Nature Notes
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Nature Notes
A Bed of Bedstraw. Ham Hill Nature Reserve is a tiny, caterpillar-shaped, remnant of chalk grassland on the edge of West Berkshire and Wiltshire. Its high spine rises above steep plunging banks and a Saxon holloway, running parallel with the road to Buttermere. Facing the sun, its slopes are full of wildflowers, insects and butterflies. […]
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Nature Notes
Driving Away. My son has a car. We pick it up with him from a former farmyard in Aldermaston where it sits beside a newly roofed grain barn. There are swallows on the wires like a musical score and enough room in the boot for a bass guitar and amp. The swallows fly in and […]
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Nature Notes
Telling a Grandfather from a Heronshaw. There is a heaped pile of grey-blue serge on the edge of the road ahead. Like a discarded RAF uniform perhaps. I try and puzzle it out as I walk nearer. Things aren’t often what they seem, and it pays to pay attention. Once, on this very spot, a […]
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Nature Notes
Ocksey Daisies & Open Gates. Trying to clear thoughts muddled by persistent headaches, I go for a little lie down – on the broad open flank of the hill. Evening, and nothing but the sound of skylarks and meadow pipits singing their way up and back down to the grass wigwams of their nests, and […]
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Nature Notes
Cowslipping, Part II. Before the rain, we took a lesson in walking underwater, without getting wet. It is entirely possible to drown in the sensory celebration of a bluebell wood, even as they are almost over: the mist-blue haze floating at calf-height, lapping the trees; the sticky sappiness, the honey scent, the squeak and tangled […]
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Nature Notes
Cowslips, Part I. Through an open gateway, the wide expanse of Hippenscombe valley is full of flowering oil seed rape that glows against my skin – a buttercup under the chin. Yellowhammers spill onto the road, their lightbulb heads bright as the flowers and among them (almost missed) a thrilling glimpse of a yellow wagtail. […]
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Nature Notes
Golden Valleys & Black Hills. Two days in to a week’s stay at a farmhouse in Herefordshire and the low, white, obscuring cloud finally lifted, like a blindfold coming off. I began to orient myself. Sunnybank Farm didn’t disappoint. Its big, comfortably shabby rooms and sash windows opened out onto a rushing stream and birdsong […]
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Nature Notes
Lunch with an Otter. A text came from my son at college, whilst I was at work. ‘You’ll never guess what I’m having lunch with!’ There followed the most exquisite video clip, taken on his phone. An otter, hunting the shallow stream at one of the entrances to Andover College, rolling, roiling and revelling in […]
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Nature Notes
Running Wild Weeks like these, I get my wildlife fix on the run. Meeting my son off the bus fifteen minutes early, means quarter of an hour’s birdwatching on the hill inbetween. Or at school, helping students with their GCSE Speaking and Listening exams, I am delighted that some have chosen water vole conservation, plastic […]