Blog
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Nature Notes
Book Week and Elvers Book Week has sparked imaginations recently and although you’d be forgiven for wondering what that has to do with nature writing, books and wildlife go hand in hand for me. At Hungerford Primary School, I talked to the children about writing a book on otters, and asked them about their exciting […]
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Nature Notes
Polecat Alley On Midsummer Night, polecats are making merry in the field behind the house. They are hidden deep in the rape crop but there is no mistaking them: barks and growls rise to a hysterical yikkering, haunting whines and murderous wails. My daughter and three friends are sleeping in a tepee in the garden […]
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Nature Notes
Earth and Sett The vixen has moved her cubs, spreading them out into separate holes and chambers. They are growing up. She returns each night with food, calling from 100yds away along the down, tempting them out, building their confidence and independence. Around the earth, the foliage is crushed, flattened or worn away with their […]
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Nature Notes
The Hawk and the Blackbird The blackbirds sounded the alarm first, the high, thin, seeip, seeip, reminiscent of redwings in autumn, indicated an aerial predator along the lane towards home. By the time I reached the garden, the alarm had escalated to shrill, rising and falling screams and had been picked up by the ‘tsee […]
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Coming home through Saharan Dust
The air is heavy and strange, as if full of impending storm. The sky above is blue, but we see it through a filter of red-gold desert dust that turns it mauve-grey. On the common, a springlike warmth emanates from the ground; you can feel it on the palm of your hand held a foot […]