One day I’d love to be able to survey everything we have on the farm. Just to see what mammals or plants or insects we have would be great fun. With time and resources lacking I’ve decided that looking at this Tawny owl pellet (found on the...

Due to my interest in all things conservation, last summer upon catching wind of the potential for a week's(!!) volunteering at an RSPB reserve I was naturally excited and intrigued - this seemed like a great opportunity to see what working with wildlife's...

With everyone’s mind turned to politics at the moment, big issues like hunting bans and badger culls come to mind. It sometimes seems as if we’ve talked these subject dry without finding a solution to suit everyone; but I got an insight into...

For about 2 years now I have been learning to identify birds by their songs. Before I started taking a real interest in this, I could pick out a few - robin, blackbird, etc, but I wasn't really taking a huge effort to learn the more obscure calls...

“Find tongues in trees, books in running brooks, sermons in stones, and good in every thing” – William Shakespeare. Prepare yourselves to learn a new word, reader: today’s topic is biophilia. That’s right, our instinctive...

Swish swish swish. My waterproof trousers protest as I try to keep up with the small, strange and mighty army that is scattered through the woods.Iam surrounded by mainly over 40 year olds, clad in just t-shirts and a tatty-strapped pair of bins’...

Meet the rotten fallen down tree on my farm. This colossal beauty came down last week. If you’re wondering, the middle has been taken out and moved because it’s inconveniently lying across a public footpath. So I’ve just spent...

Think back to your early childhood. I guarantee you’ll have had at least a few cases where you marvelled at a ladybird’s spots (but no, they don’t correlate with their age, sadly... that would be cute), or captured caterpillars and watched...

Firstly watch this video on YouTube for this to make sense: (Please visit the site to view this video) The Sum Of Us posted this fantastic video on the 11 th January 2015. I’m not a media critic but I think this is brilliant in its way to...

From the Oxford English Dictionary: Ridiculous, adj: very silly or unreasonable, absurd. Otter, noun: no idea…? You may have seen the news about a recent move by Oxford University Press – the people who publish many of our textbooks...

I consider myself an armchair birder - unlike the majority of the Phoenix Forum, I can only just about tell the difference between a coot and a moorhen (coots are the ones with white beaks - I think!) and frankly, I am baffled by the sheer amount of waders...

As this is the time where we are moving from one year to another, a time to reflect maybe, I thought I’d link the natural world to something I put on the other end of the spectrum of fun. Exams. The dreaded word has been said, bear with me. Let’s...

Berry Christmas Robins, reindeer and holly; the classic Christmas trilogy everyone knows and loves. Contrary to common belief, however, their natural habitat is not the front of a Christmas card or indeed dangling from the branches of a tree. These...