More rare birds have been seen along this embankment than anywhere else in Britain. This is the East Bank at Cley in North Norfolk, a dead straight walk of about three-quarters of mile that lifts you a few feet above the marshes on either side and takes you to the sea. That day… [Read More]

There’s a stark and simple beauty in a good list but alas, I’m not very good at keeping them. Perhaps I like the idea better than the practice, though as the great Bill Oddie said: “All birdwatchers keep lists, even if it’s only a list of how many times they’ve claimed they don’t keep a… [Read More]

              The snow lay across the marsh, fixed by a bone-hard frost. The outside taps had frozen. The car-doors didn’t open till bathed in hot water. I did the outside chores in six layers… and do you know, I was stupid enough to think it was winter. There were no clouds, the sun… [Read More]

              Too bloody buoyant. You wouldn’t have thought that this would be a problem for a bird in flight, but I could almost hear the barn owl cursing as the wind gusted again and caught her, so that she was shoved six feet higher than she wanted to be. Owls are much lighter… [Read More]

              It always seems such fun to be a wild animal… but perhaps that’s because you normally encounter them on a lovely day, out for a walk, full of bracing good cheer and the promise of something nice to drink when you get back. What could be better than being a hare on… [Read More]

            There are times when it would be nice to press a button and become invisible. I was paddling my kayak along the river and ahead I could see a little egret: easily visible from 100 yards. At once my ambition was to paddle past without disturbing a single one of those lovely white… [Read More]

              When I was a boy I used to go to Silver Blades ice rink in Streatham on Saturday mornings. The crash-hot skaters used to charge the rink-exits flat out — and then stop dead an inch before disaster by turning their skates round as breakes, so that they almost faced the opposite… [Read More]

              I hadn’t thought of Colonel Hill for years. I’d forgotten how much I owe him. A chance encounter with the phrase “silly arse” brought him back. He taught geography at Emanuel School near Clapham Junction, impatient, irascible and sentimental. Anthony Powell wrote in A Writer’s Notebook about the mystery “that men, who… [Read More]

            I was out on the river yesterday, paddling the canoe on a day of sudden warmth. Spring officially starts with the equinox — this year March 20 — but that be damned: there were already buds on the willows and the alders and new growth of nettles and ground ivy on the banks…. [Read More]