I was back in the wood this week, helping Joan and John with their restoration project. The forecast blatantly lied about there being no rain all day, but luckily we timed our visit with a brief spell of sunshine! The breeze brought the added benefit of whisking the midges away. After topping up the feeders we had a slice of Joan’s delicious homemade ginger and sultana cake and watched the chaffinches and great tits up in the trees.
A dewy apple ready to be picked
One good thing about the rain is it brings up all sorts of fungi – with so much soggy soil and plenty of log stumps I knew there would be loads to see in a few days’ time. For now though, I amused myself with tiny sprigs of yellow stagshorn fungus that were just starting to emerge. I’ve been lucky enough to see several fly agarics already this year but I’ve got my fingers crossed that more will be popping up in the wood soon.
Yellow stagshorn fungus
The autumn colours are really beginning to pop. Ling heather is still dominating the woodland floor but a lot of the saplings are shining in the sun too. The rowans are beginning to brown, the oak leaves are turning acid green and the wild cherry leaves are burning a vivid pink. It’s an excellent place to learn tree ID and with Joan’s help I’m already picking up on some of the common species.
Wild cherry leaves
As I watched a buzzard gliding overhead, Joan ventured off to pick the first blackberries and the last raspberries. There were a few apples which were ready to be plucked too. I’m in love with all the rich colours and can’t wait to see what the true autumn will bring!
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.
Last night I had a lovely meal at the Grant Arms Hotel in Grantown-on-Spey before seeing a talk by Iolo Williams. Despite current news and hysteria, the lecture room was full to the rafters and extra chairs had to be squeezed into gaps.
Iolo’s new book is called “The UK’s Top 40 Nature Sites” and highlights natural gems up and down the country from the Lizard Peninsula in Cornwall all the way up to the Shetland Islands. Naturally, Iolo said that every site in England, Scotland and Ireland paled in comparison to those in Wales, “God’s own country”.
Iolo is such an inspiring speaker, sharing his stories with the confidence and laid back attitude of someone chatting in a pub. His passion is palpable and easily transfers to his audience. As well as golden eagles and puffins, Iolo was keen to highlight smaller and lesser known species. I learnt what the lion’s mane fungus looks like, and discovered just how beautiful the marsh fritillary butterfly is.
As I sat listening to Iolo’s favourite wild places, I realised that I’d actually been to quite a few of them myself. It gave me the idea of gathering my own list. Some of them are in Iolo’s book but some are my own additions. I’ve chosen places that offer almost guaranteed sightings of a particular species or the opportunity to get lost in secluded wildness. Either way, I hope people discover and fall in love with them as I have.
Anagach Woods
Iolo included Anagach in his book but I had to as well. I visited a few times when I was staying at the Grant Arms for the Wildlife Book Festival last spring and was absolutely captivated. I’ve never been in such a vast area of woodland. Although you will often see dog walkers at the edge of Anagach, as soon as you press further in and choose one of many winding trails, you quickly forget about cars, roads and people. Anagach is full of wildlife, from common coal tits and relatively easy to spot red squirrels to far rarer Scottish icons such as pine martens. Listen for crossbills flying over and look for the elusive but gorgeous crested tit, which is only found in the Caledonian pine forests of Scotland. One of my favourite sounds is a trickling stream running through a forest and I indulged my love for it in Anagach – perching on a rock watching water bubble past me between the trees. Unsurprisingly, it is easy to get lost in this sprawling forest, but that’s half the fun.
Goldcrest
Treecreeper
Farne Islands
The Farne Islands off the Northumberland coast are notorious for grey seals and I had the privilege of snorkelling with them in June 2018. It was during this visit that I had a seal swim up to me and wrap its front flippers around my leg, which is something I wish I’d photographed but will still never be able to forget.
But despite the excellent views of seals, I’ve chosen the Farnes for their astonishing bird life. Moments after disembarking from the boat we were carefully weaving around nests positioned just off the path, our ears slammed with the onslaught of squawking from razorbills, guillemots, cormorants and everyone’s favourite, the puffin. I’d seen glimpses of puffins between waves before, but on the Farnes you can watch from a front row seat as they go about their business of hunting sandeels and dashing into burrows. For anyone wanting to see their first puffin, the Farnes are the place to go.
