Earlier this week I went looking for badgers. Unfortunately I didn’t see any but I wasn’t discouraged. Any foray into the natural world is dependent on good timing and a healthy dose of luck. Besides, even if you don’t manage to see what you set out to find, there’s nearly always a surprise and this evening was no exception. As well as a brown hare, a very well camouflaged roe deer and pairs of siskins and greenfinches, I met a bubbly family of wrens living beneath the eaves of a tiny shed.
There were two slender adults and five golfball chicks all hopping from the shed to nearby trees and back, the latter being particularly vocal and standing with their beaks wide open demanding a snack. Wrens are notoriously bold and easily one of the noisiest British birds in relation to their size so they weren’t at all afraid of me; in fact they continued their foraging quite happily while I sat below with my camera. Of course it would have been lovely to see some badgers, but it’s just an excuse to go back and see what surprises I find next time.
Recently I was very pleasantly surprised to see an email in my inbox from the editor of Pay Our Planet magazine asking me to write a feature for them. I hadn’t heard of them because it was going to be the very first issue. I leapt at the chance and decided to write about red squirrels, which are an animal very close to my heart. During my time at university I was lucky enough to have some very up-close encounters with red squirrels in Lockerbie, and can now spot them quite regularly in the forests near where I live.
I was particularly taken by how environmentally aware Pay Our Planet is. Studies have shown that mangrove trees store carbon at a rate of four times that of mature tropical forests, so Pay Our Planet have partnered with the Eden Reforestation Project to plant mangrove trees in Madagascar. For every subscriber of the digital magazine, Pay Our Planet plants 15 trees each month. This makes that subscriber carbon positive, meaning their actions remove more carbon from the atmosphere than they put into it.
It’s been such a privilege to share the story of one of Britain’s most well-loved species to an international audience. I’m so grateful to Pay Our Planet for giving me the opportunity to not only write a feature for the magazine but also for putting my photo on the front cover!
With all the dolphin excitement recently, I’ve been sticking closely to the shore on my walks and neglecting the forest. I’ve always been worried that I’ll walk for miles and then get an alert saying there are leaping whales in the complete opposite direction.
But, the other day I decided to take a chance and walk the dog in the forest for a change. Within five minutes, I saw a flash of rosy red and my heart did the familiar jolt that happens whenever I see something unexpected. And this was certainly unexpected: a pair of bullfinches not twenty feet away from me.
I’ve been trying to get a decent photo of a bullfinch for years. They’re one of my favourite birds but I’ve only seen them a handful of times. On every occasion they’ve either kept their backs to me or been concealed behind branches. I’ve taken a few blurry shots that prove they were there, but they’ve never been good enough to post. Now I was being treated with both male and female. While the male is more conventionally striking, I find the dusty brown plumage of the female just as beautiful. I just love their short, stubby bills, which are perfect for cracking hard seeds.
During the entire encounter my dog was amusing herself elsewhere, completely indifferent to my excitement. I stayed with the bullfinches as they hopped around logs and fluttered up to low branches. I could have sat and watched them for hours, but after a while I left them in peace.
Still buzzing from my sighting later that day, I decided to go back to the forest for an evening walk. There would be fewer humans and hopefully more animals to see. Roe deer were another of my favourites and a few weeks ago I saw a flash of brown fur as a doe pelted past me. I was keen to get a good photo of one – they were another animal that I’d never managed to get a proper glimpse of. So, despite the warm evening I wrapped up and headed out again. The sun wouldn’t be setting until 10pm so I had plenty of daylight left. In fact, it was prime golden hour and the broom – a shrub similar to gorse but without the spines – was glittering.
It seemed I hadn’t run out of good luck. After walking for less five minutes I saw movement through the trees. Four of the skinny saplings weren’t trees at all but slender brown legs. I froze where I was, conscious of every snappable twig by my feet. She was moving slowly, leisurely. I dared myself to tread up a grassy mound for a slightly higher viewpoint. There was so much dense ground foliage that I couldn’t see her very well. She headed to my left, straight towards a clearing between two columns of trees where I’d be able to see her perfectly. I lifted my camera slowly to my face and waited. When the moment came, the click of the first photo caught her attention and she turned to face me. For about ten seconds we stared at one another. Her pricked ears were huge satellite dishes on an otherwise skinny face, punctuated by large eyes and the characteristic roe moustache. The light was fading and I stretched to a slightly higher ISO than I would have liked. I knew the images were going to be a little grainy, but my deer was posing magnificently.
Eventually, human voices cut through my moment (of all the 1700 acres they could have chosen!) and the deer darted back the way she’d come. With such a slow shutter speed I had no hope of capturing her at that pace, so I just watched her springy legs disappear into the trees.
