderful bird and wildlife illustrations of Jersey Alumni Anna Le Moine Gray. They are on display in the National Trust Wetland Centre we will end the walk. Here Anna explains how she got involved in the project: Jonathan Horn, from the National Trust for Jersey, told me what he would like to see on a page dedicated to the only wetland of the west of the island. It was also going to be the place where the first Wetland Centre of the Channel Island was going to be built. I was also asked to paint almost seventy birds, residents or migrants to that pond, so that they could be shown on the information boards. These bird sketches became the centre piece of my page on La Mare au Seigneur (its real name). I decided to paint a landscape of the water and reeds – seen from the southern bird hide – all the way to L’Etacq, a distinctive feature. It shows the area as it might have looked like during the centuries of successive flooding and dryness of the land. I met the Seigneur of Saint Ouen, Philip Malet de Carteret, who kindly told me the story of his fief and the adventures of times past. The emblem of his family, a squirrel, is on my first illuminated initial, the ‘L’ of “La Mare au Seigneur’. The pond was owned by the Carterets in 1463. It was at that time (during the seven year war against the French) that Philippe de Carteret, whilst out fishing on his land, was saved from an ambush as his black horse managed to jump over a formidable ridge and died shortly after from exhaustion. The stallion was buried by the manor in homage to such a deed and his portrait still hangs proudly in the Great Hall. The colombier of St Ouen’s Manor – a royal privilege at the time it was built – is also pictured. I have surrounded the central painting with a frieze of animals and insects who coexist by the pond: birds of prey, waders, ducks, warblers, mice, reptiles, amphibians, insects, bats (please go to the end of this document for a full list). These are all extremely important for the harmony of nature in marshlands, a soft water ecosystem so close to the sea. One of the most beautiful species is in the capital ‘S’ of ‘Seigneur’, a black and yellow weaver spider, the wasp spider (Argiope bruennichi).
Posted on: Thu, 20 Mar 2014 10:24:47 +0000
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