Nicola Chester

Nature Writer and Activist

farmland birds

  • Nature Notes

    Harvest, home. Patchy holiday weather, patchy harvest weather. The two go hand in hand of course – harvest and a holiday from school – a relic from when everyone was needed in the fields. We rush out to pull the washing in as the combine roars into the field as if it were on fire. […]

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  • Nature Notes

    An Almanac of Anger & Hope. I don’t know at what point the melancholy strikes and despair seeps in, but I am sure there is a pattern: a seasonal almanac of frustration and bitterness. Chalk grassland, rarer than rainforest, has been overgrazed for another year, resulting in no flowers so far, since April:  fewer butterflies, […]

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  • Nature Notes

    Winter Gold. The ninety-acre field could be a bleak prospect. High and exposed, it can appear a vast expanse of tilled mud: six-inch high rape leaves, little else. Squally showers come on biting gusts, shaking the new leaves to silver with a loud pattering. The mud is heavy on our boots. It seems an incredible, […]

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