Nature Notes
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Nature Notes
Dusking. When the clocks fell back, I spent a day revelling in a gifted hour – and the surprise that I wasn’t late for everything. But it was a brief deceit that soon caught up and overtook me. In this twilight of the year it seems fitting that we go ‘dusking’ in the unspecified hour […]
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Nature Notes
Wild Writing On Freeman’s Marsh, for Hungerford Literary Festival, 14 children have come seeking literary inspiration from nature. We begin by tuning in our senses, discussing the smell of dogs’ paws and listening for the thin, needling call of redwings arriving from the frozen north. And then we are out with our new notebooks, collapsing […]
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Nature Notes
The Beautiful, Toxic Landscape. Spider webs net the dew, distilling it to clear drops. I could walk the width of this field and scoop up a whole glassful of water. The stubble begins to steam gently as the sun warms it, mist rising in curls and ringlets like the feathery plumes ghosting up from my […]
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Nature Notes
Margherita Pizzas and the Six Hundredth. I am compelled to come here each autumn. I never know quite when, only that it is misty and the woodpigeons are chorusing and the jays are screeching. For the rest of the year, I tend to avoid this particular footpath and its permanent, orange, sucking clay. It is mud […]
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Nature Notes
A Raven King. At the foot of the down, below the double gibbet that has stood in several incarnations since 1676, is a dead raven. Both wings are folded demurely across its breast and belly, crossing at the tips as if it were a dark angel, its head lowered on its breast in repose. The friend […]
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Nature Notes
A Divine Path and a Pear Tree. I have deadlines to meet but, coming home from a visit to a neighbour, the light on the hill falls in such a way that the path to the top is engraved like a divine inspiration. I cannot argue with it. I had gone in search of a […]
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Nature Notes
Harvest Home. At last, harvest is in. Returning home, I swing the car slowly into our field entrance of a car park and come up against the header of the combine, powering down with the roar of bees. The field looks as if it’s been wiped out by a desert sandstorm, the air filled with […]
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Nature Notes
Urban Bats: A Night out on the Town Friday night, and I’ve a rare night out on the town; but instead of heels, I’ve opted for pumps and instead of a handbag, I’ve shouldered my binoculars. In an inspired collaboration between our freshly refurbished local museum (West Berks) and our local Wildlife Trust (BBOWT) a […]