Category Thumbnail-nature diary
#ThumbnailNature – Oh Alexanders!
While I’m fond of you, frankly my dear Alexanders, you smell terrible. Spring has brought your tiny stinky sulphur flowers with lavish curls & deely bopper stamens. An aphid languidly waves antennae under my scrutiny, lumbers through the flowering umbel & then plays peekaboo behind the juicy trunk of a stem.
#ThumbnailNature – Someone’s been busy in the pond…
I heard a splash, my daughter says, as she opens the backdoor. There’s a sumptuous heap of spawn in the middle of our pond. Now why have I just started thinking about bubble tea, I say, and she makes an ugghhh face, but leaves with a smile. Little things.
Tales from the suburban wild – food for fairies and a hunger for nature learning
A woman is walking in front of me on Peckham Rye with a four-year-old. He’s looking at something in his hand, a conker in its prickly case. “Perhaps it’s food for fairies and elves?” mum says. The boy frowns at the conker. “No, Mummy, they’re for animals”. Busted. Sarah opens the heavy Victorian door and […]
Will they ever learn?
Three parakeets eating crab apples. Peck, spit, peck, spit. Maybe this bit will be nicer? Or this bit? Or even this bit? Or perhaps this one? Or that one? Or the one over there? Now look you lot. They’re sour goddammit. They’re always going to be sour. GIVE. IT. UP.
Suburban High Noon (#ThumbnailNature)
Suburban high noon. Grass alleyway between garden fences. At one end, a fox. At the other, two crows forage all casual-like, their nest in a sycamore overhead. Fox inches forward. Stops. Starts. Watched every step. Nah, not worth it mate. He turns and lopes away. I breathe out gently.
marsh harrier hulking in spindly tree…
Opalescent light across the estuary at Rainham marshes as the fog lifts. My good friend Sophie’s a welcome change from lone excursions; we chat & look, flipping from plants to birds & back. In a spindly tree, a marsh harrier hulks, then lifts on oblong wings. A second tracks the line of pylons. High above, […]
7th July 2020 – a sky pond
I look up at the sound of a Jay chucketing. In an Ash tree on the edge of a sky pond, a well-grown fledgling is insisting it’s still hungry and its parent delivers. Raindrops hurtle down to me. It’s disorientating but astonishing. We take drops of water falling out of the sky for granted. Knowing […]
The Urban Naturalist 