Tag: Nature writing
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A Sparrowhawk, BTO News, 1,000 Shades of Green and the royal family and slavery again
The image above is from Meyer (Henry Leonard). Illustrations of British Birds, c.1835-1844. It seems the name changed to just a single word relatively recently. A male Sparrowhawk in the garden yesterday. I caught only a fleeting glimpse as usual but I am confident in my identification. It came from the direction of the bird…
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The Devil’s Garden
The Devil’s Garden: The World’s Most Sinister Plants and Fungi, Bloomsbury Wildlife, 2026, by Peter Marren. See here for one of his contributions to British Wildlife magazine: A graduation, garden wildlife, British Wildlife Magazine and a tribute to Willmie Jalius – Animal Wild The author is my type of gardener – let things be and…
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Alice’s Meadow, Thunderstone, Edward Abbey, Jim Dodge
Above is one of John Tenniel’s illustrations of Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There. “For some minutes Alice stood without speaking, looking out in all directions over the country—and a most curious country it was. There were a number of tiny little brooks running straight across it from side to side,…
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Binsey Poplars, Collared Doves, Washing Machine Politics and Defensive Defecation
The Fieldfare image above is from Meyer (Henry Leonard). Illustrations of British Birds, c.1835-1844. Each day, which is every day, when I see my ruined Lime Tree, I feel guilty and apologetic (I do actually silently apologise), even though the butchery was carried out, in my garden, without my permission and in my absence. I…
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Magpies, Gulls, Sheep, animals and the media
Magpies will stop stealing from bird feeders if you place one simple object in the garden This piece from the Daily Express is just the kind of lazy, sensationalist, clickbait journalism about wildlife that drives me up the wall. If it’s not corvids, it’s Squirrels, Red Kites, Foxes, Gulls, Adders or Ragwort being demonised. It…
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Pippa’s Ugly Car Park, Bearskin Caps and a Stag Beetle
A.A. Gill, old age, the Space Race I am reading A. A. Gill’s A.A. Gill Is Further Away helping with enquiries, and I will come back to it here, meanwhile the scintillating prose, the breadth of knowledge and subject matter enthral me. I find myself ensnared and arrested by brilliant observations of the mundane, for…
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Water, Big Pharma, and Airplane and Grouse Shooting industry scandals; British Wildlife Magazine
Water I feel have written more than sufficient about our pollution for profit water companies and Thames Water in particular, but it beggars belief that even now there is a fresh scandal. Thames Water’s £1m payout to finance chief is ‘unacceptable’, says government department | Thames Water | The Guardian Thames Water and others are…
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Farming, factory farming, salmon farming and British Wildlife magazine
I thought the local Swifts might have left by now but I was transfixed by about thirty of them high in the sky yesterday evening when I stepped outside. The Jackdaws are very much back although in smaller numbers, so are half a dozen Blue Tits (where have they been meanwhile?) and I can still…
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Dogs, Badgers, Starfish, Parrots and the RSPB
I have updated the most recent of my posts complaining about how some people allow their dogs to behave in pubs to include a list of some of the pathogens which can easily be transferred to humans. It is pretty shocking – there are far more than I realised and the effects can be very…
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The Guga hunt, the mutilation of a tree, farmyards and rights of way, A.A. Gill on parenthood, a crossword, that tv show, a bracelet and Dr Dolittle
Guga hunt Firstly some seriously good news, the Guga hunt licence for next year has not been granted. As a spokesperson for Protect the Wild says: “A major victory for compassion, for science and for common sense.” BBC Evening News Covers Guga Hunt Victory! This will be the first time in perhaps 400 years that…
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Gannets, Dogs, Chris Packham, Bill Oddie, Sperm Whales, A.A. Gill, Lawyers for Animals and a couple of life’s irritations
This photograph of a Gannet was taken in Cardigan Bay a few years ago and was used in Animal Wild. See below for updates on the Guga hunt. Dogs and their ‘owners’ Firstly though, dog ‘owners’ again. It’s always the owners. I have written previously about one in particular. Inbreeding can be an unfortunate accident…
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Lost rainforests
This wonderful display of Globe Thistles and Queen Anne’s Lace was a complete surprise in the garden this morning. I think they make a great combination and are much more splendid and interesting than any number of fancy cultivars. A lot has been happening. I remained as oblivious as I could to the football. Andy…
