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 …
Tag: mammal
“Weasely”. Adjective. To be sneaky, devious, untrustworthy, promiscuous. Let’s face it. weasels have a bad reputation. The sneaker and stealer, they have been accused of being witches’ familiars and carrying the souls of the dead. Shakespeare spoke of ‘weasel words’. In more modern culture, ‘the Weasel’ is a child-killer, a villain in the DC Suicide squad film franchise. But I side more with Harry Potter, which made the Weasley family the heroes of the hour. Because these small mammals are …
There are moments in nature-watching when the world seems to contract around you. Your pulse raises, and your hands start to shake. Your vision sharpens, as you focus intently on what’s in front of you and lose awareness of everything else. And if that sounds a lot like falling in love, it’s because it is. I’ve been following a family of otters on some local lakes for several years now. We have this on-off love affair: sometimes when I …
Regular readers of my blog will know that I love hares. The rabbit’s bigger. scrawnier cousin, hares are easily recognised by their large, black-tipped ears. I think the reason I like them so much is that hares are tough. Rabbits dig burrows to shelter in: hares scrape a shallow depression in the ground (called a “form”) and then just sit there and take it. Blizzards, torrential downpours, heatwaves – the hare is exposed to it all. Brown hare Now hares …
Sometimes I set out to see things, and sometimes things just turn up. Today was a bit of both. The thing I’d set out to see was a Garganey. A what? A Garganey. Which despite sounding like something you’d do at the dentist is actually a type of duck. We’re all familiar with the ubiquitous mallard, a bird that doesn’t get the credit it deserves for its brilliant, iridescent colouring simply because it is so well-known. But Britain has (whisper …
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