Category: Uncategorised

Today I went to Greenham Common, the former Cold War airbase that was the subject of much controversy in the 1990s when US forces stored nuclear-tipped cruise missiles there. The weapons have long since gone, and after the US withdrew, the base was returned to nature. Where once giant bombers thundered down concrete runways, rare gorse heathland now flourishes, Linnets and Dartford Warblers sing, Adders and Common Lizards bask, and one particular butterfly, the Grayling (no relation to the fish) …

It was a rainy day, and God’s kids were bored.  God had a lot of work to see to, so he rooted around the house to see what he could find, and came up with a packet of cocktail sticks, a tube of glue  and a watercolour paint set he had left over from working on the rainbow. He told his kids to entertain themselves and see what they could come up with he was working. And that, I am …

I recently did a three-hour round trip in order to photograph a specific damselfly – the Southern Damselfly. It’s nothing special to look at (below), and at a first glance you could mistake it for one of several other species.  But it is a distinct species, and to me that lent it a value that it might not otherwise have. I was lucky to find it so close to my home – the next nearest known location is an eight-hour …

Evolution is often seen as a meaningful process. As Simon Barnes noted in his book “Ten Million Aliens”, Mankind is often regarded as being the pinnacle of evolution of the ape family, as if evolution has been constantly working hard to achieve this level of perfection. It’s nonsense of course – you only have to look at certain politicians to see that Mankind has some way to go in evolutionary terms. But it’s also a mistake to think that evolution …

One of the joys the study of the natural world brings is that there’s always a new fact waiting to be learned. I thought a knew quite a lot about the large blue butterfly. I knew that it was extinct in the UK. I know that it was reintroduced. I know that its caterpillars rely on a specific species of myrnica red ant, which take the caterpillar into their nest and feed it. They do so because  the caterpillar mimics …

This is Colin. He is probably the UK’s (and perhaps the world’s) most famous Cuckoo. He lives on Thursely Common, in Surrey. But only some of the time Cuckoos like to travel. With enviable commonsense, Cuckoos spend the British winter far from our shores, in Central Africa, where they pass the time eating. Interestingly, one thing they don’t do in Africa, is say “Cuckoo”. The call so familiar to us as a harbinger of Spring  is a mating call, and …