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A graduation, garden wildlife, British Wildlife Magazine and a tribute to Willmie Jalius
This was a beautiful Father’s Day gift from one of my daughters. The flowers are local to Liverpool where she has been at university. This week we attended her graduation at the beautiful home of the Liverpool Philharmonic, which was wonderful, full of pomp and ceremony, provoking that mix of tears and deep parental pride.…
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Wildlife in South Devon Days 3 and 4
Appealing to my enjoyment of words and wordplay, I have had look into some of the abbreviations and nicknames used by serious ornithologists and there’s a list of some of them here, some more pleasing than others. Birdwatching, Birding & Bird Travel, Birdfood & Binoculars Bird Nicknames & Abbreviations – Fat Birder In my head…
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Wildlife in South Devon Day 2, part II
Our next stop was the RSPB’s Labrador Bay Nature reserve on the clifftops. As hoped we were treated to Cirl Buntings, male and female (another first for me), many interesting plants with weird and wonderful names and spectacular views. Also we heard Skylarks and a Greenfinch. Rita and I saw a butterfly not seen elsewhere…
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Wildlife in South Devon Day 2, part I
Dolphins have been especially close to my heart for years for all sorts of reasons, including personal ones, and not least because of their sheer grace and power. So the boat trip in the hope of seeing even just one was always going to be the highlight of the trip for me. Firstly though a…
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Wildlife in South Devon Day I
This is my fourth trip with Wildlife Worldwide and they have all been terrific and very different from one another. Our leader was Mike Dilger, perhaps best known for his appearances on The One Show, also an author and expert on birds, dragonflies, damselflies and more, especially plants – his degree was in botany. I…
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A Deer Sanctuary, Geezer Butler and the Ridglan Beagles, the Badger Cull, Fire Kites
I posted this in December last year: Finally news from my favourite animal rescue, Hillside Animal Sanctuary in Norfolk (passim). Ten acres of unprotected woodland were up for sale by auction nearby and could have been purchased by developers. Hillside drew deeply on their reserve funds and stepped in. The land will be fenced to…
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Lime Quarry
My membership of the local wildlife group is lapsed but they kindly allowed me to join them yesterday on a visit to a disused lime quarry, now a chalk grassland nature reserve. I will be renewing my membership – it was a glorious and rewarding afternoon. The nearby cottages are the Lime Kiln Cottages and…
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Beauty of the Beasts
Beauty of the Beasts, rethinking nature’s least loved animals by Jo Wimpenny, Bloomsbury Wildlife, 2026. The author has an easy, down to earth style which makes this fascinating and thought-provoking book a real pleasure. She is right in her preface I think to say that many of us who care about wildlife live in something…
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Birds, Greenpeace, Norfolk Wildlife Trust and Snoopy
Before moving on to more pleasant matters, a quick follow-up on yesterday’s post about the Green Party, Zack Polanski and the right-wing media’s traducing of him. I have since come across two more disgraceful interviews, one by Mandelson’s friend Trevor Phillips and one by Laura Kuenssberg. Far worse than either is the cartoon which appeared…
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Secret Africa and wildlife and other animal news
A delightful surprise visitor to the garden yesterday, a female Beautiful Demoiselle. She had moved on by the time I came back with my camera but this is a male I photographed in April 2024. A second wolf pack has been euthanised whilst we wait for the enquiry into the killing of the pack in…
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Holly Blues, SSSIs and Birdwatch
I’ve been seeing quite a number of tiny blue butterflies in the garden and around the village. They are most likely Holly Blues, also or previously known as Wood Blues, Azure Blues or Blue Speckt Butterflies with Black Tips. Only the females have black borders to their wings. They are apparently fairly common in the…
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Beastly Britain, The Assembly tv show, inbred puppies, racial hatred, textile ‘recycling’, George Takei, mobile phones in galleries, business meetings, Artemis II and plenty of animal news
Beastly Britain Newts I have now finished Beastly Britain; an animal history, Yale University Press, 2025, by Karen R. Jones. There was much for me to learn from the chapter on newts, not least the etymology of their name from Old English efte or ewte, which explains why we refer to the young as efts. They…
