Continued from yesterday After eighteen months away from work I began to reflect on my time spent wandering around the wilder corners of mid-Devon. I was increasingly aware of a nagging sense of dissatisfaction. I’d seen plenty of interesting things, including species I’d been trying to track down for years without success, and I’d enjoyed…
Tag: Ian Carter
Guest blog series, A Break from Humanity (3) by Ian Carter.
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Continued from yesterday… The decision to move down to the south-west offered the prospect of living in a less heavily-developed part of the country with a more varied countryside – a prospect enhanced by the free time I would have following redundancy. We rented Blagrove Farm, a house on a dairy farm in sparsely-populated mid-Devon,…
Guest blog series, A Break from Humanity (2) by Ian Carter.
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Continued from click here We tried hard to make the best of what the fens had to offer. We lived close to the vast Ouse Washes nature reserve for several years and delighted in the fact that the reserve’s wild Whooper and Bewick’s Swans would overfly the garden most days in winter, on route between…
Guest blog series, A Break from Humanity (1) by Ian Carter.
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Mark writes: Ian Carter is a frequent contributor to this blog as a writer of book reviews, a series of Guest Blogs on Wild Food (but some others on other subjects) and as a commenter. I’m pleased to share this series of Guest Blogs from one of Ian’s writing projects with you. The first five…
This blog’s books of the year 2018
This blog has reviewed 41 books this year (and many thanks to Ian Carter for his reviews). My selection of the ‘top 4’ books of the year is as follows; Number 4 A tour-de-force of clear writing about a technical subject. Deserves to be widely read. Which birds are related to which others most closely?…
Guest blog – Hunting Crimes in Devon (2) by Ian Carter
Traditional pack of hounds and riders on Dartmoor 2014. There is no suggestion intended that the individuals who appear in this image were, are, or ever have been engaged in illegal activities. I wrote Fox Hunting Crimes on Mark’s blog back in April, based on my eye-opening experience of living in mid-Devon for two hunting…
Meet the authors at the Bird Fair
The Authors’ Forum is a relatively new idea at the Bird Fair but it has certainly caught on. It allows authors to talk about their latest books and the audience to question them – or just have a look at the face, listen to the voice and explore the thoughts of the person whose name…
Guest blog – rewilding a step too far? by Ian Carter
There is much discussion about the potential for restoring species lost as a result of human persecution. Some have already made their return and our landscapes are all the better for it. After only a few decades since their reintroduction, a trip to the Chilterns without seeing Red Kites or to north-west Scotland without seeing…
Wild food (39) – Bilberry by Ian Carter
I used to think of the Bilberry (often Blaeberry north of the border) as an upland plant – something available for browsing in high summer when crossing wide expanses of heath or moor. In recent years I’ve found it along local hedge-banks and within deciduous woodland in the dairy and sheep country of the lowlands,…
Wild food (38) – Wild Strawberry by Ian Carter
This is a delightful plant, especially at this time of year when there is every chance it will be dripping with irresistible red berries. It has the sharply-serrated, trifoliate leaves typical of all strawberries, and delicate white flowers which give way to the perfect, albeit tiny, red fruits. In all respects it is a diminutive…