Puffins
Razorbill
Burghead Backshore
It is only recently that I’ve discovered just how special the Burghead Backshore is for wildlife. In just two weeks of living on this small peninsula jutting into the Moray Firth, I’ve seen plenty of cars parked along the bank with binocular-clad birders clambering out to scan the shore. People come from all over, including paying customers on Highland Safaris from Aviemore.
I can’t speak for every season, but so far during late winter I’ve had almost daily sightings of goldeneye, long-tailed duck, eider, red-breasted merganser, turnstone and redshank. For such a small area, the Backshore is bursting even during the lean winter months.
And of course, there are more than birds to be found around Burghead. The Moray Firth is one of the best places in the UK for bottlenose dolphins, and basking sharks and minke whales have also been seen, as well as grey seals. I can’t wait for the proper dolphin season to kick off in May, as I haven’t managed to spot any yet. This weekend I’m going to Inverness to become trained as a Shorewatch volunteer for Whale and Dolphin Conservation, so I can carry out official cetacean surveys in Burghead. I can’t wait to learn more about my local marine wildlife and contribute to conservation.
Cormorant
Redshank
Isle of Cumbrae
In May 2018 I attended a Field Studies Council weekend course on the Isle of Cumbrae in Ayrshire. It was a jump into the unknown that I didn’t fully appreciate until I was standing spread-legged in the shallows peering down into rockpools and glancing at a sheet of paper I didn’t really understand. The course taught us how to identify biotopes – the combination of a physical habitat and the biological community that lives in it – and although I certainly enjoyed staring down microscopes and poring over textbooks that weekend, the highlight for me was spending two full days on the beach looking for creatures in rock pools. We saw beadlet anemones, a stunning dahlia anemone, acorn barnacles, hermit crabs and common prawns. Every rock revealed a different discovery. Despite spending plenty of summer days at the beach in the past, I’ve never done so much rock pooling before and the FSC course started a new fascination for marine wildlife that I’m hoping to return to now I’m living on the coast.
A few years ago I had an article published in New Nature magazine about my time in the Cheviot Hills in Northumberland. In autumn last year I pitched another article, this time about my visit to Anagach Woods in Grantown-on-Spey, my all time favourite area of woodland. There was no room in the autumn issue but it has just been published in the first issue of 2020.
New Nature is written, designed and produced entirely by young people. It features the work of ecologists, photographers, ecologists and writers. Its purpose is primarily to entertain, but with an underlying mission to celebrate wildlife and encourage its protection. I feel proud to be part of a project run by the younger generation and know that I have contributed alongside a team of talented and passionate individuals.
To read the latest issue of the magazine, click here.
Recently I travelled up to Northumberland to visit friends from university. They are two of the busiest people I know, so I was pleased to be able to steal a few days in October to catch up and visit their local patch.
The first thing I experienced was severe house envy. Wildlife art adorned every wall; the sort of beautiful paintings and drawings that I planned to splash all over my own home some day. However, it was the bookshelf that really caught my attention. Sprawled across an entire wall and almost reaching the ceiling, it was crammed with every book on natural history you could want. Not just modern paperbacks but antiquarian hardbacks with leather bound covers and swirling gold titles. In front of every row of books was an envious selection of treasures: pinecones, gannet eggshells, roe deer antlers, pin badges, lino prints, Wade Whimsies, fossils, gemstones, lichens, miniature animal wood carvings and a beautifully preserved badger skull with its lower jaw intact. I spent ages studying everything in turn, gravitating first to the roe antlers. I have a roe buck skull of my own – one of my most prized possessions – but I still long to find dropped antlers too. It was an impressive collection of everything nature, framed by dozens of books from my wish list.
I stayed with my friends for a long weekend and managed to cram quite a lot into those few days. Heather and I visited a fantastic patch of woodland, which was home to not only red squirrels but also pine martens! I knew we probably wouldn’t catch a glimpse of one during the day, but it was still exciting to walk among trees that might be housing a sleeping marten. It was so peaceful and quiet with only faint birdsong punctuating the air. As we searched for fungi to photograph, I found a gorgeous caterpillar making its way along the fence. Later, we discovered it was a buff tip moth caterpillar.
Photo by Heather Devey
The next day I helped Heather with a “Mini Wildlife Adventure” that she was running for a child’s birthday party. The boy was intrigued by nature and so he and his friends spent the morning pond dipping, searching for bugs, finding badger prints and birdwatching in a hide. It was such a fantastic idea for a birthday party, and it was particularly refreshing to see that the boys had good wildlife knowledge and were genuinely excited by what they saw. Educating children about nature at a young age is the key to ensuring they continue to care about it when they grow up. Those boys would have spent hours pond dipping if we’d had the time, and it was so lovely to see.
