Odd things, knees, when you think about it. At some point in evolutionary history, nature decided that instead of walking on a single, rigid stick, life would be better if we broke the stick in the middle and made it floppy, and then had to have a complicated system of muscle and tendons and ligaments to make it all go straight again. Why? If a straight leg was too long, surely the answer was just to make it shorter. But …
Category: Birds
I hope that I’m someone who never takes the natural world for granted, but a recent experience underlined its importance for me. I’ve been silent on my blog for quite a while. Partly due to working on my latest book, but mainly due to an accident. But while I’m fine now, twelve hours in A&E, and some emergency surgery left me stuck in a chair for several weeks recuperating, with only the TV and a narrow view of my garden …
At this time of year, when the days are short and gloomy, I like to look back at the encounters I’ve had during the year and try and choose my favourite image. Every year, it gets harder. Do I choose the best photo, or the rarest or most unusual species? Or the picture that was the hardest to get? In the end, I always choose the image that brings me an emotion, an image where I’ve felt elated or tearful …
There are species that appear… I don’t know. Slightly smug, perhaps? The ones that are good-looking and know it. Take the Arctic tern. Exquisitely-designed global wanderer, it has the sleek, graceful lines and curves of a supermodel. It’s a creature that knows you’ll hang its picture on your wall. Then there are those creatures, no less superbly designed, who leave you wondering what accident befell them when they were born. The slug. The lumpfish. Those strange species that only a …
It felt like a church service. A small group of a dozen people, strung out along a length of drystone wall, staring at a field. At first, there was talk. Hushed, low tones, respectful. The late afternoon sun came and went behind a screen of clouds, and on this mid-April day, and coats were zipped and unzipped as the temperature went from warm to cool and back again. From a small stand of hawthorns, birdsong trickled out – a charm …
It took me a while to realise it, but it’s not just animals and plants that breathe. Countries do, too. For people, there are the annual holiday periods, when they jet off on holidays or travel the country to reunite with loved ones, vast flows of humanity moving around, all at the same time, and the majority for some reason settling on the M5. But for our birdlife, there are the spring and autumn migrations. Those areas far to the …
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