Peat extraction – far too little and far too late

The white-faced darter dragonfly

Ahhh, 2010! That was a classic year. Do you remember it? David Cameron and Nick Clegg formed the coalition Government. The Icelandic volcano Eyjafjallajökull blew and grounded flight across Europe with clouds of ash. Spoonbills bred in Britain for the first time in three centuries. And in December that year, the coalition Government finally introduced a scheme to end the use of peat in domestic gardens by 2020. It was a voluntary scheme, relying on the industry to get its

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In the land of dragons, a new contender

male lesser emperor dragonfly

I recently returned from Scotland, having fulfilled a five-year quest to photograph all of Britain’s native breeding butterflies, dragonflies and damselflies. Despite some truly atrocious weather I brought back the precious final pictures of the elusive northern species – the northern damselfly, the northern emerald dragonfly and the azure hawker dragonfly. I also brought back a bad case of Covid-19, which, being a generous type, I promptly gave to my wife. As you can imagine, nipping off for a private

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A day out with dinosaurs

male emperor dragonfly eating

#30 days wild is an initiative run by the wildlife trusts to get all of us, especially our children out into nature. Why not give it a go?  For Friday’s #30dayswild, I went to the seaside.  It’s a good place to cool off on a really hot day, and a brilliant way to explore nature – searching rockpools for small crabs, and if you’re lucky, seeing some of those small, almost transparent, fish that hide amongst the waves as they

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It’s the small details that matter

Brilliant Emerald dragonfly

I fulfilled a small ambition yesterday. I have for some time tried to find and photograph the Brilliant Emerald dragonfly. It ‘s a Ronseal insect, doing exactly what it says on the tin: it is brilliantly emerald. So, since the weather has finally graced us with something other than rain, I thought I’d give it another go. It’s an acid pool lover, so if you want to see it your options are limited to Scotland, or to a cluster of

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The last wings of Autumn

common hawkers mating

A few weeks ago I posted (“A case of premature exclamation”) about another failure in my years-long search for the Common Hawker dragonfly.  I have driven many hundreds of miles and devoted a great many hours to the search and come up empty handed. But last week my wife and I went for a short week’s break to Northumberland, in the lands right next to the Scottish border. It’s a place we have both wanted to visit for some time,

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