I was 8 years old when I saw my first eagle. We were holidaying on Arran and it rained every day for a fortnight. But it didn’t matter that Scotland was wet, I had gone with a firm belief that I would find gold in the mountains and despite the conditions, serendipity soared over usContinue reading “White-tail”
Category Archives: Nature Blog
The Shortest Month
I once worked with a Sci-Fi nut who took pride in seeing everything, knowing everything and being first to everything. With a brand-new Star Wars film on the horizon he was saving pennies and beginning to bubble. And in order to ensure he saw it before anyone else he knew, he bought plane tickets toContinue reading “The Shortest Month”
Catkins
Hazel catkins hang like lanolin lanterns. Little lamb’s tails that shine against the chocolate brown of the ploughed field beyond. The leaves remain tucked up, but the season is shifting. Spring is coming but winter has yet to bite. There is a different kind of cold out there though. Clouds casting shadows where even theContinue reading “Catkins”
Slipping
It can be difficult to roll with nature’s fluctuations. Man has, after all, gone to extraordinary lengths to avoid them for himself. There is much to admire in what we have achieved as a species – science, welfare and medicine have created a world (certainly in the West) which, though far from equal, does offerContinue reading “Slipping”
Stranger Things
Despite the recent heatwave, the blistering temperatures and sweaty, sleepless nights, it still feels as though we are waiting for summer. Not a settled period of pleasant warmth and sunshine, but more the essence of the season. A sense of stopping and feeling, a pause of worry and an ease of workload. An expectationContinue reading “Stranger Things”
Cuckoo
I miscounted this morning and thought this was our 8th spring in Dorset when it is in fact our 9th, but the difference is slight, and the sentiment all the more significant as a result. I heard a cuckoo – the first I have heard here. It was far-off, and came through the thick ofContinue reading “Cuckoo”
Curled up
January. A thick head and heavy limbs. Uncomfortably numb. Comfort comes in sleep. A gentle drift into dreams. They aren’t always pleasant, and many are bizarre and untouchable, but my subconscious is kinder to me now than my conscious. No guilt for not doing, for spending too long in bed. For not being gratefulContinue reading “Curled up”
Butterfly Summer
Water drips from the gutter edges and streams down the bulge of the waterbutt. The ridge beyond the field just a vague blur behind a screen of rain. Its welcome, to some degree, although perhaps not in such instant quantity. The woods where I walked last evening were dusty and bare, a few withered chanterellesContinue reading “Butterfly Summer”
Garden Party
Spring has sunk into high summer. Days of hot sunshine and sneezes, the air thick with pollen and a rapidly expanding grasshopper orchestra. My time has been stretched. A new issue of Fallon’s Angler has been tied up and released, a sample chapter for a potential project picked at and almost certainly over-scrutinised. A newContinue reading “Garden Party”
Bloodlines
Such is the power of the current Brexit storm, that any issue unconnected (and many things connected) is swept out of thought almost as soon as it comes to mind. And having turned the most complex of sociological and economic issues into a straightforward question of ‘Yes or No’, it seems that every pointContinue reading “Bloodlines”
Kevin Parr 