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The Guardian
23-01-2025
- General
- The Guardian
Country diary: Winter has come and gone in a week
Up on Cyrn y Bwch (Horns of the Buck), known as Old Racecourse Common, a plateau on the edge of the Oswestry Uplands, winter comes and goes in a week. There are still white punctuation marks fallen from the rich quiet of a snow spell that feels dreamlike now as the puddle ice thins to kitchen film and paths turn claggy. The thaw is a kind of recall as the past returns. Mounds of heather, the grey, private memories of a heath, like an old tune muffled by bracken and birch. The racecourse grandstand ruins where 18th-century punters watched their fortunes gallop away like horses over the hills. West, the green folds of Powys. East, the sunlit plains of north Shropshire fading towards the Wrekin floating on the horizon. South, a track rolls down through conifers where a small stand of beech and oak are trapped, shadowy apparitions imprisoned in the vertical lines of the plantation. Falling through trees from above are the vocal signatures of ravens. How many there are, or how many ravens make an 'unkindness', is hard to tell, but some are barking kronk, some make that cork-popping sound, and some are staccato chattering. Far from feeling unkind, the ravens call passionately, celebrating, electrified by the romantic pageants of their breeding season. Running along the edge between the trees and fields, where the light bursts across country, is the long bank of Offa's Dyke. This eighth-century earthwork was the boundary between Wales and England, and it's now a rite of passage for walkers with its 177-mile-long footpath. Maybe the ravens, with an enthusiasm for gore, have not forgotten its bloody history of amputations for those once caught on the wrong side of it. A jay is screeching from a treetop above the dyke. Although it's a single explosive voice, if it were to be recorded and slowed down it would surely contain condensed lines of dramatic monologue. Perhaps it has to do with the jay's age-old enmity towards owls, who are also getting busy now with their own breeding season. Perhaps, though, sharp as a buck's horn, the jay is claiming territorial rights and shouting: 'Sod offa my wood!' Under the Changing Skies: The Best of the Guardian's Country Diary, 2018-2024 is published by Guardian Faber; order at and get a 15% discount
The Guardian
21-01-2025
- Science
- The Guardian
Country diary: Glittering beauty from a simple water pipe
For 10 days Buxton was buried by snow and further bound, night after night, in sub-zero conditions. At Lightwood there's a steep-sided dell enfolded beneath old beech trees and held in almost permanent shadow, so that as I threaded a precarious route to the bottom, I could feel a further instant fall in temperature. The goal was a water pipe. Its outflow cascades for barely a metre, but relentless spray has scoured as its catchment basin a gritstone arc 3 metres across. Those rocks are plastered by platyhypnidium moss, while the drier south side is adorned with frost-wilted remnants of broad buckler and hart's-tongue ferns. What drew me down was the way the spray had built up along the margins as a glorious ice showcase. Beech saplings down one side had been drenched and slowly thickened into lateral ice pipes, each with a living twiglet at its core. From these horizontal supports had developed a further chaos of icicles, but they didn't depend as differentiated 'teeth', so to speak – they were welded into a rippling jawbone like fossil remains of some fantasy carnivore from an age of ice. The way the whole organism glittered to its core, partly as I moved and shifted the angle of light but also as the beech-sifted sun specks glanced off the ice bone, was extraordinary. Equally weird and beautiful was the formation at my feet. This whole shelf was an ice block, but not as a level water-resembling sheet: it was irregularly raised and globed up like molten metal or polyps on a coral formation. What was most intriguing was that all these suggestive forms had been made by minute droplets splattering randomly outwards, day after day, then solidifying into ever-increasing complexity. In this they seemed reminiscent of life itself: the way that monocellular organisms – and recall that for a full billion years microbes had the Earth to themselves – have self-assembled as ever more complex life forms. Out of bacteria came wonderful creatures such as the smilodon, the nautilus and the orangutan. Weirdest of all is that I went back to the spot two days later. Nothing remained of that whole world. Except the words written here. Under the Changing Skies: The Best of the Guardian's Country Diary, 2018-2024 is published by Guardian Faber; order at and get a 15% discount
The Guardian
18-01-2025
- Science
- The Guardian
Country diary: Why does the bird bob its head?
