At first it’s barely noticeable. A tinny resonance of indistinct origin, easily ignored amongst the background hums and whirs of the home. I stop crunching my toast and listen. The morning radio presenters are doing an outside broadcast from a noisy location – car engines come and go, voices rise and fall, and birdsong from the other end of the country feels as close to me as my mug of breakfast tea. But it’s none of those things. It’s probably just the mechanical twittering of starlings on the farm buildings next door, but still I squint my eyes and stare…

Flying the nest is a big deal. It’s surely among the most momentous events in our lives. I remember doing it myself with a sense of both excitement and trepidation, wondering whether I would experience, as Edina in Absolutely Fabulous described it, ‘umbilical whiplash’ and catapult back home to my mum at the first sign of trouble. I didn’t, as it turned out, probably because I did it gradually at my own speed and I knew that I could, having fledged, return to the nest if I wanted to. Indeed I did just that for months at a time during…

Of all the traumas that summer inflicts upon a pale, midge-and-tick-attracting ginger who is forced to skulk around in the shadows for months on end, hay fever is by far the worst. But while I’ve had my fair share of horrendous seasons in the 38 years since I was diagnosed I can’t remember experiencing anything quite like I’ve experienced this year. Is it just me or is 2017 a really bad year for hay fever? Given the individual nature of the condition I’m well aware that my own experience might not be representative, so I’ve resorted to one of my…

The insect world is a bit marmite really. I’ve met a good number of people who adore insects more than they adore the furriest, softest koala bear. But then I’ve met plenty of people who loathe insects with every fibre of their being, who would purge the entire planet of every last creepy crawly if they could. Of course, the entire planetary ecosystem would collapse if they got their way so let’s just be thankful that none of them have found a genie in a lamp and wished all those bugs away. But my general impression is that the majority…

It’s wonderful when a place surprises you, when something you think might just make an interesting diversion actually turns out to be something extraordinary, something revelatory. Perhaps even something profound. The Bone Caves of Inchnadamph were somewhere I’d driven past innumerable times on my way to somewhere else, most likely to Kinlochbervie, the Assynt coast or some great big lump of Coigach rock. I’d certainly been aware of them both as a notable geological feature and as an important site in Scotland’s ecological history, but for some reason I’d never actually stopped to visit them until March this year. The…

On 15th February I went for a walk up West Lomond in Fife and, as I walked through the fields everything around me screamed ‘SPRING!’ for the first time this year. It was only 7C but it was a clear blue-sky day, utterly calm with a warm sun. There was some gorse blooming on the side of the path and skylarks twittered over the fields. It looked, felt and sounded like spring….but was it? None of those signs are unique to spring of course. Beautiful days occur all year round, as do gorse flowers. A winter sun can be warm…