I’m not a particularly religious person, but I do to try to keep my promises. So when many years ago I promised to keep an eye on the tiny baby who was my God-daughter, I got lucky. Because it turns out that, now a grown woman, she’s as nutty about nature as I am. So a trip to Staffordshire to see her was a doubly welcome event. I got to spend some precious time with her, and we spent it …
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It was, to put it mildly, not the most promising start to a day’s nature-hunting. It was the night the clocks went back, and they seemed to go back to the times of Noah. The rain overnight and into the late morning had been biblical, so thick and dense that it seemed like fog, erasing the view more than a few feet in front. I set off when it slackened slightly with every expectation of returning home, and nearly did …
I took a very difficult decision today. There’s hoopoe, a rare bird that I’ve always wanted to see, showing well in Warwickshire. People have been posting stunning photos of it. I’m free today, and I have both the time and money to go and see it. But I’m not going. The decision is agonising, but it’s the right one. Because I can’t sit here and moan about the lack of political action at COP26, I can’t feel helpless and hopeless …
I am standing in a meadow, far from the noise of traffic and people, and in the breeze the tall willows that border the field flicker and clatter their leaves for me, the sound of a distant waterfall where there is no water. Two branches of beech, grown too closely together, bang an erratic accompaniment to the steady bagpipe drone of hoverflies visiting the early blackberries. The soft heads of the grasses, the timothy and Yorkshire fog, whisper to each …
Greenham common, Berkshire. I am standing in a thousand acres of a habitat that is rarer than rainforest. To my left and right, as far as the eye can see, it is a green carpet of rough grass awash with colour – the mauve of bell heather and the delicate pink of ling, stands of bramble heavy with berries but still flowering white and pink, and impenetrable swathes of gorse. The flowers are long gone from the common gorse, but …
I watch as two invaders to our shores play a deadly game It is one of those September afternoons that you always hope for: a bright, warm sun traversing low in a sky of faded blue, adorned with suds of grey-white cloud, and a gusting breeze. A narrow path leads me between stands of bramble to an open area of long grass, and almost at once I see it, low down between the stems. It is hard to miss. It …
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