Nature Notes
-
Nature Notes
The Long Twilight. The domed hill is shedding chalk rivers of rain. Chains of bubbles slide past either side of the raised camber, as if there were otters beneath the slick, wet surface of this river-road. Yet, after another 12 hour deluge, the late evening is quiet and still. Blackbirds are piping alarms from the […]
-
Nature Notes
Nightjar Nights. On Greenham Common, the heat shimmers off the heathland, blurring the horizon, and the cows gather to stand in the pools. We seek the shade of the alder gullies that fold off the flat, gravel plateau like creases in a tablecloth. In the evening, my daughters and I walk on a smaller fragment […]
-
Nature Notes
Digger on the hill. We go out just before sunset on a glorious day where the sky is swimming-pool blue. A warm breeze provokes whitebeam leaves into light. It is not strong, but it is a portent of the weather to come and enough to turn the wind turbine on the far hill, so I […]
-
Nature Notes
Hill forts, islands & leavings. When we booked our recent holiday, reading out the description instigated a family fit of giggles. Our holiday destination nestled below a 298m hill and its Iron Age hill fort. It was the gateway to a National Park under official dark night skies and a historic, bloody battle was fought […]
-
Nature Notes
Eastwards: the Cheviots in Spring. Low, red-roofed Homildon Cottage forms the gatepost to Northumberland National Park and St Cuthbert’s Way all the way to Lindisfarne. It nestles below historic Humbleton Hill (the cottage keeps the older name) and its garden gives way to bilberry, heather and the unfurling fiddleheads of bracken. There are lapwings nesting […]
-
Nature Notes
Cherry Dew. The scent of cherry laurel in the keepered woods is a sensory mnemonic: it triggers a search. The bluebells are emerging where the canopy is native and open and, near the badger sett, I go looking for toothwort and find it. A ghostly wildflower that lacks chlorophyll and springs from tree roots, it […]
-
Nature Notes
A Spring of Hares. April weather and the season is on. Celandines that had pinched petals in tight pursed pouts, open to shine, glossy and reflective, back at the sun. In a week, balled fist-buds in a landmark sycamore give up the fight against winter and relax, opening palms of crumpled, damp-handkerchief leaves that tremble […]
-
Nature Notes
An Apparition: Starlings & the Peregrine. On a bright afternoon, we go birding in the Land Rover, not anticipating much. The last embers of redwing and fieldfare flocks glow – and babble like a stream through the trees. Near the dewpond, it becomes apparent there is a huge flock of birds, just over the ridge […]