Winter Migration on the Dee Estuary Driven by the same forces – shortening daylight, falling temperatures, and dwindling food supplies – tens of thousands of wildfowl and wading birds leave their Arctic and sub-Arctic breeding grounds every autumn to travel hundreds, and sometimes thousands, of miles to reach the food-rich mudflats of the Dee Estuary. […]
Few landscapes in Britain feel as deeply enchanted as North Wales. With its mist-shrouded hills and mountains, ancient woodlands, and windswept coastline, it is a place where the boundary between the everyday and the otherworldly has always seemed thin. It should come as no surprise then that the plants growing in this landscape carry centuries […]
The Theatre of Lightning We had been making our way to bed when the first flash of lightning stopped us. Arriving on the back of a yellow weather warning for a heatwave in May, the storm swept in late on an airless Wednesday night, tearing the sky into great white seams and illuminating the Clwydian […]
Our frosted hills and fields, for so long hushed in a quiet stillness of waiting, now sound with the tremulous bleating of new born lambs and the answering calls of their attentive mothers. Snowdrops have given way to bright drifts of daffodils, daylight stretches into lengthening hours, and winter begins to loosen its grip on […]
Amid rolling pastureland in the Denbighshire countryside lies a modest, whitewashed church, its walls greened with age and weather. A simple wheel-type bell hangs silent above the west gable. Surrounded by ancient yew trees and gnarled blackthorn bushes, the church is approached through a heavy iron gate, its hinges stiff and slow with time. In […]
The Clwydian Range is a line of heather-clad hills rising above the verdant Vale of Clwyd. Though modest in comparison with the lofty heights of Eryri (Snowdonia), these hills have a presence entirely their own, shaped by wind, weather, and the steady rhythms of rural life. Walking here demands no heroic effort: the reward is […]
The scream comes before the bird: a sudden, searing note overhead that stops me in my tracks, leaving me scanning the North Wales skies for the longed-for rush of dark, scythe-shaped wings. They are back! My heart soars. Common swifts normally arrive here during late April, each one having survived an epic and often hazardous […]
Written one humid afternoon in August 2025, when we were all desperate for a storm! Please follow and like us:
For many reasons, I haven’t written for a while, but a beautiful photograph by my dear friend, Angus Ferguson, taken in the North East of England, inspired me to put pen to paper again late last night. His images – all straight lines, vanishing points, and vast skies – have a quiet magic. Sometimes, an image […]
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