The morning after the night's frost, the field basks in sunshine. Waders are foraging among the grazing sheep and my gaze falls on the bobbing head of a redshank as it probes a tuft of grass. A golden plover dashes past and my view switches. At speed, the plover's head is steady; but when it slows, the head starts to bob; and then the bird pecks at the ground. Head-bobbing is found in about half of all avian species. It happens for similar reasons that my mammalian eyes make involuntary flickers as they look at something; that is, to build up a picture of the scene, picking out the important bits from the unimportant. As I look back at the redshank, although my gaze feels perfectly steady, I know my eyes are minutely moving and pausing their focus. I can also assess where the different birds are in relation to each other because of my forward-facing eyes. My brain combines the slightly different images produced on each of my retinas, which is what gives frontal vision its sense of perspective. But birds can't move their eyes like I can, and many species, like waders, also have their eyes on the side of their head. This lateral vision gives a panoramic view – good for scanning for predators, not so good for assessing perspective. Head-bobbing is the solution to both these problems. Like the involuntary flickering of my eyes, it helps a foraging bird to look closely. It also improves perspective. As the bird's head moves, different parts of the surroundings move at different speeds depending on how far away they are, giving a sense of depth. But whether – and how much – a bird bobs its head depends on its activity. Lining up a food item to peck might need only a slight bob from a golden plover. Watching all the moving parts of a busy street could demand exaggerated bobs from an urban pigeon. A sudden alarm call from the redshank has sent the flock into the air. I look around in surprise – my narrow vision had missed the farmer's approach. Now I see his long crook; his border collie; and the sheep huddling together at the dog's – seemingly – steady gaze. Under the Changing Skies: The Best of the Guardian's Country Diary, 2018-2024 is published by Guardian Faber; order at and get a 15% discount
Yahoo
10-12-2024
- General
- Yahoo
Country diary: A local rarity, a mug of hot chocolate in bird form
A day of incipient winter, sun bright in sharp blue sky. Hat and gloves weather. Tooting Common pond is home to ducks and geese and swans (oh my!) – what a birding friend dismissively calls 'the usual rubbish'. But for a few weeks now there has been a glamorous addition, a rarity, flown in from wherever to bestow a hint of the exotic on these everyday urban surroundings. A ferruginous duck – 'fudge duck' for short, the nickname felicitously combining abbreviation and a succinct description of the bird's colour. Reports say that it's a first-winter female 'of unknown origin'. This is code for 'probably escaped from a wildfowl collection but without a leg ring we can't be certain'. Hardcore birders, valuing the truly wild above all else, might sniff at an escapee, but a bird is a bird. Besides, I have never seen a ferruginous duck, and while I wouldn't usually make a special journey for a sighting, this is merely a short extension of my daily walk. It would be rude not to. All is quiet. A female mallard – easily overlooked, but an embodiment of the attractions of subtle brown streakiness – dabbles unobtrusively by the island. A mute swan sails by, magically combining bulk and elegance. A coot, in an orgy of furious splashing, picks a gratuitous fight with another coot, rearing up with the energy of its flapping. For a moment I fear I'm witnessing a murder. But it ends almost instantly, the combatants losing interest by mutual agreement. Whatever, mate. All good? All good. And there it is. Small, dainty, the colour of expensive chocolate, the pert dome of its head betraying its relationship to the larger, more familiar pochard. Bold and curious – 'confiding' and 'obliging' in birding parlance – it seems content with its lot. Whatever its provenance, it has found itself in a place of comfort and plenty. I study it, enjoying the rich brown of its plumage, wondering where it's come from, whether it will overwinter here. In the interests of balance, I turn my attention to 'the usual rubbish' – beautiful, elegant, belligerent rubbish, without which my days would be immeasurably poorer. The sun calls it a day, and so do I. As darkness steals in and the chill bites, I take my leave, overtaken by a sudden craving for hot chocolate. • Under the Changing Skies: The Best of the Guardian's Country Diary, 2018-2024 is published by Guardian Faber; order at and get a 15% discount
The Guardian
10-12-2024
- General
- The Guardian
Country diary: A local rarity, a mug of hot chocolate in bird form
A day of incipient winter, sun bright in sharp blue sky. Hat and gloves weather. Tooting Common pond is home to ducks and geese and swans (oh my!) – what a birding friend dismissively calls 'the usual rubbish'. But for a few weeks now there has been a glamorous addition, a rarity, flown in from wherever to bestow a hint of the exotic on these everyday urban surroundings. A ferruginous duck – 'fudge duck' for short, the nickname felicitously combining abbreviation and a succinct description of the bird's colour. Reports say that it's a first-winter female 'of unknown origin'. This is code for 'probably escaped from a wildfowl collection but without a leg ring we can't be certain'. Hardcore birders, valuing the truly wild above all else, might sniff at an escapee, but a bird is a bird. Besides, I have never seen a ferruginous duck, and while I wouldn't usually make a special journey for a sighting, this is merely a short extension of my daily walk. It would be rude not to. All is quiet. A female mallard – easily overlooked, but an embodiment of the attractions of subtle brown streakiness – dabbles unobtrusively by the island. A mute swan sails by, magically combining bulk and elegance. A coot, in an orgy of furious splashing, picks a gratuitous fight with another coot, rearing up with the energy of its flapping. For a moment I fear I'm witnessing a murder. But it ends almost instantly, the combatants losing interest by mutual agreement. Whatever, mate. All good? All good. And there it is. Small, dainty, the colour of expensive chocolate, the pert dome of its head betraying its relationship to the larger, more familiar pochard. Bold and curious – 'confiding' and 'obliging' in birding parlance – it seems content with its lot. Whatever its provenance, it has found itself in a place of comfort and plenty. I study it, enjoying the rich brown of its plumage, wondering where it's come from, whether it will overwinter here. In the interests of balance, I turn my attention to 'the usual rubbish' – beautiful, elegant, belligerent rubbish, without which my days would be immeasurably poorer. The sun calls it a day, and so do I. As darkness steals in and the chill bites, I take my leave, overtaken by a sudden craving for hot chocolate. Under the Changing Skies: The Best of the Guardian's Country Diary, 2018-2024 is published by Guardian Faber; order at and get a 15% discount
