Category: Nature

On Safari

Let’s start small – no, not microscopically tiny – just a small mammal and we will work up to bigger ones. Five of us were having supper in the garden on Monday evening.

Bee Keeping in Nicaragua

Betzabe keeps bees in San José, Nicaragua. Hitherto she has borrowed money from a community bank and repaid those loans in a timely fashion. Now she has successfully applied to Kiva for a loan of $3,000.

Motion Pictures

Early yesterday morning I was lucky to see one of the peregrine falcon fledglings fly from its nest to the roof at the north east corner of Charing Cross Hospital. Most of the time they either sit still or slowly sidle crabwise along the ledge where they were born.

Fabulous Falcons

For more than ten years peregrine falcons have nested on a ledge, part of the roof of Charing Cross Hospital. The best place to see them is from the west end of Margravine Cemetery or from our attic window.

Chiswick House

Just two miles upstream is an architectural gem: Chiswick House. It got a big thumbs up some three years ago in Upstream. Now it’s back on our radar because it is set in 65 acres of gardens.

The Druids’ Oak

The City of London is often dubbed The Square Mile and that’s more or less right – it is 1.2 square miles. But the writ of the City of London extends to a further 10,000 acres of public green spaces: Hampstead Heath, Epping Forest, etc.

Lily the Pink

Het Loo, het who? Until yesterday I’d never heard of one of the finest palaces in Europe. It was built in the 1680s for William and Mary (rather a waste as they emigrated in 1688), looks like a very grand version of the Royal Hospital in Chelsea and has magnificent gardens.

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Categorised as Nature

When Bali Met Bertie

I took Bali along the towpath to Richmond yesterday morning while Robert kept an eye on Bertie. It was high tide so not much avian activity on the foreshore.

Big Cheese

I’m sorry, I’ll write that again – big trees. This is a Maclura Pomifera named after William Maclure, an American geologist born in Scotland. The Pomifera means fruit-bearing. It should be named after William Dunbar, another Scotsman, who identified it in 1804 when he was travelling from the Mississippi River to the Ouachita River.