The Welsh side
In all my years visiting the Dee Marshes, I had never looked across them from the Welsh side.
Spoonbill identification: harder than you might think
Struggling to identify a species is the best way to learn.
Keswick Woods
In which I return to a favourite childhood haunt after a gap of 40 years.
Hats off to geology!
Geology doesn't receive the recognition it deserves. Our modern understanding of how the world formed and evolved is one of science’s great triumphs.
The Art of Sloe Gardening
In which I attempt to grow blackthorn seedlings from sloes collected last autumn.
When is a buzzard not a buzzard?
…when it's a marsh harrier.
Peregrine-harrier tag-team challenge
In which I witness a peregrine and marsh harrier hunting together—almost as a team.
Pleasures of August
August on the Dee Marshes and the Pennine Moors, including encounters with a bolshie pheasant, a practising peregrine, and a flirty wheatear.
In the wilderness of Wirral
An unwelcome modern intrusion into one of my favourite wildernesses takes me on an unplanned medieval journey in reverse.
The iniquity of oblivion
In the fudge-box-pretty village of Burton on my native Wirral Peninsula lie two graves, their inscriptions now utterly lost.