The fox appears in front of the kitchen window; he is in perfect condition with a thick winter coat. Immediately, he steps into the abandoned ground of grasses and nettles that one day may be a back garden. He seems to know it is the right place to hunt and is entirely alert and focussed….
Category: British Wildlife
Shellness again…
The tide is forecast high again at 1:30pm and at 10:00am the waters are well up with just a fringe of mud and bays half-filled. The wind is from the north and the blockhouse provides shelter and a view of the shore. The oystercatchers are already neatly regimented on the ness and Brent geese slowly…
The unstoppable sea
On Saturday, the day is warm with a southerly breeze and the oystercatchers gather on their familiar stretch of shoreline at the far end of the ness of shells that gives the place its name. Another spit near the blockhouse is filled with a tight knit flock of grey plover, dunlin and knot. On the…
Sunset on the North Downs
We had a great sunset here here on the North Downs the other evening. The clouds appeared to have been whisked…
Mucking and Cooling
The mudflats at Mucking that run north from Coalhouse Fort support a great flock of avocet as well as smaller numbers of shelduck, curlew, knot, dunlin, redshank and grey plover. The birds are safe from disturbance as the mud is separated from the coastal path by a stodgy stretch of saltmarsh. A peregrine roosts on…
Whitstable perspectives
The tide is well out but running in; beyond the stony beach below the town are the vast ranks of exposed trestles on which bags of oysters are laid or strung. The scale of production is industrial and locally contentious with a planning inquiry shortly set to adjudicate on the fate on the scale of…
October at Oare
A pale clouded yellow dances in the breeze on the sea wall and after many attempts finally settles in the couch grass, small whites are also on the move, nectaring on the last sow thistles. The clear autumn skies and gentle warmth put the wintering flocks of godwits and redshanks at ease; there is no…
Scabious and ivy
As the autumn equinox arrives, the downs are browning and the last flowers support the last insects. The slope at Fackenden is now thick with summer growth; the marjoram and other summer flowers create dense blankets of green growth with a few flowers; the autumn gentian has gone over and only the devil’s bit scabious…
Old Tapestry New Forest
The Forest is quiet in September; woodpeckers, crossbills and siskins break the silence in the ancient woodlands and conifer plantations. The heather on the open heaths is at its purple peak and the summer crowds have waned. In the late afternoon, ponies and donkeys start to move to forage on the roadsides, and cause a…
Painted lady
A butterfly lands on the gravel path in Farningham wood and folds its wings; it is unrecognisable. Neither a wall brown nor a grayling both of which nearly always fold up, just a perplexing something in between; the colours are subtle and beautiful and it turns out to be a painted lady doing what it…
The edge of the Stiperstones
On the moorland edge under the bare grey Stiperstones, the hand-reared curlews that have been held since hatching in a netted enclosure are now released. The birds either fly off in a rush or walk slowly out into the field before heading off, a few keep walking and stay in the rushy pasture on the…
Summer shades
Sometimes there is no story, no theme to wrap some pictures around, just the rich sights of late summer to enjoy. Bright sun against a dark thundercloud, flowers in morning light, the appearance of the last swifts in the sky and the effervescent and colourful insects; even the irritating paparazzi, the clegs and mosquitoes, and…