Green Veined White – forty years ago in my nature notebooks
Butterflies are very noticeable insects. They have large bright wings and fly during the day. How they escape being eaten by birds …
Butterflies are very noticeable insects. They have large bright wings and fly during the day. How they escape being eaten by birds …
Sometimes there’s just too much wildlife going on here in Westray. We’re sitting on the beach in Pierowall Bay watching the seals …
Forty years ago I was twelve years old and had been using a Single Lens Reflex camera for a couple of years. …
Forty years ago I was scouring the beaches at Tenby looking for any interesting living creatures. As is so common, I only …
One of the greatest things you can have as a child is a love of the natural world. To have the capacity …
Forty years ago today, on 11 August 1976, I was 12 years old, my family were on holiday in South Wales, and …
Black Guillemots seem to be called Tysties on Orkney. This one has caught something tasty. It looks to me like a Butterfish. …
Peeled paint litters the floor at Einar. There’ so much on the floor that I have to sweep it up. There’s more …
There’s such a crack in the wall at Einar I could be in an episode of Dr Who.
Antonella Papa spent a month last year as restorer of Orkney’s Italian Chapel Antonella says: “The Italian Chapel now is part of …
St Magnus Cathedral dominates Kirkwall just as the Vikings who built it originally intended. If you ever get the chance to go …
On Westray the traces of Lake Orcadie are everywhere. 380 million years ago this land we now call Westray was in the …
A fine day on Westray is better than being anywhere else on earth.
If I’m being pedantic, it’s actually sunset next to Einar, rather than sunset over Einar, but I’m hoping you’ll forgive me.
Food is a subject of much ritual and tradition, no more so than when I’m on Westray. There’s coffee and cake at …
I love Grobust beach. The walk down to it from the car park is covered in daisies.
There’s a miniature rock stack on the east coast of Westray. It’s slippery as I make my way across the rocks to photograph it at dawn.
Do you ever dream of having a different life? Do you ever dream of moving somewhere where you can savour each day? …
The Castle o’ Burrian on Westray is famous for its Puffins.
The statistics say we catch 60,000 tonnes of edible crab around the British Isles each year. Imagine if we talked about humans …
There’s a single red poppy down by the bay. It’s so fragile. As fragile as life itself.
The white clover is beautiful. In many places in the world people are discouraged from growing it because it attracts bees which may sting people. Personally I’d rather have bees than lawyers.