It’s not easy to upstage an American buffalo but the prairie dogs do their best. Certainly they add a touch of comic relief to the eternal dignity and the eternal tragedy of the buffalo. I met them, inevitably, on my trip to Badlands National Park a few weeks ago, when I was researching a piece… [Read More]

A tiny scratching noise from the window as I sat here typing away. Naturally I raised my eyes. And for a second – maybe even 1.5 seconds – I was three feet – maybe even 2 ft 6 in – from a wren. How tiny! How absurdly, ridiculously, impossibly tiny! It clung there, balanced, twisted… [Read More]

I was writing about the gannets of Bass Rock. I visited them last summer, part of a project for the Wildlife Trusts, which I’ll be able to tell you about in a few weeks. It was a wonderful trip to what is probably the most spectacular wildlife site in Britain. So I was blasting away… [Read More]

The snow had more or less gone by noon when I stepped out again. I had to move two horses from the higher meadow – what we amusingly call a hill in Norfolk – to the lower. And as I was leading the first horse down the slight slope I saw a patch of drifting… [Read More]

Loon trousers had prodigious flares but very little room around the crotch. Neither characteristic made them ideal for a wildlifing expedition. The floor-sweeping velvet skirt of my companion was no better, but that night we rose above all impediments. The time was two hour past midnight, the place Ashton Court, just the far side of… [Read More]