Inspired by such an early sighting, I pressed deeper into the woods, keeping my ears open for any unusual sounds that I wouldn’t hear during the day. The fantastical idea of pine martens popped into my mind but I pushed it away. To see a wild pine marten on my first evening forest walk would something close to miraculous. But a fox or perhaps an owl might be more likely, so I stayed as quiet as I could and did my best to avoid noisy leaf litter, although my stealth skills left a lot to be desired.
It’s astonishing how soothing a forest can be, if you let yourself align to its peace and quiet. I regularly stopped to listen to the birds, which at 9pm were still going strong. Far off, a blackbird perched on an overhead wire. If I closed my eyes, I could easily have been sat on my garden porch in Hertfordshire. A blackbird used to sing in the holly tree every evening without fail, and the sound became a firm part of my childhood. Elsewhere in the forest tonight was a chaffinch’s downward running tune, a wren’s bolstering trill and a chiffchaff whistling its name. I took recordings on my phone of all the assembled voices.
I walked and sat in the forest for three hours, until eventually at 10:15pm I began to feel the chill. Even so, the light was close to what it had been when I arrived, just without the bright sun – everything was lit with a milky glow that carried on long into the night. Moray is situated on the same latitude line as Gothenburgh in Sweden so during the summer months, the days last much longer and nothing goes completely dark. It’s a phenomenon I haven’t gotten used to yet. Many nights recently I’ve gone to bed and it’s still been light outside.
Taken at 10:17pm
I decided to call it a night. Looping back the way I’d come, I headed down the straight track that was lined on both sides by thick clouds of broom. I glanced briefly through a gap in the foliage and saw a face. Freezing, I stepped slowly back and came eye to eye with a male roe deer. My fingers itched for my camera, but there was no real chance of getting a photo. I could barely make him out with the naked eye. Most of his body was shrouded in shadows cast by the trees, but his face and antlers were dimly lit enough to spot. Again, we stood eyeing each other for a few moments before he took off, bounding down the ditch and up again. Then a sharp, gruff bark broke through the trees, which I realised was the deer! I’d never heard their barks before and couldn’t believe how canine they sounded. I wondered now if perhaps I had heard it and just dismissed it as a dog. It was haunting, especially in an ever darkening forest, but I loved it.
When I broke out of the trees and onto the open field, the spell broke. I felt a physical difference between the forest and civilisation. For hours I’d immersed myself in a place where people weren’t the most abundant presence and it was unbelievably refreshing. I decided, during the summer at least, to make my evening forays a regular thing. Daytime walks are good – I’d seen my bullfinches that morning after all – but there’s something far more mysterious and captivating about the night.
It’s Nature Journaling Week! I’ve taken on the challenge of writing and illustrating a page in my nature journal every day from the 1st – 7th June. I always miss the international weeks and days but luckily I caught this one the night before it began. I’ve kept a nature journal for about nine months now, but recently it’s become more difficult to make time for it with my masters and other work commitments. So, Nature Journaling Week couldn’t have come at a better time for me.
As well as daily prompts, the week includes workshops and virtual events with nature journaling teacher and author John Muir Laws and author and artist Tim Pond. There is a huge amount of information on the website, so if you have a flair for journaling or even just a curious interest then get involved!
For day one I visited my local forest, which has always been a great place to relax and reflect. As well as birds and butterflies, there are furrier creatures to be spotted too. I’ve glimpsed a roe deer dashing through the gorse on previous visits, but I had a particularly special sighting yesterday.
ROSEISLE FOREST
What a brilliant morning. Before we’d even entered the forest I saw a juvenile robin, house martins sweeping up under rooftops to reach their nests and a female blackbird with a mouthful of food. When we left the road behind, the natural soundscape took over: the whispering “whoo whoo” of wind beneath a crow’s beating wings, the scuds and crunches of pinecones underfoot and a distant chiffchaff singing its name.
The branches of young conifers were like apple green hairbrushes, still soft with youth, while the thick knots of spiderwebs twisted around twig tips resembled silver microphones. Elsewhere, the fine gossamer hung between papery trunks shone golden in the spots of light seeping through the canopy. A dunnock was singing – its pink mouth open wide. Fluttering leaf-like was a speckled wood butterfly, basking on the dry earth with lazy blinks of its wings.
We looped back towards home, relaxed and at peace after a little forest therapy. Just as I glimpsed the first row of houses, a branch rustled overhead and revealed the tiny body of a red squirrel! It stared at me for a moment before taking off over the treetops, lost in greenness and silence.
