Nature Notes
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Nature Notes
Midsummer Nocturne In recent weeks, I have found myself going out just before dark, after the children have gone to bed. I can’t go far – just as long as the spooled out ties-that-bind allow, my ears alert to any sounds from the house. The evenings are scented with honeysuckle and I creep about, pausing […]
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Nature Notes
A Hill from Home The children are at mum’s and we have run to the hills – the Tors of Dartmoor, to be exact. But it seems we have homed in on a familiar shape. From our starting point in pretty South Zeal, the ‘Dome of Dartmoor’ looms against a blessedly fair sky that I […]
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Nature Notes
Sea Pinks and Coconut Ice-Cream We are at my parents in North Devon for half-term – perhaps for the last time. After fifteen years of living here, the house is up for sale. We determine to make the most of the week, whatever the weather. The South West Coastal Path is a riot of wild, […]
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Nature Notes
Under an Ashen Sky, a Bonfire. Three consecutive evenings of badly planned fox-watching expeditions with the family were nevertheless evenings well spent. Late spring evenings are very, very seductive and hard to resist: even when I know there is not enough time and heavy rain is imminent. On top of the hill, it was evident the […]
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Nature Notes
The Mere and the Cockchafer. Hungerford Bookshop put on an inspirational evening of nature writers last week, with Rob Cowen (Common Ground) and Katharine Norbury (The Fish Ladder). Here, personal and poetically drawn lives are interwoven, inescapably, with nature. The evening was life-affirming. For my family, nature is inextricable too; our everyday. But to make […]
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Nature Notes
Shiners. It is cold down at the badger sett; too cold, perhaps, for the cubs to come out. I can hear them bumping about in the earth beneath me. The nettles on the earthworks are freckled with the last of the cherry blossom and have flushed with growth brought on by recent rain. Soon, they’ll […]
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Nature Notes
A National Bird Vote. It may not have escaped your attention that there is an alternative election going on. Author, broadcaster and fellow RSPB columnist, David Lindo (aka the brilliant Urban Birder) called for and has created a national debate on which of our British Birds should be voted our champion. So what do we […]
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Nature Notes
Blood on the Apple Blossom. On my way to the kettle at 6.30am, the racket from the garden birds alerted me to the presence of a predator – I didn’t have to look far – the sparrowhawk had already made a kill and was straddling its victim on the grass beneath the apple trees, plucking out […]
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Nature Notes
Mountain Blackbirds. I am feeding the farmland birds (on a grand scale) for the last time this season, driving round the depleted wild bird cover plots in the 4WD Gator, spinning out seed like gold dust from the hopper behind me. The songbirds are all nesting or moved on now, but they are all set […]