Nature Notes
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Nature Notes
Ghosts of the Farm – Two Women’s Journeys Through Time, Land and Community. Hello there. It’s been a while, hasn’t it? But I am thrilled to announce my new book, & reveal its most beautiful cover. Ghosts of the Farm – Two Women’s Journeys Through Time, Land & Community will be published by my very lovely publishers, Chelsea Green Books, in the UK & US, on 30th September and you can pre-order here, or anywhere you buy your books, if you like. A fitting date, as it’s Michaelmas time, the traditional beginning and end of the new farming year. The cover is a detail from…
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Nature Notes
A Newsy One: books, ambassadorship, SO much reading, writing tips to ReWild Yourself … and a tease; keeping my powder dry, just a little. August into September, 2024. This blog (with apologies) is necessarily a newsy update, rather than my more usual Nature Notes, with lots of links to what I’ve been up to. It might be one to skim. Normal Nature Notes will resume in a couple of months’ time! I had a great time at Global Birdfair in Rutland last month. So many great discussions to be had and so many friendly faces. It really is a great…
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Nature Notes
To London to March, under an empty, feverish sky … June into July 2024. On Saturday June the 22nd, around 80,000-100,00 people responded to Chris Packham’s and Megan McCubbin’s clarion call to Restore Nature Now – and marched through London, from Park Lane to a rallying point in Parliament Square. I was able to make it up with my dear friend Sarah. The gathering pulled together an extraordinary blend of traditional and radical organisations, major nature charities and direct action groups, from The National Trust, Wildlife Trusts and the RSPB, families and the Red Rebels, Right to Roam to Just…
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Nature Notes
Lights, Action … May into June 2024. With apologies for the tardiness of this blog … there has just been so much going on and too much to do! ‘Writing between the gaps’ of life, family and work is something I’ve always had to do, as many of us do (and that in itself is political) but my goodness those gaps are getting narrower. I’m hoping to post these blogs on Substack at last, but I will continue to blog them here too. Anyway; some writing and after that, some chat, and lots of news! Thank you as ever for…
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Nature Notes
Grey Skies, Grey Wagtails, Linnets, & a New Writing Companion … April 2024. It’s been a chilly spring of grey-lidded skies and so very much rain. Sometimes, things feel far from ‘normal,’ and there is a kind of surreal, lucid edge around the lens of things, when I’m very aware the joint wildlife and climate crisis is playing out before our eyes. And of course, here in the UK, we are unfairly buffered from the worst effects unfolding. The rain caused a small landslip below the rookery on Hollow Lane in the village, bringing down a portion of the high…
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Nature Notes
Winter Thrushes, Warmer Thrushes … March 2024. Whilst the calendar month has moved on and daylight has increased past six o’clock in the evening, it still feels wintery – chilly and damp with porridgey skies and so much water and mud. The spring I’m noticing most at the moment comes via the thrushes. As soon as the year turns itself to the light after the winter solstice, the mistle thrush begins to sing – in fact this year, it began caroling a whole month earlier. I love mistle thrush song, make no mistake – but there is also something ‘other’…
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Nature Notes
The Shining of the Woods … February, 2024 As I write today, there are patches of blue among white clouds sailing over, but in truth, my goodness it’s been a wet and windy start to the year. Between flooded roads and incomprehensible, prolonged road closures, it’s been hard to leave the village sometimes, and mud is a daily companion. The various village WhatsApp groups – loosely divided into hamlets in this strung out village – have been both supportive and funny. On the wild, wet and rainy teatime of a power cut, which seemed to hit random houses, we were…
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Nature Notes
An update, a catch-up … January, 2024. It’s been over a year since I’ve published a blog here – it’s been rather a busy one – and whilst I’ve updated other parts of my website, I’ve unintentionally neglected this page … At the start of 2023, I began writing a monthly opinion column for Countryfile Magazine, which I’m immensely proud to do. The column pieces are often to be found online as well as in the magazine itself (which is full of great content and insight) and I sometimes get to write features too (on Blackbirds, Foxgloves and Red Kites,…
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Nature Notes
The Fallow Buck and the Lightning Fork. Such heavy rainstorms. What my Northamptonshire Nan would have called ‘knicker soakers.’ I walk towards the approaching thunderstorm at first; it is on the other side of the hill and this side is yet dry. A bank of heavy grey cloud deepens and white cloud moves fast in front of it, like smoke curling from a wildfire. The distant flicker of lightning comes closer, and thunder begins to close the gap, until a big fireball of light rolls like a bowling ball from the Gods along the ridgeway. There is an almighty bang.…
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Nature Notes
Burning Fields. Though the unprecedented heat has eased, the frightening intensity of it remains. Coldharbour Farm and its grain silos shimmered like a mirage in the fan-oven heat. Much of the harvest there was done before the schools broke up, and woodpigeons panted on the sticky tarmac, where even the water leaks had dried up. As the temperature – according to my garden gate thermometer – rose to 39C, the road surface from Hungerford to Kintbury melted to an oily slush, the car tyres making a slicking puddling sound, as if the tide was coming in to close a causeway.…