Blog Posts

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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The perfection of silence

female barn owl

It felt like a church service. A small group of a dozen people, strung out along a length of drystone wall, staring at a field. At first, there was talk. Hushed, low tones, respectful. The late afternoon sun came and went behind a screen of clouds, and on this mid-April day, and coats were zipped and unzipped as the temperature went from warm to cool and back again. From a small stand of hawthorns, birdsong trickled out – a charm

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Shift change has begun

Garganey duck

It took me a  while to realise it, but it’s not just animals and plants that breathe. Countries do, too. For people, there are the annual holiday periods, when they jet off on holidays or travel the country to reunite with loved ones, vast flows of humanity moving around, all at the same time, and the majority for some reason settling on the M5. But for our birdlife, there are the spring and autumn migrations. Those areas far to the

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The question that links seahorses to Chairman Mao

seahorse, St. Lucia

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

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Whatever happened to polluter pays?

raw sewage rising from a flooded drain

I try hard not to get political in my blog posts. I’m a floating voter (perhaps more so now than ever, given how much rain has fallen overnight!) so I don’t have a strong allegiance to any party. I call things as I see them. It’s now been raining for 24 hours with almost no break. Using the highly scientific empty-bucket-outside-the-back-door method, I think we’ve had about two inches (50mm) of rain. It’s raining as I write this. And I

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