It’s National Mammal Week, and with the latest David Attenborough series “Mammals” showing us just how diverse a group of creatures these are, who wouldn’t want to take a moment to celebrate them? Britain has a healthy range of mammals, occupying all spaces from our seas to our mountaintops. Regular readers will know that I have a deep love of hares, those long-eared, long-footed super-sized rabbits who sit out in the countryside and take whatever the weather throws at them …
Category: mammals
Recently,I stood next to a small patch of scrubby grassland. Roughly triangular in shape, bounded on each side by footpaths worn by countless walkers boots, it measured perhaps ten feet across with the rotting remains of a small tree, now reduced to just a few moss-covered logs in the the middle. Anyone, including me, would have glanced at it quickly, seen a tangle of leaflitter and nettles and passed by. But yesterday I was looking for a bee. I’m trying …
The star-gazing hare said to bring good luck. The Romans’ and Greeks’ sacred hare. The Cornish white hare believed to warn of coming storms. Across the globe, the brown hare has long been seen as something special to humans, more spirit or ghost than just an animal. It’s Spring, that traditional time for the ‘Mad March Hare’. Normally leading fairly independent, solitary lives, brown hares come together at the start of the breeding season in Spring, to court and mate. …
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 …
Most wildlife tales these days are grim. All of Britain’s wildlife is declining, and much of it is vanishing quickly. Most naturalists I meet border on clinically depressed. But just occasionally you come across something in the natural world where the only word you can use is “joy”. Channonry point is a spot on the coast of Scotland’s Moray Firth, just a hair North of Inverness, and it is probably the best place in Britain to watch dolphins. Bottlenose dolphins …
We’re all familiar with that beloved British icon, our native red squirrel, now sadly endangered. We’re also very familiar with its cousin, the grey squirrel, which is largely responsible for the red squirrel’s downfall. Greys are a North American animal, introduced as an ornamental species in English country estates in the 1820s. They have since taken the country by storm and now vastly outnumber our red squirrels. They carry a disease, squirrelpox, which our reds are susceptible to, and are …
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