Blog
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Nature Notes
Fallow and Chestnuts. Such still, quiet weather; the sky is an oatmeal-grey. Two muntjac are having a bark-off at either end of the wood. Rhythmic barks at different pitches, each delivered six seconds apart, on a count of three after the last one, in a game of aural tennis. But here, exiting the middle of […]
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Nature Notes
A Confusion of Raptors. I am listening hard in the wind that comes off the downs; trying to silence the rustle of my ill-chosen coat with shallow breathing, directing cupped hands held behind my ears to the sky. Five woodlark are singing over Windmill Field. Still here, pouring their melancholy, heartbreaker alleluias over the earth. […]
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Nature Notes
Chalk Hills & Woodlarks My son’s first cycle race recently, was up our 974ft Walbury Hill. More than 130 cyclists took on the time trial up our usually lonely down, powering up the incline between hill fort, scarp and its ‘moon field’ below. We were given sticks of coloured chalk to write competitors’ names on […]
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Nature Notes
Harvest Home. The last-but-one field on the Estate has been harvested. The straw lies in great wide windrows like yellow plaits across the stubble; all the gold of summer days laid out in thick, shining tresses. I get to ride up in the combine through the last of the oats, the lights and the sunset […]
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Nature Notes
Chalk for Gritstone. The high winds blowing through Swaledale and Wensleydale are rumbling and rough; a sharp contrast to the smoothed out, keening swish and wail over the downs of home. This wind rolls gritstone around, buffing limestone scars and the corners of our thick-walled farmhouse at Skellgill. The sheep tuck in to line the […]
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Nature Notes
On Watership Down. Books, words and wildlife have always gone hand in hand for me; from the small brown Observer’s Book of Birds Grandad gifted me, and the pocket money Punchbowl Farm books I discovered in my local Oxfam shop, to The Wind in the Willows that mapped the chalkstream Moors of Pangbourne for me, […]
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Nature Notes
A Midsummer Night’s Trespass. Midsummer. And after a day of heavy showers, all is glistening. The long grass is a heathered haze of flowering Yorkshire fog. My boots and jeans are already soaked through and the grass pollen has made lichen-green smears across my knees. There is a certain euphoria felt, running out into a […]