Dedham Vale is a landscape of English oaks, pollarded willows and water meadows around the meandering River Stour. The villages are small but with imposing churches built on the profits of the wool trade. It is the landscape of John Constable and so, for many, of lowland England. Constable painted many scenes around the Mill,…
Kent Churches
These baker’s dozen were taken when heading to and from, or sometimes within, wildlife sites. The North Kent Marshes and Dickens country around Higham feature heavily as do Oare and Romney Marshes. A couple from the heart of the Weald and downland villages provide some contrast. All are a timeless and beautiful part of the…
Sandwich Terns at Shellness
A big spring tide on a warm afternoon is a good time to watch the waders, gulls and terns gather on the shore. There is a regular post-breeding congregation of Sandwich terns and their raucous calls fill the blustery air. The terns fly up and down the shoreline and out into the bay sometimes returning…
August Insects
The weather in SE England is warm and dry through July and August; the mid-summer flowers are now late summer seeds and fruits. Coming after a wet spring, it is a great year for blackberries. The ivy flower is taking over from the bramble and will be the chief source of pollen and nectar for…
A Tale of Two Tresses
Cors Fochno or Borth Bog on the western edge of mid-Wales, holds a recently discovered population of Irish Lady’s Tresses Spiranthes romanzoffiana; it is a pretty orchid with small white flowers in three spiral rows. Spiranthes romanzoffiana occurs in sites with wet, acidic peaty soils, in western Britain and Ireland but also much more commonly…
Plovers and catchers
Shellness is a remote and remarkable spit of cockle shells at the east end of the Isle of Sheppey. It is the tip of a vast expanse of saltmarshes and dark brown mud that form a large part of the Swale National Nature Reserve. The shell spit is continually moulded by the tide and currently…
Stour Estuary, Suffolk
The Stour Estuary is divided down the middle between Essex and Suffolk; on the Essex side the road runs east from Manningtree and ‘The Walls’ at Mistley to Harwich past a coastline of woodland and wetland nature reserves and, near Wrabness, the House for Essex. On the Suffolk side, it is equally wild with nothing…
Mid Wales Raptors
The Clywedog reservoir in Mid Wales supports breeding ospreys; on a recent trip with Tony Cross to ring the two young it was a chance to snap the anxious parents and ruffled young. Over the weekend we also ringed a brood of kestrels in Cwmystwyth, sparrowhawks on the edge of Borth Bog and an albino…
The South Charente in Late June
Under thundery skies, the herbaceous borders at Boisjarzeau are at their colourful best. The wet spring this year has saved on the watering but the garden meadows are unusually thick with false oat-grass and barren brome with little space for wildflowers. A sward full of yellow rattle would impede the grasses and promote floral diversity…
Arles, Van Gogh and the Stars
Arles is a magnet for visitors and the attraction is Van Gogh and his ‘Starry Night over the Rhône’ on loan from Paris for a summer exhibition at the Fondation Van Gogh Arles entitled ‘Van Gogh and the Stars’. There are works by those that inspired him such as Jean-François Millet and many more of…
Vinca
Vinca is a small village high on the eastern flank of the Alpi Apuane reached by a tortuous road from Monzone; it sits in a forested bowl, ringed by bare limestone peaks such as Pizzo d’Uccello; it is both peaceful and stunning. Vinca is famous for its dark bread, the Pane de Vinca, baked in…
Casola in Lunigiana, Tuscany
The precipitous mountains of the Alpi Apuane hold the rarest and most sought after seams of white marble that are mainly worked on the western facing slopes high above Carrara where the quarries leave blazing, white scars on the bare peaks. On the eastern flanks, in the villages around Casola in Lunigiana, the lower hills…