goshawk
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Nature Notes
The Moon and the Goshawk. These are strange and unsettling times for us all. I head for the high tops, to clear my head with a clearing storm. I can see it coming; great grey brush strokes drawn down with a broad sweep over the wet page of a lemon-yellow sky. I decide to cross […]
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Nature Notes
A Confusion of Raptors. I am listening hard in the wind that comes off the downs; trying to silence the rustle of my ill-chosen coat with shallow breathing, directing cupped hands held behind my ears to the sky. Five woodlark are singing over Windmill Field. Still here, pouring their melancholy, heartbreaker alleluias over the earth. […]
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Nature Notes
Field Signs. I am scraping through wet leaf litter with some friends. We are looking for hazelnuts nibbled in the precise way a dormouse eats them. We know dormice are present locally and hope to make this wood a better habitat for them. Mooching about, our close-looking is rewarded – not by hazelnuts nibbled in […]
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Nature Notes
H is for Hawk, Part II It seemed fitting to climb the hill to watch the solar eclipse. I have come here to watch comets, meteor showers, sunsets, the Northern Lights and beacons lit across the country. There is a disappointment of thick cloud white as a snowfield, yet at the appointed time, the landscape […]
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Nature Notes
H is for Hawk, Part I. Back in midwinter, a thrilling discovery: the plucking post of a bird of prey in the centre of a clearing in the wood. The stump of a great, fallen ash, upended on its rootplate so that it forms a thick column just taller than me, is all roots, orange […]