Blog Posts

Unrestrained joy

Jumping for joy? Breaching dolphin

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

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Small and perfectly formed

The shrill carder bee

It was my brother’s birthday recently, and as he doesn’t drive, I took him on a trip to a place that would normally be hard for him to get to. RSPB Newport Wetlands sits, as its name suggests, on the South coast of Wales near Newport. It’s an extensive area of… well, wetlands, those places of reedbed and marsh that we dismiss as useless only if we don’t understand their importance. Trips to wetlands, especially on very windy days with

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What are grey and black and red all over?

black-coloured grey squirrel

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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2023: the silent summer

red-tailed bumblee.

It’s the thing that everyone is noticing but nobody is talking about. Where have all the bees gone? I have a small garden, full of bee-friendly flowers. Two years ago my plants had so many bees on them that the very air seemed to vibrate. Yesterday I spent three hours working in my garden. I saw four bees. Four. And it’s not just me.  Up and down the country people have been saying the same thing to me. Try it

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That fuzzy feeling

male sand lizard

I spend a lot of time looking for wildlife. It’s a sad commentary on the state of Britain’s depleted nature that I have to go searching for it. Species common in my grandparent’s day have nowadays become an exciting find. But occasionally, just occasionally, nature comes to you, as happened on a trip to Dorest’s Studland beach recently. I love Studland. The miles of white sand and clear swimming waters make a happy place for my wife, and the mature

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The weird and utterly wonderful

stone curlew

There are species that appear… I don’t know. Slightly smug, perhaps? The ones that are good-looking  and know it. Take the Arctic tern. Exquisitely-designed global wanderer, it has the sleek, graceful lines and curves of a supermodel. It’s a creature that knows you’ll hang its picture on your wall. Then there are those creatures, no less superbly designed, who leave you wondering what accident befell them when they were born. The slug. The lumpfish. Those strange species that only a

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