June 25 We were having evening drinks in the garden when I saw the most beautiful bird in the world. It was singing hard on the exposed and topmost branch of the oak tree, the one in the garden that’s dying back.  The bird was lit with the soft light of the declining sun, and… [Read More]

June 24 It was right in the heat of the day – not an expression you use on a routine basis in this country – but I went out anyway. I had a feeling. One day there are none of them at all, the next day the place is full of them. It’s one of… [Read More]

June 23 Another yowl from the sky. A buzzard. Of course it was a buzzard. When I moved to East Anglia more than 20 years ago, you never saw or heard a buzzard. Now they’re the most obvious bird of prey. And they yowl. They are the most gabby of all birds of prey. Most… [Read More]

June 22 Evening drinks. A custom we introduced for lockdown, and a good one. And better still, a present for me: four bushes. Chilli bushes no less: two Ring o’ Fire, one Apache and one Hungarian Hot Wax, one or two young fruit already visible.  The fruit of the chilli brings joy to humankind: and… [Read More]

June 21 I remember Peto’s Marsh when it was beans. Rotten beans, they were: a crop doomed to be ploughed back in as a dead loss. You don’t need to be a crash-hot farmer to work out that a marsh is a suboptimal habitat for beans.  Not a bean in sight these days. Cindy, Eddie… [Read More]

June 20 We were about two hours from the solstice, the moment at which the earth starts to rock back the other way. From tomorrow the nights would begin to get shorter. The long retreat from winter is over, the slow advance towards the new winter begins. It is a solemn moment, tinged with sadness…. [Read More]

June 19 I was sitting still, gazing across at the marsh… perhaps you get tired of reading that; if so, many apologies. The fact is that I have yet to get tired of sitting and the gazing across marshes.  A bird was in sight for about half a second, getting on for a mile away,… [Read More]

June 17 I had spent rather too long working out exactly what I would say to a rather oppressive editor in the next email. It was a useless exercise anyway; it was half-past three at night.  But when I eventually got to sleep I dreamed that a horse I was leading got away from me… [Read More]

June 16 Ineluctable modality of the aerial, at least that if no more, flight through my eyes…   Apologies, dear readers — if there are any left — for this flight from accessibility. You will see from the date that this is Bloomsday: the anniversary of the day on which the fictional events of Ulysses… [Read More]

June 15 I had cooked a curry feast – mutter paneer, faux chicken in coconut milk and chillies, dal and rice. Eddie, deeply attuned to the mood of Wild June, suggested that we ate with plates on knees, halfway down the garden. Good call. Because our meal coincided with a fledge-out of great spotted woodpeckers…. [Read More]

June 14 I was filled with desire to see forever. True, the Norfolk sky is not the most claustrophobic prospect on earth, but I was mad for a view even less restricted. That means the sea.  So we went to Pakefield. After all, we’re allowed to now. Pakefield is on the Suffolk coast, and it’s… [Read More]

June 12 Eddie and I were taking a late afternoon stroll around the marsh, an activity that always involves at least as much sitting as walking, at least as much listening as talking. We do it often, but it’s become daily thing during Lockdown. You can’t mistake a falcon for anything else – at least… [Read More]

June 11 Morning chores: and a sudden burst of song. Not the usual sort of song, that’s why I heard it so clearly. You get used to the everyday singers and a song that breaks the pattern is like a shout.  No great mystery though. It was a lesser whitethroat. A brisk rattle, a bit… [Read More]

June 10 Our friends Thomas and Hilary live on a boat with their two children. Their on-board lav had packed up and for some reason we had their back-up thunder-box — so we went down the road to give it back. They live, as you would expect, on the river, and after our socially-distanced conversation… [Read More]

June 9 You are not just a member of a species. You are also an individual. That is true for any representative of Homo sapiens who might be reading these words, that is equally true of the representative of Sylvia communis who would be witnessing their composition if he wasn’t so busy right now. The… [Read More]

June 8 The heronry is a couple of hundred yards away, on our neighbour’s land. I had taken on the job of counting the nests this year, because of lockdown: three definite nests in there and one probable. They were up there, high in the trees, big spreading structures of twigs and small branches. You… [Read More]

June 7 The thing about hares is that they are really good at running away. It’s the one big thing they know. Speed is at the heart of a hare’s world: the certainty that they can outrun and out-turn anything that lives. Turn a corner, enter a field with two or three hares in it:… [Read More]

June 6 There is a strange illusion that comes just before a thunderstorm. The sky has gone dark, but certain birds seem to have been lit up: caught in a single tiny spotlight of impossible candle-power, making the bird the one bright thing in a murky old world. Not just bright. Impossibly bright, glaringly, bright,… [Read More]

June 5 We are having a wild old social time during Lockdown. Every evening, round about six, we all meet up for Evening Drinks. All four of us who live in the house. It’s been a nice addition to routine: making a good thing out of being shut in together.  We are of course absurdly… [Read More]