I spend a lot of time looking for wildlife. It’s a sad commentary on the state of Britain’s depleted nature that I have to go searching for it. Species common in my grandparent’s day have nowadays become an exciting find. But occasionally, just occasionally, the nature comes to you, as happened on a trip to Dorest’s Studland beach recently. I love Studland. The miles of white sand and clear swimming waters make a happy place for my wife, and the …
Category: behaviour
The red-breasted merganser is something of a boogie bird for me. One of those species that I’ve tried to see, but only glimpsed. Which is a shame, because it’s a fascinating creature. To begin with, there is something about its name: ‘Merganser’. I have no idea why, but to me it feels like something out of Tolkien, or RR Martin, a creature of fable, the kind illustrated in medieval bestiaries by assembling parts of different animals and topping them with …
I was at the Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust’s Slimbridge reserve recently. It was near high tide on the river Severn, and the whole landscape (which had been bone-dry in the summer) was saturated from torrential rain over several days. As a result, the fields of the reserve are teeming with wildlife. Imagine those films you’ve seen on the BBC of the plains of Africa, full of wildebeest. Now turn them into vast, uncountable numbers of birds. Sitting in one of …
It is definitely supposed to be winter. Christmas is only just past. A couple of years back we were knee-deep in snow on this same week. But the current high temperatures here in the South of the UK mean that some of our wildlife thinks that spring is on the way. And that can cause some serious problems if the predicted cold snap arrives. I recently visited Salisbury Plain, in Wiltshire. You’ve probably heard of it as a military training …
Well, it was nice while it lasted, but Summer has definitely gone now, and the perennial challenge of entertaining bored children on a wet weekend has returned. But what if I said you could have an exciting day out with them that costs nothing? And how much better would that get if I said that you could do some science – some actual, honest-to-goodness science – while you were at it? Well, you can. October 24th-30th is National Mammal …
I am walking on a carpet of freshly-fallen brown leaves that crunch beneath my feet. Welcome to… summer in Southwest England. As the Southwest of the UK starts to feel the bite of the drought already affecting the Southeast, the trees are responding. Unable to support the loss of moisture that comes from their single, long daily breath, they are discarding some of their leaves and retreating, reducing themselves in the hope of surviving until moisture returns. The …
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