It was so lovely to take time out to concentrate on creative writing and art. It’s easy to get distracted with pressing deadlines, but it’s also important to break that routine and reset yourself. I returned from my walk more relaxed, (thrilled after the squirrel sighting!) and ready to begin the day. I hope Nature Journaling Week will inspire more people to not only visit wild places (ensuring appropriate social distancing of course) but also to record their interactions in a journal to reflect on them for years to come.
I had just finished dinner after a fairly uneventful day when I received a tip off from Steve – wildlife photographer, skipper and all-round marine mammal wizard – who told me there were bottlenoses on the way. I jumped into a down jacket and grabbed my camera. Luckily my daily walk can include a long stretch of rocky shoreline, which is infamous for its wildlife including the Moray Firth dolphins. Half a minute later I was slammed by an unexpected wind and I regretted not grabbing a hat on my way out. Although, I wasn’t sure how fast the dolphins were going and another half minute could be the make or break.
Keeping my two metre distance from Steve, we started scanning the water. He spied them far out, almost level with the next town, but we stayed put. If they didn’t turn north and swim further away, they would follow the coast and come straight past us. There was still lots to photograph while we waited. Groups of gannets – easily one of my favourite birds – were diving just offshore and a grey heron was settled hunch-shouldered on the rocks, surrounded by the usual mob of herring gulls and oystercatchers.
Suddenly the dolphins appeared again, much closer this time. They began to breach, leaping one, two or even three at a time. Photographing them felt a bit like playing Whack-a-mole – just when I thought I’d caught one, it had already landed with a splash and another had sprung up somewhere else. Once, two jumped together in perfect synchronicity, and no sooner had they landed than another pair took their place in the air. As so often happens, I was trying so hard to get the shot that I occasionally missed some of the action. But, when animals bigger than most grown humans are flinging themselves out of the water and performing acrobatic stunts, it’s almost impossible not to lift the camera and watch through the viewfinder. I find there’s nothing more enjoyable about wildlife photography than the unpredictability.
The cold was nibbling my face but there was no way I’d go home for my hat now. Dolphins were jumping in multiple directions, and all of them heading towards the sunset. We hiked up to the headland for a higher vantage point. As the dolphins got closer to the sun, the water streaming from their bellies mid-leap turned golden. Even with the naked eye you could spot them between waves from the clouds of shimmery spray erupting from their blow holes. Every so often there’d be a breach, but they were gradually heading further out. Still, Steve had never known them to linger for so long in one place. I was pleased not just to watch them but to know there was plenty of food to keep them there.
The sun finally set, casting a bright orange glow over the water. It was moments like that when I knew I’d made the right decision to move to Scotland. Sitting on the grass, shivering in the cold and watching dolphins breaching out at sea.
Although I’m naturally quite an introverted person and love having time to myself, I’ve still struggled to adapt to the lockdown routine. I like to potter around outside for hours while I write or just watch the world go by, so it goes without saying that I’ve missed wildlife far more than the pub. Alerts have hit my local Facebook groups about ospreys just a few miles away from me and orcas (orcas!) further along the coast, but lockdown measures have kept me stuck in one spot.
Still, it’s a beautiful spot to be stuck in, and there have been some new visitors to my local patch over the past few weeks. Before the clocks went forward, the daily sightings always included goldeneyes, long-tailed ducks and red-breasted mergansers. Now, as the spring wildflowers emerge and the days grow longer, I’m seeing some new faces on the backshore.
Willow Warbler
When I arrived in Scotland I was told that May was the true start of the bottlenose dolphin season, but I’ve already been spotting dorsal fins on the water. I’ve had three different sightings so far, and on the second I managed to photograph some for the first time. Even from a distance and with most of their bodies submerged, it’s easy to see just how large these marine mammals are. In fact, the bottlenose dolphins in the Moray Firth are the largest and most northerly in the world.
Bottlenose Dolphin
As well as cetaceans, there’s been some avian excitement too. My absolute favourite birds have arrived in my patch: gannets! I glimpsed a white wingspan last week but wasn’t sure if it was just another herring gull, but since then I’ve had indisputable views of these vast and beautiful seabirds. As well as flyovers, I had the privilege of watching a dozen gannets diving for fish just offshore – twisting their bodies and tucking in their wings at the last moment before hitting the water like feathered torpedoes. I’ve always been drawn to gannets’ subtle plumage and dramatic facial markings and it’s been such a treat to watch them in my patch.
Gannet
As I walk along the shore, I have the option of looking left to the ocean or right to dense clouds of gorse. As well as infusing the air with a beautiful coconut smell, the gorse provides excellent shelter for lots of different birds. Over the last week I’ve seen willow warblers, stonechats, linnets, skylarks, hooded crows, swallows, swifts and yellowhammers in just a small area. The charm of the gorse forest is that you never know what you’re going to spot and I’m almost always surprised by something.
