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 …
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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 …
I never dreamt that ‘anal appendages’ would become a part of my life. I mean, who would? And yet somehow, they have become something I not only talk about, but carefully examine. When I started my long, slow love affair with the natural word, it was all about seeing and photographing living things that are easily accessible – things like great spotted woodpeckers, buzzards and bank voles. Over time, I developed good fieldcraft skills, and as I’ve done so I’ve …
One of the things I loved about the Harry Potter books was Harry’s invisibility cloak. I really liked the idea of being able to sit somewhere and have the world pass me me by without anyone or anything knowing that I was there. But while Harry’s cloak is fictional, the power of invisibility is all too real. Camouflage is a pattern which breaks up the shape and outline of something, making it harder to see. I use it myself quite …
I was at the Gloucestershire Wildlife Trust’s Coombe Hill reserve yesterday. It’s a top spot for Dragonflies, but unfortunately it seemed to lack the Whinchat I’d hoped to see – or at least, they weren’t anywhere near the bits of the reserve I was. I’d had a close view of a beautiful sedge warbler singing, watched as a spotted flycatcher fed its young in the branches of a downed tree, and watched a bevy of green sandpiper being ever so …
This last week I went on a trip to Cumbria, in search of “Britain’s only alpine butterfly”, the Mountain Ringlet. This small butterfly is adapted for the colder, harsher climates at altitude, having a hairy body and wings, and flies in tiny colonies at altitudes (in England) from 350m upwards. It can be remarkably hard to see because each colony flies only for a few days, the timing o which varies, and it only flies in still, sunny weather – …
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