NORTH DOWNS & BEYOND

  Most of my plant hunting has taken place in what could be described as urban and suburban settings. For every search of a Scottish Mountain or an English saltmarsh there have been hundreds across the streets of south London and northern Surrey. This may at first suggest that the rewards in such man-made habitats will be somewhat lacking, but, as much as my chance of finding a Drooping Saxifrage here is nil, the cross-section of plant families and species composition will be much higher. I was therefore delighted to discover that Bloomsbury had published 'Urban Plants', a book in their 'British Wildlife Collection' by the notable botanist Trevor Dines. It is a wonderful book, crammed full of information that will ensure that you will never look at urban botany in the same light again. From grass verges, pavements, trees, wasteland, walls and street furniture, the scales will drop from your eyes as you are expertly introduced to a world fit for exploration and discovery...

Last Saturday morning I had four encounters with Goshawks within an hour's birding along the Mickleham Valley (above). The first was a loud, robust and piercing call from an unseen bird; the second an enormous female, flying along a hillside of yew and box showing off its muscular athletic build, long neck, long wings and rounded tail, with a dark mask beneath a thick white supercillium; next a distant displaying bird big-dippering; and lastly a streaked juvenile, just at tree top height, circling the hillside giving fine views (but for the thin tree canopy great photographs could have been obtained). It would take a highly inattentive birder to wander across my part of the Surrey North Downs and not realise that Goshawks are doing rather well here. For the past three years I've been able to expect to see them in the late-winter/spring with some regularity and so far this year if I don't see at least one when I'm out and about then I am rather surprised. It wasn't a...

I have touched upon my hearing loss previously in ND&B posts, but since then there has been developments. It must have been back in that strangely blame-free pre-Covid year of 2019 that I first noticed that my ears were not fully functioning. On a mid-summer walk through a meadow with my eldest daughter, she commented on the noise that the 'grasshoppers' were making. I stood still and listened. I couldn't hear a single one. This was soon followed by my failure to pick up the screams from a high flying flock of Swifts; the realisation that migrant Tree Pipits had not really become exceedingly rare but was down to the fact that I couldn't hear them call; and that most evocative of autumn night noises, calling Redwings, were out of my aural reach (unless they were very close). The final straw that broke this birder's back was last winter, standing with another birder on Ranmore Common, he picking up and announcing incoming Hawfinches whilst I stood there in a silen...

Back in the summer we lost another of the birding family, Barry Banson. Had I been maintaining this blog at the time I would have written about him there and then, so please accept my belated words of celebration of the man, one who was a great influence on me, moulding my natural history interests with the result that it took me to the four corners of Britain in pursuit of wild flowers. I first met Barry while birding at Beddington SF in the mid-1970s. He was, at the time, a schoolmaster at Alleyn's, a public school based in Dulwich. I think it is fair to say that the schoolmaster never fully left Barry, who did not suffer fools gladly and treated many people as if they were a pupil in one of his classes. regardless of their age or station in life. Having said that, once you got beyond that veneer of authority he was an utterly charming and interesting person to spend time with, a man of many interests, with natural history and sport at the top of a long list. In those early days ...

It has been 10 months since I last posted, a post which I suggested might be the last made on 'North Downs & Beyond' - I have never known when best to stop... How are you? What have you been up to? Me? Well, when I left you I was still knee-deep in Hawfinches along the Surrey North Downs. Mickleham Downs was the epi-centre of the action, with several counts of 300-400 being made. These most charismatic of finches were still to be found well into April, although I couldn't claim to have found any breeding pairs. Having said that, there was plenty of courtship behaviour to be witnessed earlier in the spring, with the photograph above showing a female (left-hand lower bird) accepting a tree bud that the male, neck outstretched, had tenderly offered her. This took place on 18th February 2025 and I was most privileged to have witnessed it, let alone caught it on camera. The Mickleham - Box Hill - Colley Hill area was also excellent for Goshawk (below), with several pairs bei...

Early March. Sometimes, out of the storm clouds comes sunshine, out of the murk, clarity. Dawn at Gorey, on the Channel Island of Jersey was bright but misty. The rising sun soon burnt off the mist to reveal a morning of rare brilliance. The light was ethereal, liquid, slightly hazy. A deep azure-blue upper sky became pearly white towards the horizon. The sea had been tamed, a benign swell softly lapping against the honeyed shingle. The houses, that rose steeply from the beach, dazzling white and with unblemished grey-tiled roofs, were as a film set. Palm trees competed with the riotous flower beds for my attention, with even Agapanthus coming into bloom. In the near distance Gorey Castle rose majestically from its rocky base, all-seeing over the centuries. It was all calm, all peaceful and a strange prelude to visiting my younger sister for the last time. She had been admitted to a hospice a few days earlier, a long illness finally overcoming her. I had visited her the previous evenin...