On a more serious note….please bear in mind that, although both parents know me well and are even prepared to feed from my hand, when it comes to their nest-site, I stay well away! I took this picture from the other side of the garden with a digi-scoped camera so as not to disturb either the chicks or the parents! If you have Robins nesting in your own garden already, then it’s worth remembering that, for the most part, they’ll be quite happy to put up with you hanging out the…

This is Buckshot, the hen Pheasant. I stumbled across her as she was slowly bleeding to death in a hedgerow almost a month ago. She was riddled with tiny pellets from a shotgun blast and her left wing was completely shattered. Normally, when I come across game-birds or even so-called “nuisance” birds in this sort of condition, I feel obliged to put them out of their not inconsiderable pain and misery. However, there was something about the look in Buckshot’s eyes that made me…

…and telegraph wires from a story told….er, since the dawn of time! (Clearly, two tablets taken three times a day simply aren’t enough!) Into the Gap Kander gathered together his few meagre possessions from beside the still warm ashes of last night’s camp-fire and placed them in his saddle-bags. He slid his sword into its scabbard and hung it from his belt, pausing momentarily to stare thoughtfully at the gap between two very large and gnarly old Oak trees that marked…

Better known as the Field Pansy, this tiny inhabitant of both cultivated and waste land is traditionally recognized (along with the Wild Pansy) as a symbol of remembrance and its name is said to derive from the French word “pensee”, meaning “thought”.If possible, I like to leave either a Field or a Wild Pansy together with a wild Common Poppy on any wartime commemorative monument I happen across when I’m out and about, though if people see me doing it, they often…

This year, we’ve had one of the mildest Novembers on record,  maybe the berries have got it right this time.

“Though we travel the world over to find the beautiful, we must carry it with us or we find it not” (Anonymous)

“Some see Nature all ridicule andDeformity….and some scarce seeNature at all, but to the eyes of theMan of Imagination, Nature isImagination itself” (William Blake)

For another shot of this extraordinary member of the Daisy family as well as a tale of goat’s butter, a very large pig and an awful lot of mud, see the “Arty-Farty” page.

What was strange the day I took this photograph just across the road from where I live, was the countless number of little cotton wool balls of cloud making their way quite rapidly across the sky. In fact, they were more like the clouds that children draw than proper clouds!

I was able to get out today and get some work done while my wife spent most of the day with her Mum. I also needed to walk off a few sleepless nights, so I yomped about twenty-four miles as the crow flies and blew away some cobwebs. It was a nice sunny day too and the air was fresh and crisp.