Water Avens My favourite subject at school was English language and I soon learned that verbs were necessary to every sentence. Verbs express what we do and a sentence is incomplete without at least one lurking in there, explaining what we are about. Kirkheaton’s 20% for Wildlife group exists, largely,…
Long-tailed tit The long-tailed tit with a mouth full of caterpillars is a timely reminder that nature’s reproduction season is in full swing. If you’re up during the night feeding a demanding baby, I sympathise with you. But you’re not the only one finding child rearing hard work. In the…
I’ve never grown a beard for more than two or three days before I was expressly encouraged to shave it off. That is, until I forgot my razor when I went to the Hebridean island of Mull a couple of weeks ago. Of course, I could have gone to the…
You may have noticed that I haven’t posted anything new for a while. There are a number of reasons for this which I won’t bore you with. However, I’m back in action. Tomorrow, I catch a ferry from Brodick, Arran, to the Scottish mainland at the end of a two…
The snowdrops are just past their best, daffodils are springing into life, and even our first tulip has already burst into flower. I can hear a green woodpecker’s ‘yaffle’ from the woods along Ox Field Beck and our tawnies are calling to each other up the Scrog. It seems like…
I don’t know what’s going on at the moment but on the last few occasions I’ve been out and about, there’s been little to see of interest on the wildlife front. There are still plenty of birds in the garden but once I step outside, everything seems to be in…
If you’ve ever seen the Red Arrows, you’ll remember the exhilaration you felt from the team’s spectacular aerial display – man and machine in perfect harmony. There’s a bird that can give you that same thrill. In May, swifts will be flying here from Africa. In summer, they can often…
I just helped a friend to produce a rather late edition of his company calendar for 2022. We’d been working on it for a good hour when we spotted the start date – January 2021! We’d been meticulous in making sure the photos were right, the company logo was in…
Thanks again to all those who listened to me speaking about nature during November and December, those who bought images or ‘Ray’s British Wildlife Calendars’, I have sent £929 of your money to www.Zarach.org, enough to buy 6 bed bundles for Christmas and a little left over. Our Mission We…
If you have just read this title yourself, you’re probably already asking, ‘Who is she?’ If someone is reading it to you, you will think, quite rightly, that I’m writing about names that are incorrectly or unsuitably applied. Wikipedia tells us that ‘misnomers often arise because something was named long…