Category Archives: nature
Formby on Friday
Through the pines. Over the dunes. And onto the beach, the light in constant flux … … an Atlantic north-westerly ripping in relentless. “I’m going out”, said J, pushing through piles of sand outside our bedouin tent. “I may be … Read More »
The pike and heron
I spoke in Afloat in the Fens of a brace of pike spotted in a small mere, amid an otherwise banal housing estate on the edge of Thrapston and fed by the Nene. Here they are. Close by, another ambush … Read More »
Afloat in the fens
It’s a scorching afternoon, still and sultry. A minute after putting in at Islip, I disturb a grey heron. It flaps a gawky take off across the river twenty metres ahead. Ten minutes after that I hear a tiny plash … Read More »
Saturday on the Soar
Needing spiritual refreshment after two months making repairs to my house in Sheffield (I let it out, and hand over the rent collected to my own landlord) and a recent flurry of posts on Julian Assange, I took the junior … Read More »
Four days in Norfolk
It’s the last Thursday of June, the hottest day of the year so far. Patrolling the sky above Barton Broad a pair of common terns glide, hover and swoop for small fry. I’m in the shade of willow and alder, … Read More »
Andromeda’s gonna get you!
Mathematician and astronomer Fred Hoyle rejected the big bang theory (coining that term in a radio interview put-down) in favour not of creationism but of panspermia – the idea that life on earth originated in micro-organisms arriving from outer space. … Read More »
No uncertain terns
Snapped on Tuesday, on a day trip to Brancaster, east of Sandringham on the southern coast of the Wash. I can photograph terns any day of the week at Attenborough, a ten minute stroll from my door. But Norfolk’s a … Read More »
Great crested grebes go fishing
Yesterday my favourite water bird further endeared itself to me. At Colwick Country Park, where flooded gravel pits are topped up by the Trent a few miles downstream of Nottingham, a pair of great crested grebes were ferrying chicks on … Read More »
Wollaton today
A pair of Egyptian geese with only one gosling, my best pictures yet of those fallow deer – and the woods a blue shimmering haze. A few of the images at Wollaton Park on what is forecast to be the … Read More »