Here there be badgers
That evening Heather, Cain and I spent a peaceful last evening watching Sherlock with the fire cracking and snapping in the grate. It had been a pretty jam-packed weekend but as always, I felt inspired with a rejuvenated love for nature that always comes after a trip to northern England or Scotland. I sometimes struggle to feel that same passion at home in the south, where there are more people and noise and far fewer pine martens. I love escaping to the wilder parts of the UK and look forward to another wildlife adventure very soon.
The first wildlife I encountered when I crossed over the bridge into Tring Park was the grasshoppers. They were everywhere, their electric buzz sounding from every direction. The pale grass in which they were concealed was jungle-thick with a million places to hide, but a particularly noisy individual drew me in and I knelt on the grass and studied the ground intensely. Suddenly I found the culprit, rubbing its legs together with fierce ferocity. I just managed to take a few quick photos before the insect propelled itself into the air, leaving the leaf bouncing with the impact.
As stunning as the open parkland was – with butterflies flitting through the grass and red kites wheeling in slow circles overhead – I sought the shade of the forest, already beginning to perspire in another bout of sweltering August heat. The cooling cover of the trees was instantaneous and I made my way up the hill. Sloping overhead from left and right, the trees sighed as a breeze whistled through them. The canopy was a blend of greens, browns, oranges and, where the sun was shining, molten gold. Further up the hill I found a small clearing speckled with sun and shade and set down my blanket. Blue tits churred up in the trees and a distant jay screeched into the silence.
The first activity came from two grey squirrels who came darting at full pelt straight through the clearing. One continued right past me but the second wasn’t nearly so trusting. Hopping onto a nearby tree, the squirrel studied me intensely. After a few moments’ deliberation, it decided to take the long way round and shimmied up the tree in fragmented bursts, pausing every so often to stare again, bushy tail twitching. I’d obviously plonked myself in a squirrel playground and this one was making sure I knew it.
After the branches had stopped shivering from the squirrels’ antics, the forest fell silent. My eyes kept catching on long lines of spider web that sparkled each time the sun touched them. They were mesmerising; delicate gossamer threads lifted by the breeze. Behind them, voices permeated through the forest and a group of dog walkers marched past, each dog’s nose on overdrive with all the enticing aromas. Another squirrel foraged close by, exploring the leaf litter in small hops and tail twitches.
Every so often a single leaf would fall, twirling slowly to the ground like confetti. It seemed that no animal had disturbed it, so it must already be the beginning of autumn. Soon, the leaves would explode into warm colours and tumble to the ground before the first frost.
There was another rustle to my right and I glanced up, expecting to see another dog walker or jogger. An involuntary gasp escaped and I watched in disbelief as a female roe deer headed straight towards me. She briefly disappeared behind a tree and when she emerged suddenly spotted me, stopping dead in her tracks three metres from where I was sat. For several long moments we stared at each other, both equally incredulous. I willed her not to be scared of me but she was naturally rigid with unease. My camera lay right next to me within easy reach, but I knew the second I moved she would bolt. So I ignored my photographer’s instinct and stayed frozen.
We continued to gaze at each other and I took the opportunity to admire her beautiful face with its large, black nose and literal doe eyes. Eventually she skirted around me, falling back to a safer distance and emerging onto the path, her elegant legs moving in long strides. As she retreated I grabbed my camera and snapped just before she disappeared, although of course my real photo opportunity was long gone.
Proof that it happened!
There comes a time when an encounter is worth not getting the picture and I believe that was one of those times (or so I kept telling myself afterwards). Not only would reaching for my camera have startled the deer unfairly, but it would have undoubtedly shortened my time with her. For those few precious seconds I ignored all distractions and savoured the thrill of engaging with a wild animal, especially one as naturally wary as a deer. Experiences like that don’t happen every day and sometimes it’s best to simply be in the moment, even if you pass up the possibility of a killer Instagram post.
Long after the deer had gone I buzzed with excitement. The afternoon was warm but goose bumps had risen on my arms as I sat relishing the encounter. I’d always been captivated by the elegance and composed beauty of deer. In a way I found them near mythical. Despite their supposed abundance I very rarely see them, so to experience one so unexpectedly close and without any warning was exhilarating.
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