Author Archives: Amanda Tuke
10th August 2021 – a therapeutic find on Bramley Bank, Croydon
Having finally emerged from the dark hole of coronavirus, I dragged myself out to the little patch of acid grassland on Bramley Bank. I didn’t have much energy for serious botanising so was even more delighted to find a patch of tiny Birdsfoot (Ornithopus perpusillus). BSBI atlas records suggest it hasn’t been recorded here in […]
The thirty-minute birder – third article in series for Bird watching magazine
This was another reminder how incredibly lucky I am to write about nature for a living and get to talk to birding people like Lev Parikian, Ruth Miller and Dave Clark. Burgess Park is an absolute jewel – so good when my home borough, Southwark, gets it right. And always wowed by the page designs […]
26th July 2021 – Love a crow
Crows nest in the wood opposite our house but this year a pair choose one of the oak trees in our communal garden. From our back bedroom window I can see them building their nest as the leaves aren’t properly out. That nest soon disappears into the green. There’s not much evidence of them, or […]
19th July 2021 – gorging on the birdiest of all birds
A male Kingfisher is sitting on a fence post, preening in the early morning sun, until something in the water below catches his attention. After bobbing his head a couple of times, he slices through the lake surface and emerges with a silvery prize. A squadron of Swifts skim across the water’s surface, calculating their […]
12th July 2021 – It’s sooo sticky…
I’m just back from a week in Wales and the excitement of seeing unfamiliar plants was almost too much to bear. On a pavement plant walk around the fishing town of New Quay (no, not that one!), I found this Rock Sea-spurrey with gorgeous pink flowers and unbelievable sticky glandular hairs which meant the whole […]
29th June 2021 – “Tree Wheat” in Cardiff
I have time for a couple of hours of pavement plant hunting before I catch my train back from Cardiff to Paddington. Common Limes line the west side of the Taff Embankment and many of them have a mini-ecosystem of lichens, mosses, ferns and other plants thriving on the river-facing side of the main trunk. […]
21st June 2021 – One big “ooooo”, and happy birthday C…
A sixteen-year-old’s birthday is not the obvious occasion for botanizing, but the celebration a week ago started with a family feast on the edge of a meadow in East Sussex. After what I thought was a decent amount of chatting, I drifted subtly across to the long grass. There were beautiful candy-pink flowers of Grass […]
10th June 2021 – Reedies and farming past
It’s one of those days when I can’t really settle to anything; much better to stop trying and set off on an adventure. I’ve been planning to visit Beddington Farmland nature reserve in Sutton for a few weeks now. Hackbridge is a rather soul-less and traffic-busy place but, as I leave the main road for […]
Pavement weeds – article in Mar/Apr 2021 Resurgence & Ecologist magazine
If you follow this blog, you’ll know that I spend a lot of time getting excited about pavement plants in suburban south London. Earlier this year, I wrote this article about urban plant hunting for Resurgence & Ecologist magazine. I heard recently that, after reading my article, a teacher has started taking her class out […]
The 30-minute birder – second article in series for Bird Watching Magazine
I’m so enjoying writing this series and hoping it will help encourage people teetering on the edge of birding to take the plunge. The next instalment, about bird-listening in parks, is due to be published in August.
The Urban Naturalist 