Our (almost) daily walk around our local lake produced a variety of sights today. The blackthorn blossom has come and even starts to be going, as drifts of small white petals start to accumulate beneath the bushes which are coated in stem-bending swatches of blooms in what paint manufacturers would call “white with a hint of pink”. The nettles have suddenly erupted, small serrated leaves on stalks already five inches high. In the woodland, the long beard-shaped leaves of arum …
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The word is out. Not from the snowdrops, who have been peeking up from the verges and in clusters around the base of the trees in the local park. They are rugged hardy survivors and harbinger nothing more than the turn of the year. But today the blackthorn is in flower. Not everywhere, just in one sheltered copse in the small woodland that straddles the stream. The wrens woke me this morning with a different call. They have returned to …
I was woken at 4:30 a.m., which was more than a little annoying as I’d only gone to bed at 3 a.m. I’m naturally a night owl rather than a morning person, finding that my brain seems to fizz more with ideas when the stresses of the day have ebbed away. I’d spent a few hours before going to bed beating the bounds of my small garden, making sure that everything which could fly couldn’t. I put a large lump …
glossy ibis in Somerset Glossy Ibis The glossy Ibis is another bird that seems to be travelling faster than headline writers and website producers do. It’s undoubtedly a rarity on these shores, a bird more normally associated with Africa than dreary old England. In fact the bird can be seen on every continent except Antarctica, but we tend to think of it (as I’ve seen it) clustered around lakes in the subtropical regions. Yet here was a glossy ibis, comfortably …
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 …
For over a year now, I have been searching for a particular dragonfly. Irritatingly, its name – the “common hawker” -suggests it is easily found, but that couldn’t be further from the truth,and it’s actually quite scarce in the south of the UK. It’s a lover of pools which have acidic water, the kind that you find in pine forests and peat bogs, and those are in short supply near where I live. So I have travelled hundreds of miles …
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