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Book Review: ‘60 Degrees North’ by Malachy Tallack

Around the world in search of home.
Invertigo

I’ve never seen stars remotely approaching those in Anglesey. There are so damn many of them. Thousand upon thousand. Too many to count.
LRB letter: ‘Weather-forecasting frogs’

On the unlikely 17th and 18th-century German fashion of keeping tree frogs to forecast the weather.
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.
Keep a writing journal

…The best writing advice I ever received.
Dipper waiting

With half an hour to kill in Hebden Bridge, I head over to the river to see if there are any dippers around.
Life’s too short for pristine notebooks

How I eventually overcame my reluctance to write in my precious notebooks.
The seahorse and the pelican

How a passage from W.G. Sebald’s The Rings of Saturn might give a clue to some family history.
Snapping at swallows

My dad’s dog and I both pursue swallows in our own way.
The advantages of a borrowed dog

One thing I hadn’t really appreciated, when walking dogs in the countryside, is just how much more you can end up seeing.
The great Darwin fossil hunt

For my 50th birthday, a friend beyond compare organised a very special birthday present for the only self-confessed ‘Darwin groupie’ in her life.
Sir Thomas Browne observes a murmuration of starlings

Quote from ‘Notes and Letters on the Natural History of Norfolk More Especially on the Birds and Fishes’.