Yellowhammer (male)Stonechat (male)
Although I’m usually drawn towards birds and mammals, I can’t help but notice emerging insects as the temperature climbs. Just along from the town allotments I’ve seen bees, peacock and red admiral butterflies and green foliage that’s speckled with ladybirds.
It’s been difficult for us all to stay connected to the natural world during the lockdown, but seeing snippets of spring visitors on my daily walks has really lifted my mood. Nature never fails to make me feel better, and it’s during these challenging times that our time spent outdoors is the most important. Stay safe and stay wild everyone.
Jasmine brought me the ball again and shook her fur just as I stooped to pick it up, sending a spray of sand up into my face. Since I moved to the coast, sand is now a constant in my life. Every dip in a pocket reveals a new gathering of damp and slightly fishy dust, stuck like glue to every surface. I hurled the ball and Jas pelted after it, her pitter pattering paws the only sound in an otherwise silent evening. I had the beach to myself most days anyway, but recently it had become even more unusual to see another dog walker or jogger. Jas was none the wiser and was soon back at my feet again, tossing the ball up where it splatted against my shin and left a patch of sandy residue.
The evening was gloomy. Clouds were gathering and the little sunlight left was concealed behind the point at the end of the peninsula. My wet dog was getting curlier by the minute so I gave her a treat and put her back on the lead. She picked up her ball and carried it lovingly, ears lolling either side of a sand-clogged beard. I headed up the hill towards the pink splodge that hinted at an impressive sunset and scanned the shore. Herring gulls were gathered together on the rocks while a pair of red breasted mergansers bobbed in the shallows. A cormorant shot over the surface. The usuals.
I struggled with the lead, my soggy gloves and a poo bag as I rummaged in my pocket. The vivid sunset paled instantly as my phone decided not to pick up any of the oranges or pinks that I was seeing. Scowling at the phone and the dog as she began to dig a hole at my feet, I contented myself with just watching the sunset, but a black scratch on the water quickly made my stomach flip over. I lifted the binoculars up and yes! A dorsal fin! I could barely believe what I was seeing. For the last month I’d believed that dolphins were mythical creatures and I was more likely to see Nessie. But no, there were multiple bottlenose dolphins out there. As Jas continued to tug at a particularly stubborn tussock, I buzzed with excitement as the dolphins surfaced again. I counted four fins, although it was difficult when they didn’t all appear together. They were heading around the point so I followed them, hurrying along the thin trail that wound around the sheer edge of the hill. If I tripped the wrong way I’d plummet into the sea but I wasn’t too aware of that at the time. Jas followed reluctantly, no doubt wondering what the fuss was about.
Again! Definitely four fins, dark against the pale water. They were out of the sunset now and trickier to spot. Without the bright light, they were swallowed up by the mist already obscuring most of the horizon. They came up again but I could barely make them out. I began to feel rain, the sort of rain you don’t notice until you’re drenched, so I walked back to the house, scanning sideways the whole time, but my dolphins were gone for now.
I discovered ‘Sky Dance’ while looking for non-fiction titles in the Scottish Interest section of my local Waterstones. In the past I have struggled to engage with a lot of rewilding books and often been intimidated by the political conflict. But after reading the blurb I realised that ‘Sky Dance’ was actually a novel. The story follows two hill walkers who get caught up in a row between conservationists and landowners about the reintroduction of lynx into Scotland. There is a fictional island called Morven and a landowner who ticks all the stereotype boxes of a tweed outfit, upper middle-class pomposity and a disregard for any animals besides grouse.
It is a strange book in many ways – especially the surprising ending – but I enjoyed the unorthodox approach. Acknowledging a potentially heavy topic such as rewilding through the medium of fiction was intriguing. ‘Sky Dance’ conveys important messages while remaining full of action. There are a few too many side stories which muddled the plot for me, but the main narrative about the lynx was an engaging one.
It would be fantastic if the reintroduction of a long-lost predator into Scotland could one day be a reality and not a piece of fiction. Burns explains that lynx would pose no danger to humans and only have a very low impact on livestock. If famers were compensated for these small losses then lynx would undoubtedly make a valuable contribution to the restoration of an unbalanced ecosystem that is currently overflowing with deer and damaged trees. Wolves and bears raise more difficult issues, but I believe lynx should definitely be brought back to the UK. John D. Burns paints quite a haunting picture of what the Scottish Highlands could look like if we started to reverse the damage we’ve caused by hunting apex predators to extinction.
Published in 2019, ‘Sky Dance’ is John D. Burns’s third book. He has spent over forty years climbing mountains and fifteen years writing. To hear more from John, visit his website for blogs and podcasts.
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