A pint of badger

For the first time in my life I came nose to nose with a wild badger last week - just a thin pane of glass between us. My partner had organised a surprise outing to celebrate our anniversary and it was going to be down in the woods at dusk.

The hide was sunk into the earth at the foot of a hill in the woods: a hill riddled with badger holes. Once a large sett, it was now home to one sow and two boars. A cub born early in the year, after an exceptionally hard winter, had disappeared and is thought to have died.

A ranger sprinked peanuts in front of the window and we waited for the badgers to appear. A frog hopped over the woodland floor under some bracken, a wood mouse scurried nearby and tawny owls hooted from the tree tops.

A black and white mask flashed from the top of the hill. The sow lifted her snout repeatedly to scent the air and after a few minutes followed a round-about trail down to the peanut larder in front of the hide. Eventually she was joined by one boar, then the other - both with broader shield-shaped heads.

I'm sure they sensed our presence behind the glass, even though their eyesight is poor and we were sitting in darkness. From time to time, one would stop suddenly and look up in our direction, disturbed by a slight noise - their hearing and sense of smell are very acute. But mostly they busied themselves snuffling in the leaf litter for precious peanuts.

One of the boars stood up on his back legs and reached up with his front paws onto a half hollow tree stump directly in front of us. With surprising agility and lightness of movement, he pulled himself onto the stump and spent ten minutes picking nuts out of the hollow with his snout and claws. Somehow he looked very pleased with himself.

As the darkness thickened, the badgers made a final sweep of the area for any overlooked nuts, then trotted off into the woodland for their nightly forage. What a privilege to watch them from a front row seat. We retired to the pub over the road and ordered a round of Badger ale.

Reflections

Reflections

One of the reasons I started this blog was to give myself space to reflect on my experiences of nature and to share them with others. I took this photo in mid-June at a watercress farm in the Surrey Hills. It was a still, warm day and I had just seen my first wild dormouse in some woods nearby while checking nest boxes.



The woods were idyllic: a tangle of hazel coppice carpeted with wild flowers, including yellow archangels, and everywhere shafts of sunlight penetrating the canopy. And the dormouse we found was every bit as sleepy as the one in the teapot at the Mad Hatter's tea party in Alice in Wonderland.



Somehow it was one of those serene summer days when everything seems to be in harmony and at peace. Beside the pond pictured above, I found a swan sleeping with its neck curled back along its body, looking as elegant at rest as in mid-glide across the water.

Butterfly corner

The silver-washed fritillary is one of our largest and most colourful butterflies and a strong flyer. My partner photographed this one on the edge of a woodland ride on a local common. We had stumbled on "butterfly corner": a crossroads in the woods with a small patch of grassy scrub at its centre, dancing with butterflies.


Common blue, male

This little patch was like a cloud of fluttering colours, constantly in motion. We spotted fritillaries, male and female common blues, a small copper and a handful of brown argos. Then we watched the entrancing courtship flight of silver-washed fritillaries, the female steaming straight ahead, chased by the male flying loops around her.


Why do we find butterflies so magical? Is it the colours, the delicate fluttering flight, or their ephemeral summer quality? Maybe all of these things. If only they could sing...

Speckled wood

Brown argos

Wildlife on Thames

Just to prove that you don't have to go to the middle of nowhere to see wildlife, this heron posed for the camera by the Thames on a busy riverside in south west London.

We also spotted a crested grebe bobbing along midstream, framed by walls of purple loosestrife lining the banks.

Taking tea on the hill later, we watched a plump, bold grey squirrel lapping water from a dog bowl beside one of the tables. And you can enjoy all this in the heart of civilisation and sophistication while munching chocolate tiffin...

Green tiger beetle

This is a green tiger beetle, photographed on a sandy track on the Isle of Hoy, Orkney, in June. Isn't it gorgeous? That deep emerald green caught my eye, almost like a jewel sparkling at my feet. It was scurrying across the cliff-top path to the Old Man of Hoy, the tallest sea stack in Europe. Who knows, perhaps it likes the view?

If you love beetles, bees, butterflies and other creepy-crawly creatures, have a look at the website for Buglife, the conservation charity for invertebrates: www.buglife.org.uk As you might expect, it's a small but highly industrious organisation doing fantastic work in raising awareness and protecting sites which are home to some of our rarest and most endangered bugs.

And if the bugs die, you can be sure we won't be far behind. They pollinate much of our food and break down a lot of our waste.We need them more than they need us...

conservation grazing

Not everybody wants to leap out of bed at 6.30 on a Saturday morning but it's the best time of day to be out in the meadow if you have cattle to check. There's hardly anyone about - just the odd roe deer browsing and a few sleepy butterflies waking up in the early morning sunshine.

This morning I startled a fox and watched it bound over tall tussocks of grass to the edge of the wood. I wasn't quite speedy enough to catch it on camera but it was a beautiful beast with deep brown fur and a black tip to its tail.

In our main paddock, 19 Fresian steers and one jersey cross (affectionately known as "cadbury) came bounding to meet me at the fence. Dairy breeds are not the normal choice for conservation grazing but they seem to do well on our site. They were given extra feed yesterday as the grass is so dry and were clearly hoping for another delivery this morning. Their loud chorus of mooing made a happy greeting. Empty-handed, I had to send them back to work to eat the scrub and keep the meadow, well, meadow-like.

After the ice age and before humans swarmed in large numbers across the British Isles, most of the land was covered with forest. Grassland and heath were created by clearances for agriculture and remained open landscapes thanks to constant human management - largely by grazing. When extensive sheep and cattle rearing disappeared from lowland Britain after the Second World War, these open spaces quickly scrubbed over and reverted to woodland. With them went the natural flora and fauna adapted over millennia to these habitats.

So grazing is back in conservation and it's big news. One wildlife trust even maintains its own grazing herd; other organisations borrow animals from farmers, offering free food in return for a living mower. The thing is: animals do a much better job than mechanical mowers from a conservation perspective. They graze the sward to a variety of different heights, creating mini-habitats for lots of different flowers and invertebrates.

Since grazing was reintroduced on our site some 15 years ago, the main paddock has been sprinkled with a carpet of violets every spring and attracted the spectacular silver-washed fritillary whose caterpillars feed on them. A rare plant, the wonderfully named corky-fruited water dropwort (above right), was once restricted to a single clump. Since the cows arrived, they seem to have spread it across a huge swathe by carrying the seeds on their feed. Yellowhammers with their distinctive song: "A little bit of bread and butter and a piece of cheese" have also recolonised the meadow.

Orkney

My musings from Orkney are long overdue: I spent ten days on the islands in June, around the summer solstice. In the long-enduring daylight I caught glimpses of so many birds I have never known before, watched common seals basking on the beach with their pups, gazed across thriving heathland at majestic green hills, and photographed delicate Orcadian flora. So much space, light and tranquility. If you love wildlife and wild places, go there!

One day I walked around the coastline of North Ronaldsay, among the sheep grazing seaweed on the beach. There were dozens of common seals hauled out on the rocks, many with young pups. As thick mist descended, they disappeared from view but I could still hear them singing: a haunting, eery sound. It's easy to understand how myths developed about mermaids, and here in Orkney, selkies - shape shifters who could change between human and seal form.

On parts of the shore I was dive-bombed by arctic terns defending their nests on the shingle and accompanied by the squabbling cries of fulmars tucked into nooks and crannies on shallow sandy cliffs. Meanwhile little ringed plovers, turnstones and the (on Orkney ubiquitous) oyster catchers scurried around at the edge of the waves.

More on the birds, flora and a beautiful beetle in future blogs...