NORTH DOWNS & BEYOND

Nostalgia. Is it a wimpish retreat into a bygone age, a celebration of what has gone before or just a plain old symptom of being a sentient human being who can look back as well as look forward? Maybe it is all three? I'm always mindful of Spike Milligan's take on the subject, an obsessive nostalgianarian (I may have just made up that word). He wrote something along the lines of - 'do we always look back in time because the present is troubling, the future is uncertain but the past is a known quantity' - some thing like that. I'm also drawn to the final line in F Scott Fitzgerald's novel 'The Great Gatsby' which is 'so we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past'. I wish I'd written that. Almost as good as 'I've seen things you people wouldn't believe' - I'll stop there before I go full flow into a response such as... "a quarter of a million hirundines fleeing the Kent coast and heading...

I've always liked to have plans, to have projects in the pipeline, a peg to hang my natural history sightings on, a reason behind why I do things even if those reasons are based more on a whim rather than scientific rationale. I also like to change things around a bit, hence my flitting between patches or swapping my core interests - normally birds, sometimes moths, there again it could be plants. Or trying to big up my Pan-species list. Itchy feet, a wandering mind, call it what you will but it is something that I have always suffered (or been blessed) with. And as the year starts to fade away (yes I know it is only July!) I like to prepare the ground for next year, that human construct of a time-line that some of us are slaves to. So, what has prompted my latest bout of 'thinking' - yes I can be accused of thinking now and again! Well, several things. First up is that need for me to hang my natural history sightings on a peg, to give a bit of reason and purpose to what I ...

For the inland moth trapper the chance of recording a scarce migrant moth is much higher than an inland birder recording a scarce migrant bird. I like to think of Vestals, Bordered Straws and Delicates as the lepidopteran equivalent of Yellow-browed Warblers, Red-backed Shrikes and Wrynecks - maybe not quite equals but I'm sure you get my drift. The latest heatwave has managed to send some more migrant moths to my modest inland garden in Surrey, with the first record of Ni Moth (pictured) plus two Small Mottled Willows - and on the back of two Striped Hawk-moths so far this year (plus a good few months of possible action to come) 2026 is turning out to be a decent year for continental wanderers. I have been recording the moths here in Banstead since 1987 and thought it a worthwhile exercise to tot up all of the migrant species that have come my way. I left out the much commoner species, such as noctuella, ferrugalis, and Silver Y, plus a few others that may have been pure migrants ...

I don't know how historians of the future will look back on the current period of time and how they will analyse it. What will they make of our species knowingly engineering an environmental breakdown, of the cover-ups, the denials, the greed? My fear is of a dystopian future, the obscenely rich and powerful living behind heavily protected barriers where new technologies and limitless money can stave-off the worst of the deprivations that the vast majority of the population suffer. I used to think that 'climate change' was going to be fed to us as a gradual process, the hotter summers, windier frontal systems and heavier rain incremental and slowly accepted. But not now. These life-threatening increases in temperature; the alarming melting of ice-caps, glaciers and permafrost; flash floods and landslides that are not generational events but are now annual ones - I haven't even mentioned crop failure, water insecurity and societal breakdown. There is no 'new normal...

I was having a dream that I was sitting in front of a giant aquarium, watching tropical fish swimming just inches away from my face. Without warning the glass exploded, engulfing me in freezing cold water and shards of glass. And at this violent moment I woke up, to be thoroughly confused as to what was happening as I was, in reality, being assaulted by cold water and broken glass - it was actually happening! Where on earth was I?... Jolted awake it took a few seconds to take in what was occurring. I was sitting in the front seat of Steve Broyd's car and his windscreen had been shattered by a Pheasant that had decided to fly straight at it as we travelled along the road at 50mph. My feeling of being immersed in cold water was, in fact, the cold winter air that was now howling into the opening car front. The glass was real. The Pheasant (a male) lay dead in the back of the car wedged between Bob and Scotty Hibbett. When the bird first entered the car Steve had looked around to see m...

As a family we have a great affection for the north Cornish coast and recently spent a week in the sleepy hamlet of West Pentire, east of Newquay. The area is well known for the wildflower fields that are under the stewardship of the National Trust, full of Common Poppies (largely over when we arrived), Corn Marigolds and other assorted arable plants. The image above gives some flavour as to the colour-scapes that such flowering can create. Corn Marigold is a fast disappearing species in my part of Surrey so it was a joy to see thousands of flowers in their pomp (below). Although not a holiday that had natural history as a central theme I did wander off on a number of occasions, taking advantage of the warm, sunny and settled weather plus the coastal footpath that takes you on a journey through some of the most stunning scenery the UK has to offer. I ventured as far as Perranporth on foot, via Polly Joke, Kelsey Head and the imposing sand dunes of both Holy Well and Perran. Considering...