Finding a blue feather from a jay’s wing is like finding treasure – I’ve had one in my wallet for a couple of months now. If the feather’s gorgeous blue wasn’t enough, then looking at the structure through a hand lens is extraordinary. Tiny hooklets, on barbules, on barbs, on a quill, rachis or shaft […]

I went in search of Yellow-legged Gulls and left instead with a photo of the purple-pencilled flowers of Gipsywort, which I found growing alongside the boardwalk. Finally nailed a Willow Warbler with confidence, so progress on my birdsong and call journey. Oh and there was a good showing of by a Marsh Harrier too.

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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. […]

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 […]