I’ve renamed this annual round-up as ‘Encounter of the year’ because my emphasis these days is less about photography and more about appreciating the plants, birds and animals that Britain has for what they are. There were times in 2024 when I thought my year would be a blank sheet of paper. It could so easily be called the ‘year with no summer’, or perhaps the ‘year with too much weather’. I have a garden filled with nectar-bearing flowers, but …
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First off, a shout out to the English teacher who made me learn the word “onomatopoeic” at school because I’m about to use it in a real sentence – for only the second time in 62 years. Ready? Here goes: We all know about the cuckoo, whose onomatopoeic name derives from its well-known call. Interestingly, the cuckoo only ‘cuckoos’ here, in Britain. It’s a mating call, and the bird doesn’t use it for the rest of its year in Africa. …
Although you might not realise it from the weather, it’s late Spring, almost Summer. That makes it time for all of the new life that is entering our world to make itself seen. It’s also that time when parent creatures are driven frantic by the need to deliver food to growing families. The parents of this pair of little grebe chicks were in constant motion, finding insects and even small fish to feed to their pair. The effort involved …
There is a lot to be said for autumn. Indeed, I told someone recently that I couln’t live a country without seasons, for all the problems that they sometimes bring. Weather is like music: if you only ever heard one note, it would get incredibly boring. The dance of the seasons as they drift into each other is part of what makes life interesting. Mind you, standing in the freezing cold looking for something that isn’t there often takes the …
I was listening to BBC Radio 4 last week. It was reporting on the Poole Harbour oil spill. It seems that the mixture of oil and water from that spill now risks running into Studland Bay, the most globally-important breeding area for spiny seahorses. The what? I know. It surprised me, too. I’m a naturalist and I take an active interest in all British wildlife, and even so I was only vaguely aware that seahorses live in Britain. I’ve watched …
The news in the Guardian recently that beavers are to be released in Ealing represents the ultimate comeback for a species once hunted to extinction in England. Possessor of a fine, waterproof fur and a pair of gland-like sacs near the anus which produced a substance, ‘castoreum’, used in perfumes and – wait for it – vanilla flavouring, the beaver was considered better off dead than alive, a view endorsed – and sometimes still endorsed – by farmers whose fields …
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