barn owls
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Nature Notes.
A Tender Key of Place. We walk into the drying, sheep-scented wind and down the sheltered hollow lane. Light puddles on the dust and passing tractors mill the chalky mud-crust into a gritty flour. A pink, white and blue tangle of campion, stitchwort, bugle and speedwell thicken banks more than twice my height – something […]
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Nature Notes
A Windmill for Kites. On the last morning of my 49th year, I woke to the cuckoo calling loudly through the open window, from Nightingales Wood. I dreamt his first woodwind notes, before I realised they were real. The year before last, he didn’t come at all – and I feared that would be it. […]
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Nature Notes
Shifting mists. Each day, tentatively and in small increments, there is a little more light. And signs, too, of the season to come before we expect them: snowdrops and bluebell shoots, blackbird notes, the first drumming woodpecker and the gold lamb’s tails of lengthening hazel catkins; sherberty yellow daubs against the cold, wet, teabag-browns of […]
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Nature Notes
Barn Owl Resurgence. In 2013, our local barn owl group were in deep despair: nationally, the breeding season for these wonderful birds had been catastrophic, and out of 119 nests monitored in the Pang and Kennet valleys, not a single chick survived to fledge. It was heart-breaking news of a much-loved bird already in trouble. […]