Thursday was our first day out this year and so the first of my retirement. Saltholme was the obvious choice but we didn’t want the obvious, so we had a little walk out in Richmond instead. We’ve walked into Billy Bank Woods before but not since our courting days, when we finished the stroll withContinue reading “Wild man a wondering – Week 3”
Category Archives: nature diary
Wild man a wondering – Week 2
The deep, white layer of frost on the 10th January covered almost everything that I might see and write about, but it couldn’t help revealing something. In a narrow line along the shelf at the back of our conservatory were some small, delicate canine prints. I can’t always distinguish a fox print from a dogContinue reading “Wild man a wondering – Week 2”
Wild man a wondering – The weekly wildlife journal of a would-be naturalist
Week 1 (OK, week 2, but let’s pretend it’s week 1) Consistency has always been my problem; my spirit animal ought to be a butterfly. If you’d asked me what I wanted to do once I was retired, I would have said, “I want to write more”. So, now that I am retired I determinedContinue reading “Wild man a wondering – The weekly wildlife journal of a would-be naturalist”
To see a thousand things – December
Well that felt like the quickest year of my life; perhaps seeming even quicker for documenting it on a monthly basis. December was a good month for my list with the addition of over 50 species, though most of them were technically not new species. Instead they were ones that I had just got roundContinue reading “To see a thousand things – December”
To see a thousand things – November
The poet Thomas Hood has beaten me to my blog this month. His poem, “No!”, ends with the stanza; “No shade, no shine, no butterflies, no bees,No fruits, no flowers, no leaves, no birds, November!” That was pretty much it for November. I found two new plants, though neither was a flower, and added anotherContinue reading “To see a thousand things – November”
To see a thousand things – October
October started with great excitement. A Facebook friend posted a photo of a shrew that her cat had caught in the garage. The photo, just of its head, resembled a flattened Womble, which is exactly how I think White-toothed shrews look. I would have gone with that identification were it not for the fact thatContinue reading “To see a thousand things – October”
To see a thousand things – September
September sucked! I was thinking of leaving the entry for September at that, a sort of blogging equivalent of the Haiku, only for people who haven’t the patience to read a whole Haiku. I had envisaged August as being the month when nothing much happened, a brief pause before the next season started. I hadn’tContinue reading “To see a thousand things – September”
To see a thousand things – August
I hadn’t expected much of August. The month when no news ever happens is also a lean month for wildlife. Most of the flowers are over, the fungi haven’t really started and the birds have swapped singing for skulking. It is still a decent month for moths and with a good guide book and aContinue reading “To see a thousand things – August”
To see a thousand things – July
If June had been my worst month so far, then July was probably my best. Not quite as many new species as I found in May but then these were on top of the ones I had found in May, and all of the other five months in the first half of the year asContinue reading “To see a thousand things – July”
To see a thousand things – June
Where did June go? Before I knew it, it was the 23rd and I had only recorded an additional five species. Not that I hadn’t seen any wildlife this month, in fact I had seen quite a lot, including some species that I had never seen in the wild before, such as Muntjac and Spoonbill,Continue reading “To see a thousand things – June”
Raven on the Wing 