Natural history writing
Articles in ‘Natural history writing’
December 2nd, 2010
After escaping to the Lake District to visit his friends the Wordsworths, Samuel T. Coleridge was on the overnight coach to London, preparing to face family responsibilities and the reality of earning a living. At dawn, he was mesmerised by a sight over the wintry fields:
Starlings on a vast flight drove along like smoke, mist, or any thing misty without volition – now a circular area inclined in an Arc – now a Globe – now from complete Orb into an Elipse & Oblong – now a balloon with the car suspended, now a concaved Semicircle – & still it expands & condenses, some moments glimmering & shivering, dim & shadowy, now thickening, deepening and blackening!
In his fascinating biography Coleridge: Early Visions
Richard Holmes notes how this vision would haunt the poet long after. It was
some sort of self image for Coleridge, both stimulating in its sense of freedom, of “vast flight”; and menacing in its sense of threatening chaos or implosion, “Thickening, deepening, blackening”.
This excellent video shot at Otmoor, near Oxford, captures the display before the starlings settle in their roost, building up to an astonishing climax, when the flock becomes almost impossibly dense.
The photograph is taken from a Guardian gallery of starling photographs.
Birds of Britain, Natural history writing, Nature in art and literature, nature writing about Britain | Tags: birdwatching in winter, Coleridge Early Visions by Richard Holmes, Romantic poets and birds, starling flock described by Coleridge, starling murmurations, video of starling flocks|
October 25th, 2010
The Peregrine by J. A. Baker
is much more than a detailed observation of the falcon of the title. The author roams his patch of the Essex countryside, evoking the landscape, the changing light and other wild species he comes across. As he walks through winter, he notes the cruel impact of an unrelenting freeze, finding a dying heron, “its wings . . . stuck to the ground by frost”. He witnesses scenes like the following:
Above the brook a kingfisher hovered. . . . It half dived, half fell, and its bill hit ice with a loud click like a bone breaking. It could see a fish below the ice but it did not know what ice was. It lay on its belly, stunned or dead, sprawling like a brilliantly coloured toad.
In trying to break free of a human perspective, Baker found a haunting, unsentimental style to describe the natural world on his doorstep. More information on The Peregrine
Natural history writing | Tags: book about birds, classic nature writing, highly recommended book about nature, one of the best nature books|
February 19th, 2010
In this intriguing documentary, based on his book The Wild Places, Robert Macfarlane warns us not to write off over-developed and over-populated Britain in the quest for wilderness. Wild nature is there under our noses, in the most unexpected of places, and Macfarlane helps us focus on it, just as his friend Roger Deakin opened his own eyes.
Essex was chosen as an apparently unlikely location to commune with nature. Condensing a year of exploration, the film shows startling beauty among sewage works and dual carriageways. The contrast is beguiling: a peregrine falcon soaring past Tilbury Power Station is the angelic and the toxic closing-up against one another. Read the rest of this entry
England, History of the British landscape, Natural history writing, Radio and television nature programmes, Southern England | Tags: bbc nature documentary Macfarlane, exploring nature in England, legacy of Roger Deakin, nature in industrial Britain, red seals in Essex, return of the Water Vole, Robert Macfarlane, The Wild Places by Robert Macfarlane, wilderness in industrial Britain|
January 11th, 2010
The Orwell Diaries is a remarkable blog which publishes George Orwell’s diary entries on the same date 6o years later. The entries are full of fascinating insights into the daily life of the author between 1937 and 1947 and include a surprising amount of observations on natural history. The comments by the readers are also, unusually, interesting. Here is his entry of 11th January from the cold winter of 1940:
No thaw. It would be possible to skate on the church pond, but unfortunately I have no skates here. The other ponds not bearing. Water beetles (the kind whose legs look like oars) can be seen moving about under the ice. When a brick lies in the bottom in shallow water, there appears in the ice above it a curious formation the size & shape of the brick itself, presumably something to do with the temperature of the brick when thrown in being higher than that of the water. Turned up a woodcock in the common lane. No rabbits in the field today. Birds very bold & hungry. Rooks in the vegetable garden, where they do not usually come. One or two primroses & polyanthi budding, in spite of the frost upon them. One of the elm trees apparently bleeds a brown-coloured stuff, sap or something, & large icicles of this hanging down, looking like toffee. Milk when frozen goes into a curious flaky stuff like flaky pastry.
Orwell had an enduring interest in natural history which stemmed from his childhood. In letters from school he wrote about caterpillars and butterflies and he had a keen interest in ornithology. He also enjoyed fishing and shooting rabbits, and conducting experiments as in cooking a hedgehog or shooting down a jackdaw from the Eton roof to dissect it. Wikipedia
Birds of Britain, Information about the 2010 cold snap, Natural history writing, Weather and climate | Tags: Facts about the 2010 cold snap, George Orwell and natural history, George Orwell on birds, George Orwell on nature, Weather in 1940, Wildlife in the cold snap|
November 2nd, 2009
Photograph: Steve Trewhella
The Guardian has an extract from an amazing new book about seahorses – Poseidon’s Steed by Helen Scales. It’s filled with beautiful, vivid descriptions:
Should we presume these odd-looking creatures were designed by a mischievous god who had some time on her hands? Rummaging through a box labelled “spare parts”, she finds a horse’s head and, feeling a desire for experimentation, places it on top of the pouched torso of a kangaroo.
This playful god adds a pair of swivelling chameleon eyes and the prehensile tail of a tree-dwelling monkey for embellishment – then stands back to admire her work. Not bad, but how about a suit of magical colour-changing armour, and a crown shaped as intricately and uniquely as a human fingerprint? Shrink it all down to the size of a chess piece and the new creature is complete.
And fascinating facts: Read the rest of this entry
Natural history writing, Sealife in British seas | Tags: beauty of seahorses, excellent new book about seahorses, keeping seahorses, new book about seahorses, Poseidon's Steed by Helen Scales, seahorse males get pregnant, seahorse sex, seahorses in Britain|
October 22nd, 2009
Robert Macfarlane evokes brilliantly and beautifully the wild landscapes of Britain in his book The Wild Places. Listen here to this Radio Four interview with Macfarlane by James Naughtie.
Natural history writing | Tags: Robert Macfarlane, The Wild Places by Robert Macfarlane|
Fears about the impact of last December’s severe weather, the coldest in 100 years, were unfounded. The drop in small bird populations witnessed in the 
The oldest osprey of the UK – and probably the world – has returned to her eyrie in the Scottish highlands. When she left for West Africa at the end of last summer, no one expected her to return. At 26 she’s lived 3 times longer than most female ospreys. In her life she’s laid 58 eggs and hatched 48 chicks, a massive individual contribution to the survival of ospreys in Scotland, where there are still only about 200 breeding pairs. The questions now are if her mate will return and if she is still fertile. Events can be followed on the 
The construction company currently finishing off the Shard building in London, which will be the UK’s tallest skyscraper, recently had to call the council to remove a squatter from the 72nd floor: a young fox. He was surviving on scraps left by builders. After a check-up at the Riverside Animal Centre, the fox has been released on the streets of Bermondsey, having shown the type of curiosity we associate with cats. 
Otters, water voles and fish are all benefitting from the improved quality of the UK’s waterways, now described as the cleanest since the industrial revolution. Since almost disappearing from the wild in the 1970s, otters are thriving, particularly in the south west of England, Cumbria and Northumberland. The population of water voles, highly precarious in the 1990s, is also beginning to recover. The good results of stricter pollution controls and extensive conservation work are set to continue in the new year with the introduction of new European water quality directives. 
