Nature Notes
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Nature Notes
The Dewpond on the Height. “Our blunt, bow-headed, whale-backed Downs, Bare slopes where chasing shadows skim … We have no waters to delight Our broad and brookless vales— Only the dewpond on the height Unfed, that never fails” — Rudyard Kipling Just off the beaten track of Wigmoreash Drove, not far from the beech hangar, […]
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Nature Notes
Winter’s Spring. The weather swings between seasons. Water fills ditches and rivers travel backwards; the River Lambourn’s source backs up to higher East Garston, where it is winterbourne. Another dusting of snow makes the hill blanch pale. At the snowline, a snipe goes up with a cry like tearing fabric. The wind bites, so I […]
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Nature Notes
Black Kites, Bicycles & other Local News … To celebrate our local newspaper’s 150th Anniversary, I show the students at school a short film from 1952 when Newbury (through its newspaper) was chosen to represent British life to the Commonwealth. It raised an interesting debate on the changing face of journalism, women journalists and the […]
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Nature Notes
Silver Downs and Anthills The night before it snowed, I took the moonlit road to the downs. The ribbon of tarmac gleamed like chalk and disappeared somewhere among the stars. At the top, the sheep lay like grey wethers – stones deposited by the last ice age; ancient beasts with the moon on their backs. […]
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Nature Notes
Love & Comets: A Brother’s Re-Leaving. My brother and his family came home for Christmas. And by home, I mean where our parents are. He lives in Australia. My nieces have not seen (nor the eldest remember) an English winter. We want snow for them or at least, a lasting, Narnian hoar frost; but instead, […]
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Nature Notes
Winter Gold. The ninety-acre field could be a bleak prospect. High and exposed, it can appear a vast expanse of tilled mud: six-inch high rape leaves, little else. Squally showers come on biting gusts, shaking the new leaves to silver with a loud pattering. The mud is heavy on our boots. It seems an incredible, […]
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Nature Notes
Hotchi Witchi. An Apology. Near-dark, and I am trying to point out a small, still hedgehog under a hedge by the Scout hut to my son. He only sees it when it trots off, a conker on fast little legs. He is astonished I spotted it. But I have a special eye for hedgehogs. And […]
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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. […]