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…
It’s that time of year when our summer visitors have gone and most of the winter ones have still not checked in, so it seems fairly quiet on the wildlife front. But 15th October is sunny and warm and we have loads of bees and a small tortoiseshell on the…
Four spotted chaser I must admit I’ve been a bit busy lately and have only just got around to checking out the ponds near my house. Someone has put fish into the one nearest, which is not good news for the great crested newts which, apparently, will desert that pond…
It’s been a few years since we were able to take part in the Big Garden Birdwatch. At this time of year, we’re usually off on our travels so it was nice to take part this morning and spend an hour recording our avian visitors. As it happened, we had…