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Various birds, wolves, maths and NASA
Dunnocks Bird of the day is the Dunnock. There are always at least two in the garden. I have said many times how underrated their complex and beautiful plumage is. I cannot imagine why both of the garden bird books (both publications from the British Trust for Ornithology) I have been drawing from of late…
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Hedgehogs, Wolves, Dogs, Foxes and Bruce Springsteen
Wolves Firstly, a couple of follow-ups. I wrote recently about the wolves at Wildwood: Still on the subject of canines, the five wolves kept at Wildwood Discovery Park in Kent have been killed since they had begun to attack and wound each other. I expect they were driven mad by their captivity. The first two…
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Mink, dogs, wolves and birds
Lovely to see the Marsh Marigolds, above, making their annual appearance. Mink The Hunt Saboteurs remind us that the mink hunting season is about to begin: Mink Hunting season due to begin. If the population does need controlling in some form, which is arguable, it should not be done like this – with dogs, drainage…
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Bird matters, birds matter and other wildlife
My bird of the day is the Blackbird. As well as the two books mentioned in earlier posts, I am drawing on the charming book above, Bird Lore, the Myths, Magic and Folklore of Birds, Quadrille, 2025, by Sally Coulthard, which has delightful illustrations by Clover Robin. It turns out that the “calling birds” in…
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British Wildlife magazine part I; lawyers for animals and the environment
The latest British Wildlife magazine has come through the letterbox too, Volume 27, Number 4, February 2026. By coincidence in terms of the content of much of the rest of this post, it opens with Alexa Culver’s ‘A confluence of crises in English nature laws’. The Bio Diversity Net Gain legislation of 2024 was far…
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Great Tits, Birdwatch Magazine, Tree Sparrows, Global Justice Now, Greyhound Racing and … Spring at last
After Wood Pigeons and Jackdaws, the first bird I saw today was a Great Tit. New to me from the garden bird books was the fact that the black chest stripe tapers off in the females but continues downwards and broadens in the males, for whom the width is a status symbol which attracts females…
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Seashells, Hippos, Cheetahs, the trouble with birdwatching, corrupt politicians and an amazing panorama
Seashells These shells were no longer wanted in my son’s room and so I have relocated them to the summerhouse which is getting rather cluttered with wildlife books, objects and art. I had forgotten we had them and cannot remember where they came from. They made me think of my good fortune in being involved…
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Badger sett survey February 2026
I would go so far as to say that our survey yesterday was joyful. Signs of spring abounded: snowdrops, daffodils, crocuses and birdlife (although not so much birdlife as one would wish). Best of all was to feel the sun on our skins after so long in grey, dreary wetness. Surpisingly the ground was mostly…
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British Wildlife Magazine December 2025
Volume 37 number 3 Tim King writes an update to a piece from almost twenty years ago about Yellow Meadow Ants, who are featured on the cover. They are fascinating biodiversity boosters. I have a quibble. Tim describes them as “ecosystem engineers”, going on to say that the term has been debased by some to…
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Crosswords, Rupert Brooke and Jeffrey Archer, AI, zoos in trouble, the Environmental Investigation on Whaling, news from the Hare Preservation Trust and Mark Kermode on ‘Melania’ the movie
Images in this post are from: Thorburn (Archibald). British Mammals. Two volumes. Longmans, Green & Co., 1920-1921. I have now finished Pretty girl in crimson rose (8), a memoir of love, exile and crosswords by Sandy Balfour and it has been a delight throughout. The last few chapters include examples of what might be called…
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More George Monbiot, Birdwatch
George Monbiot’s How Did We Get Into This Mess?: Politics, Equality, Nature, Verso, 2016, continues to shine. In ‘Civilisation is Boring’ his prose really takes flight, soars and sings. He quotes the pioneering conservationist Aldo Leopold: “One of the penalties of an ecological education is that one lives alone in a world of wounds ……
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Gordon Buchanan and Me; flea treatments for domestic animals; Peregrine Falcons, the illegal trade; George Monbiot
The image above is of a hand-coloured lithograph from Audubon’s Viviparous Quadrupeds of North America, 1845-1848. I have pretty strong preferences when it comes to tv wildlife presenters. Ones I like and respect include Chris Packham, Liz Bonnin, Hamza Yassin, David Lindo and Steve Backshall. I despise the fraudulent Bear Grylls and my aversion to…
