NORTH DOWNS & BEYOND

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...

From my folder marked 'Mystery Pictures' - best left to the experts... He may not have kicked over a hornet's nest exactly, but Seth Gibson's recent blog post on Pan-species Listing (PSL) ( you can read it here ) has certainly stirred up a bit of debate on social media (including a blog post from Alastair Forsyth which you can read here ). This is my contribution to the conversation. I think I can safely say that I was in at the start of the whole PSL movement. I had, just like Seth, independently started to collate a list of every living organism that I had recored in the UK and, just like Seth, this was primarily a lumping together of my bird, plant, butterfly, moth and dragonfly lists plus a handful of obvious others (ie Stag Beetle, Pike, Fox, you get the picture). My non-core identification library was scant and woefully inadequate, but it was all that I had to use - remember, these were pre-internet days! If I saw a wasp, fly, beetle or fungus, I took my basic ide...

Priest Hill. Until the Second World War it was north Surrey farmland, a mix of arable (wheat, barley, oats and potatoes) with a small herd of Jersey cows that were used for milking. A demand for the payment of death duties meant that the owners were forced to sell, which in 1942 brought in the tidy sum of £100,000 from Surrey and London County Councils. The farm was demolished in 1956 which then lead to the building of Ewell Technical College and the creation of playing fields for the use of Tulse Hill School, used to service its 2,000+ pupils, who were bussed in from South London. When Tulse Hill closed in 1990 the playing fields, changing rooms, tennis courts and cricket nets were abandoned to vandals, graffiti artists, fly tippers, travellers, glue sniffers, motor bike off-roaders... and me. I used to wander across the fast vegetating land, a vast open wasteland, to see what alien plants were springing up and what (few) birds I could find. A bit of the land was saved (Glyn Schoo...

The heading of this post may give you the false impression that I had some sort of connection with David Hockney - maybe that we shared studio space, or he was a drinking buddy - but no, we never met and he certainly had never heard of me, whereas I, of course, had heard of him. It would be virtually impossible to think of a list of the highly creative individuals that blessed the 1960s and not have him in their number: The Beatles, Twiggy, Terence Stamp, David Bailey, Mary Quant, David Hockney… they all slip off the tongue with ease and without so much as a need to think about it because they were all so iconic of that era - and continue to be so, so strong are their legacies. ‘A Bigger Splash’ and ‘Mr and Mrs Clark and Percy’ are just two of his paintings that will be familiar to many and just as redolent of the brightness and freedom of the 1960s as is ‘Sgt. Pepper’ and the mini-skirt. If I’m being honest, I’m not old enough to fully appreciate what was going on at this time - I can...