Nature Notes
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Nature Notes
Chemical Ruin & A Fly Shaped Absence. Wait. Another of our songbirds is missing. Its disappearance has been worrying away at the frayed fabric of my summers in recent years – their usual perches and glad, familiar silhouettes, vacant. It isn’t an iconic summer visitor like a cuckoo, or a turtle dove, a nightingale, swallow, swift or […]
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Nature Notes
Love Letter to North Devon. Fifteen years ago, shortly before I fell pregnant with the first of our three children, my parents moved from the west of West Berks to North Devon. It was a wrench – but no more so than now, when they are moving again. We fell in love with a place I […]
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Nature Notes
A Reveal of Badgers. On a dull, warm evening, we walked off the edge of the down and crept into the hanging wood and its badger sett. Without the sun to break through the mixed broadleaf and coniferous canopy, it felt prematurely dark. Behind us, a pheasant release pen of young birds coughed and crowed […]
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Nature Notes
I know a place where the wild thyme blows … Where you can find it, chalk grassland is at its most romantic and sensual now. The short, springy turf is a riot of richly fragrant colour, alive with its associated butterflies, bees, other insects and birds. The sward is necessarily low, chalk plants have adapted […]
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Nature Notes
The Plight of the Bumblebee The short walk to the horses’ field has become even more of a pleasure of late. Next to the otherwise lifeless, factory floor of wheat, a wide nectar strip has been planted. Bird’s foot trefoil, purple vetch and the pink pea flowers of sainfoin ramble through tall grasses. A single, […]
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Nature Notes
Wild Children, Wild Words. It is a truth that ought to be universally acknowledged, that kids need nature and nature needs kids – otherwise, it’ll be the end of us all. And although I’ve heard things from children that alarm me (what’s a cuckoo? how do badgers swim underwater?) there is plenty to gladden the […]
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Nature Notes
A Month in the Country … For the month of June, in a new, simple and innovative campaign, The Wildlife Trusts challenged us all to commit ‘random acts of wildness’ on a daily basis – and so began 30 Days Wild. What a lovely gift of a thing to do. We accepted the challenge with […]
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Nature Notes
Strokes of Havoc … An evening walk takes me past gloriously uncut verges of ox-eye daisies, buzz and insects – but this is a perilous joy. Just as nature is at its most vibrant, productive and protective (of bees, butterflies, the unnamed, sustaining bugs, nestlings, voles, and even leverets, hedge hoglets and fawns) so many […]