In Part One of this continuing series we left the Hen Harrier in the recent past, with the mixed fortunes of 2022 to 2024: record fledging years giving way to weather-hit productivity, satellite tags failing silent, and the brood-management trial paused for review.
Tag Archives: #Yorkshire
Autumn Days when the Grass is Jewelled
(Excerpt) Autumn brings with it many sensory delights; sounds, tastes and sights unique to the season, yet it does not arrive with a single scent but instead with a layered, shifting perfume that settles into the hedgerows, woodlands, and wet country lanes.
The Common Darter
In the serotinal days of late summer, when the countryside’s tones shift from emerald to gold, our insect life slowly fades from the scene and the buzz and hum of bees and flies dials back to the silence of winter.
Yet life still lingers, and some flying insects remain to stir the cooling autumnal air, including the striking and swift-flying Sympetrum striolatum, the Common Darter dragonfly.
Ovinophobia, the Rise of the Anti-Sheep Movement
(Excerpt) In the early 2010s, a series of sharp critiques of British upland sheep farming emerged from environmental circles and gradually hardened into a sustained campaign. What began as polemical writing about ecological damage evolved into calls for the removal of sheep from the hills. This was framed as essential for nature recovery, flood prevention and rewilding, among other things.
Laccaria amethystina, Deceptive Jewel of the Autumn Woods
(Excerpt) Laccaria amethystina is ectomycorrhizal, forming symbiotic relationships with the roots of trees. It is most often found with beech, oak and birch, though it also occurs under conifers, and grows in leaf litter and moss in both deciduous and mixed woodland, frequently in scattered groups or small troops.
The Northern Oak Eggar Moth
(Excerpt) The Oak Eggar moth (Lasiocampa quercus) is one of Britain’s most distinctive and widespread large moths. Despite its name, it has no connection with oak trees, the ‘eggar’ refers to the tough, oval, acorn-like cocoon in which the pupa develops, this is referred to in the epithet of its scientific name: quercus, which is the latin name for Oak.
Common Bracken
(Excerpt) Bracken (Pteridium aquilinum) is a perennial fern in the family Dennstaedtiaceae. It is one of the most widespread vascular plants on Earth, being known as ‘cosmopolitan’ as it can be found almost everywhere from temperate zones to the tropics and from sea level to high altitudes, indeed it occurs on every continent except Antarctica,.
The Runaway Turntable
(Excerpt) It was a wild afternoon high on the Settle-Carlisle line, the wind came howling down from Wild Boar Fell and across the exposed plateau at Garsdale (still known to older hands as Hawes Junction). It was the sort of day when the moors seemed determined to remind every living thing there who really owned the place.
