A butterfly’s wing

December isn’t a great month for butterflies (but then November wasn’t a great month for nature as a whole), although, of course, they are all (apart from the painted ladies and red admirals) still out there as eggs or pupae or some other clever way of getting through the winter if you really want to…

Fieldfares

This is the season when, as I drive around east Northants, a small flock of large thrushes will fly out of the roadside trees or be looking for worms in the grass fields.  They are chunky and have patches of grey on their heads and backs – and are fieldfares.  These thrushes come to see…

Use them!

On one of the last day’s of my trip to the USA I watched a killdeer calling in alarm as a man, unwittingly I think, disturbed the bird from its chicks.  The bird’s cries cut through the mist of the June Gloom on the California coast – I won’t forget the sound of them as…

Various again

I went out for a walk on 1 December – it’s one of the things I can do now I am self-employed.  There were fresh worm casts on the lawn and quite a lot of insects in the air – it hardly felt like December.  At my local patch of Stanwick Lakes there were golden…