I believe in miracles
There was a kind of magic that earlier spring, under the Quantock ridge, where Hope Corner Lane crossed the Kingston Road. If we left home early in the half light, before breakfast, the white owl would still be ghosting alongside the hedgerows on silent wings to take a last late vole to the shadow of the barn. And there in the garden of the big house, behind the wall, a fairy woodpecker, red head and ladder back would be fidgeting his way up the tall trees. Alas, the house has been demolished;... Read more »
Making sense of coastal erosion
The east coast of England is being washed away. Tidal currents sweeping down from the north are gradually eroding the coast from Flamborough Head south to Suffolk, moving shingle and silt down into long narrow spits as at Spurn Head and Orford Ness, collapsing the shingle banks in front of... Read more »
A fine creation from a doomed insect.
It’s the finest, most delicate thread in the world and can be dyed and woven into smooth yet light clothes fit for an emperor let alone a modern man of distinction or a lady of style and discernment. This cloth is the bee’s knees, the cat’s pyjamas or, to more... Read more »
Jungle Bugs
From a distance, it looked like a rotten stick, covered in white lichen, such as you might see in Derbyshire, but no! The lichen was moving. I looked more closely. The stick was covered with hundreds of bright white insects, each one decorated with appendages resembling flower parts, tiny stamens, bifurcate... Read more »
A curious tale of butterflies, ants, wasps and the passage of thyme
The large blue butterfly is the largest and rarest of our blue butterflies. Clouds of them can be seen fluttering over heathland on a summer evening, but in the eighteenth century the passion of Victorian gentlemen for collecting butterflies nearly drove them into extinction. Conservationists tried to protect them by... Read more »
Decoys
I was running along the narrow track that threaded its way along the grassy slope. The deer were feeding far below me. The rain the previous night had made the mud slick and my feet slipped at every pace. I was concentrating on the way ahead when a faint hissing... Read more »