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RSPB Magazine & BTO News
RSPB Winter/Spring 2026 Chief executive Beccy Speight enjoys the “gentle purring” of Turtle Doves in Italy and takes from it a call to action and Yellowhammers are on the rise at RSPB’s Hope Farm. In both cases a primary factor in downturns has been intensive agricultural practices leading to a decline in wildflower seeds on…
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Birdwatch, Thylacine extinction, Penguins in prison, HS2, Pheasants and Woodcock, Ticks
Above, a little celebration of snow in the garden. The other photos in this post are from a folder on my PC which I had forgotten and were taken in 2018. I used a trailcam a lot then and seem mostly to have recorded squirrels, but I had not remembered the visits of a Jay.…
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British Wildlife Magazine November 2025 and Labour’s animal welfare proposals
Volume 37 number 2 Cath Jeffs opens this issue asking whether European Wildcats might return to south-west England. They were declared functionally extinct in the UK in 2019 but there are ongoing efforts to restore a population in Scotland. They are a different species from Domestic Cats. They are larger, have thicker fur, a banded,…
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Empathy and gratitude; foxes, raptors, swans, cows, deer, legal matters and more
The Kennet & Avon Canal played a large role in my year and my enjoyment of the summer in particular. The photo above and two of those below were taken in the cold winter of 2010 when the canal partly froze over. Wildlife rescue in the face of wildlife persecution A World We No Longer…
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Thames Water, Open Cages, Foxhunting, Rachel Reeves, and more Wildlife
The image above and those that follow are from the beautiful setting for food and drink after a funeral we attended last week for the father of a friend, The Old Mill just outside Aldermaston. It was a powerfully moving Catholic service and although I am not religious I do rather like the High Church…
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Ben Elton; the ex-prince and the royal art collection; good and bad news for nature
I have recently finished Ben Elton’s autobiography and enjoyed it very much – he is at the very least always easy to read. He was at Manchester University not long before me and as students we adored The Young Ones. He has of course been extraordinarily prolific and I read several of his many novels…
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Egyptian Geese, Otters, British Wildlife and Keith Richards
Egyptian Geese The photo above was taken at Ranworth Broad in Norfolk in 2023, a lovely place with a floating visitor centre. They are strange looking birds and seem to be a classic example of a misnomer. I can’t remember where I saw this but they are not really geese, or as far as I…
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Sarcastic Fringehead
This crazy name came up in a short multiple choice quiz set by the £1m winner of Who Wants to be a Millionaire? It is, it turns out, a fish, so named for its highly aggressive, territorial behaviour. I suppose sarcasm can be a relatively gentle form of aggression but I still don’t really get…
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An oaken sett survey
Another adjectival word for oak trees is, delightfully, “quercine”. It’s an oak at the head of this post. For once I see no harm in revealing the location of our badger group’s planning and infrastructure related survey: Sandleford Park in Newbury. This has been hugely controversial since 2012. The original application was for 360 new…
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Bulls, foxes, auks
There is no particular reason for the bird pictures in this post other than as decoration but it was good to see the stunning Nuthatch and two Blue Tits on a feeder at the same time. The Sparrowhawk is still around – as usual I only saw her from the corner of my eye but…
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Ivy flowers, WordPress nags, a canal journalist, chuckwallahs, Wild Justice, planning, autumn leaves, penguins in prison, a butterfly healer, Hamza Yassin, Hitchens and Fry on the Catholic church, and first fungi of the year
I have often read that ivy is a superb food source for pollinators late in the year but never really witnessed it. But the ivy in the garden this year is absolutely bursting with flowers and literally abuzz with insect life. I think these are mostly hoverflies. There was a white-tailed bee too. I haven’t…
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Savernake Forest: fungi, lots of fungi and a Treecreeper
Savernake Forest, just outside Marlborough, Wiltshire, is privately owned and seems very well looked after for its wildlife, in spite of its being managed by Forestry England. The Marquess of Allesbury and his son the Earl of Cardigan are the owners. It has SSSI status for the diversity and in particular ancient oak trees and…
