• We're All Going On An Elm Hunt 15 Apr 11

    Ted Green, one of Britain’s foremost tree authorities and a co-founder of the Ancient Tree Forum, was lamenting the impact of Dutch elm disease on our landscape when I interviewed him recently. The... Read More

  • Tropic Of Kew 18 Feb 11

    The United Nations has declared 2011 the International Year of Forests, so Kew’s annual tropical festival, this time focusing on ‘the wonder and importance of the tropical rainforest’ is... Read More

  • Fly Away Home 5 Nov 10

    The last painting by Sir Peter Scott – naturalist, artist and founder of the Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust (WWT) – was of waterfowl flying over reed beds of the Thames at Barnes, the towers of... Read More

  • Feeding Frenzy 22 Oct 10

    Saturday 30 October is Feed The Birds Day… It’s a real indictment of the modern world that the RSPB needs to tell us that we should feed the birds, says Jill Glenn… Read More

  • And A Nightingale Sang 24 Sep 10

    Heading homewards on a recent stroll, I climbed across the brow of a hill to find a group of swallows flitting about over the field below, putting on a display of energetic swoops and swerves that... Read More

  • Arcadia In The City 11 Jun 10

    London’s cityscape is not renowned for magnificent vistas. Stand on the banks of the Thames and the soul does not soar in the way it does in Paris, for instance, by the River Seine. Instead, you... Read More

  • Fluttering Away 28 May 10

    I’ve long prided myself, not always delusively, on my receptivity to nature. I revel in the variety of British landscapes, from the rugged granite uplands of the north, to the softer chalk... Read More

  • Where Have All The Flowers Gone? 19 Mar 10

    In the hierarchy of British wildlife, flowers come a distant third behind birds and mammals in public recognition. In fact the gap could be widening. Not so long ago, the environmental editor of a... Read More

  • A Song For Christmas 18 Dec 09

    In one of my favourite books of the countryside, a 1932 edition of WH Hudson’s Nature in Downland, a woodcut opposite the title page depicts a mistle thrush in a snow scene, ‘singing in weather... Read More

  • The Patron Saint Of Conservation 11 Sep 09

    There can be few British people with an interest in wildlife and the environment, and born in the middle decades of the last century, who were not inspired in some way by Sir Peter Scott. Founding... Read More

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