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Isolation I press my nose against the pane in wonder. Sparrows and starlings squabble over seeds, and a blackbird sings. I can half-hear it, muffled by the barrier between us. My eyes slip down the lawn, past the trees, through the borders, to the back fence, and beyond. And beyond… And beyond the fence… well,…

Lockdown birding at home By April 7th, I had already ‘enjoyed’ two weeks of self-isolation and was starting my second week of ‘ordinary’ Lockdown.  I am fortunate that my garden and the fields I can see from it have most of the bird species of the surrounding habitat.  I have three standard bird feeders hanging…

From 9am I will publish the dozen shortlisted entries to this blog’s Lockdown Nature-writing Challenge. I hope you enjoy reading them – I certainly did. And from 10am you’ll be able to start voting for your favourite. A tip: by the time you read the last one you will have forgotten which was which earlier…

Tim writes: The name implies that this is a tropical species but it also occurs throughout the Southern Himalayas, so also goes by the name of Himalayan Porcupine (Histrix brachyura).  Its scientific name translates as short-tailed porcupine, even though its tail is quite long, but this distinguishes it from the Long-tailed Porcupine (Trichys fasciculata), which…

Tomorrow is International Dawn Chorus Day. Read Chris Baines’s guest blog about how this all started. Sunrise is about 5:20am but it gets light before then and birds start singing before it gets light. But the forecast is fine so I’ll set the alarm for 4:30am and step outside for half an hour or so….