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Boris, Spider Webs, Country Music, Fungi and the Animal Cruelty Prism
Heathcote Williams’ book about Boris Johnson duly arrived. Rather than Boris Johnson: The Beast of Brexit – A Study in Depravity, 2019, which was what had attracted me, I have instead the earlier Brexit Boris, from Mayor to Nightmare, Public Reading Rooms, 2016. I tired of it pretty quickly – too much has already been…
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Tolkien and cars and Heathcote Williams, Badgers, Reggae, Cranes, Michael Palin in Venezuela, Eating Swans, Sparrows, Deer, a Butterfly, Elephants, Parakeets and Zack Polanski
Badger survey A good day on Sunday. Firstly a badger sett survey in the Arborfield area. We didn’t find a sett but there are definitely badgers about, as evidenced by hairs found on wire fencing (our ace finder of such things always dives down when he sees a push-through) and what was almost certainly a…
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Return to Farmoor, Ragwort, Slang, Starmer and Digital ID, RSPB Magazine
I much enjoyed my first visit to Farmoor Reservoir in Oxfordshire at the beginning of the year: Farmoor Reservoir – Animal Wild I planned to return and having acquired an electric bike in the interim much looked forward to cycling round, easily covering the distance so that I could be where the birds were. Thames…
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Elephants, Cane Toads and a Southern Oak Bush-cricket
I took the picture above on my first safari in Tanzania and it was almost the first of the trip and I think one of my best, not because of any skill with the camera but because of the way it depicts the profound and emotional relationship between the two elephants greeting each other with…
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Birdwatch magazine October 2025, Choughs, the Isle of Wight, hard drugs and the latest from Starmer
Issue 400 Birdwatch magazine celebrates 400 issues. As ever much of it is too twitchy for me, but the photos alone of the rare Red-flanked Bluetail, as on the cover, are worth the price of admission. I confess to having wanted to see a Chough for a long time though (a black corvid with strikingly…
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The Abyss
Firstly, another mention of Michael McCarthy’s Fergus the Silent, Youcaxton Publications, 2021. I wrote previously that “it’s a novel and the first fiction I’ve read for perhaps fifteen or twenty years. I have discovered that it is common to middle-aged men suddenly to stop reading fiction and it came to me out of the blue that…
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British Wildlife Magazine August 2025
Volume 36 number 8 It seems quite brave to put a ‘humble’, unglamorous fern on the cover, but I love ferns so it works for me. Specifically it’s a Rustyback Fern, Asplenium ceterach. This issue opens with the last of the Wilding for Conservation series, 26 articles, a reflective piece by Rob Fuller and Guy…
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Chimpanzees and Sparrowhawks and Dr Dolittle
Not my own photograph at the head of this post (all photos on this blog are mine unless stated otherwise). I watched this last night: Violent Chimpanzees That Attack Villages and Steal Children | Our World Some of it is hard to see. I’ve long felt that the trouble with Chimpanzees is that they are…
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Wasps
Wasps. The Astonishing Diversity of a Misunderstood Insect, by Eric R. Eaton, Princeton University Press, 2021. The author has worked as an entomologist for institutions including the Smithsonian and is the lead author of the Kaufman Field Guide to Insects of North America amongst other claims to fame. Who hasn’t been annoyed by wasps on…
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From the heart of Bath to the outskirts of Bristol; the Sparrowhawk; Fergus the Silent; Patrick Galbraith
The Bristol and Bath railway path was the first major project undertaken by Sustrans. It’s more or less flat of course and asphalt all the way. I didn’t feel the need to continue on into Bristol – this had already been my most urban bike ride this year by far – so I turned around…
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The Great Auk
The Great Auk, Its Extraordinary Life, Hideous Death and Mysterious Afterlife by Tim Birkenhead, Bloomsbury Sigma, 2025. I have already written about this book briefly when it was reviewed in British Wildlife magazine. Of at least two other books I have said that there’s a danger with those about a single species that they can…
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Phoenix Trail, a double rainbow, a Sparrowhawk in the garden and a bird murder raffle
The Phoenix Trail I parked just outside Princes Risborough and easily picked up the Phoenix Trail which runs on variably surfaced paths to Thame, about a fifteen mile round trip. It was very peaceful and runs through wooded sections and arable fields, with great views of the Chiltern Hills. It’s also a sculpture trail with…