Tourism has transformed the pretty, mountain village of Gavarnie; its huge car park is filled by mid-morning. Most visitors run the gauntlet of shops and cafes and then hike up the valley to the immense cirque with its 400m high waterfall; this entails walking the track up through the pine forest and pastures to the…
Two East Anglian Tudor Manor Houses
Kentwell Hall in Long Melford, Suffolk and Oxburgh Hall in Norfolk are both moated, Tudor manor houses. Both have belonged to prominent Catholic families; the Cloptons at Kentwell and the Bedingfields at Oxburgh. The Cloptons took on Kentwell in 1377 but ran out of heirs in the middle of 17th century; the Bedingfields have lived at…
A Norfolk Barn Owl
Four in the morning and a barn owl hunts over the hay meadows for another hour before heading to the barns where there is surely a brood of young waiting to be fed; it is a fruitless hour of quartering and the occasional dive into the sward before reappearing empty handed. The grasses, mainly false…
June butterflies and orchids
A hot and dry June brings out the bee, fragrant and pyramidal orchids here on the North Downs; it seems a good year for them all even though the ground is parched. There are also droves of meadow browns, marbled whites and skippers. The dark green fritillaries are on the greater knapweed Centaurea scabiosa in…
Ffridd
The unenclosed hill slopes or ffridd are a mosaic of bracken, scrub, heather, grass and wet flushes that lie between the pasture fields and the mountain plateaus. Around the Elenydd mountains in mid-Wales, ffridd is rich with small birds including redstarts, yellowhammers, tree pipits, whinchats and stonechats. Redpolls, siskins and mistle thrushes are common in…
Great Dixter in mid May
Parts of the garden are a riot; rich with the wayside plants of the Mediterranean and Balkans intermingled with the local and far flung. The Peacock Garden is dominated by bright yellow umbels of great fennel Ferula communis contrasting with the mauves of honesty Lunaria annua, greater meadow-rue Thalictrum aquilegifolium and, I think, dame’s rocket…
More Spring butterflies and other insects
It has been a great spring for insects in Kent with a spell of uninterrupted warm, dry weather through April and May. The holly blues Celastrina argiolus are all over the hedgerow dogwoods Cornus sanguinea laying eggs on the flower clusters. The small blues Cupido minimus at Fackenden Down are plentiful at the base of…
Audley End
In late March on a chilly day, under a blanket of stone grey cloud, the grand old house is drained of colour. Audley End is a remnant of a much larger palatial country house, a so-called ‘prodigy’ house built at the start of the 17th Century by a courtier to James I, who cooked the…
Little owl on the old brick wall
The old farmyard buildings hold a pair of barn owls and little owls. The scolding blackbirds always let you know when they are about. The little owls are likely to nest somewhere in the abandoned livestock pens and the crumbling brick wall is a favourite perch. Of course, this photograph is as much about the…
Peregrine hunting dunlin at Shellness
At high tide at Shellness, which usually falls in the middle few hours of the day, a peregrine often runs in to try to take a dunlin or ringed plover. The start is marked by the sudden rush away of the dunlin flock. The oystercatchers gathered on the ness and curlews in the saltmarsh all…
Spring butterflies in Kent
The local butterflies seem more abundant than last year and the recent, warm weather has only helped them along. The photos were all taken in Kent on trips to Stodmarsh National Nature Reserve, Shellness in the Swale National Nature Reserve, Mereworth Woods, and Fackenden Down Kent Wildlife Trust Nature Reserve.
Cwm Doethie’s Merlins
Right at the heart of the Cambrian Mountains in mid-Wales, the Doethie valley runs north off the Pysgotwr which in turn runs down into the Tywi by the Dinas nature reserve; it is a rare valley in that there is no road or driveable track just a path used by walkers and mountain bikers between…