Learning the Land
How nature has colonised my notebooks as I’ve learnt more about the landscape and wildlife of the Cairngorms. A journey into observation.
Tag: birds
Winter Canoe
It was one of those lost days between Christmas and New Year when we should have been travelling home from family in Yorkshire but had been forced, like most of the country, to stay home. The house was awash with decorations, dishes, dust, dog-hair, leftovers, chocolate wrappers, dribbled candles, pine needles, new books, old newspapers, […]
Loch Insh Osprey
The ospreys have gone. I went away for a week and when I got back, the strath had slipped into autumn and the eyrie above Loch Insh was empty.
Return to Fishtail Mountain
My head is still in the Himalayas. Two weeks ago, I shared about my childhood in Ghachok, a village in the mountains of Nepal which is home to the Gurung people. We left it in 1976, and over the years, have made several trips back. This is the story of those returns. The first one […]
Poetry in Practice
One of my great hopes for this year as Writer in Residence at the Cairngorms National Park was to dedicate more time to my poetry. What time? What poetry? Maybe I was the only person surprised to discover that the role (and writing about it in this blog and other publications) has kept me so […]
The Long Flight Home
Of all the bird books and field guides lying around my house, the one that is most precious is not an heirloom, or expensive, or even the most comprehensive. It’s the one that was given to me by my friend, the wildlife guide and passionate birder, Mark Denman. The book is dotted with his notes […]