Here, I make a case for something that I call compassionate entomology, which is a way of studying insects and other arthropods that upholds the intrinsic value and welfare interests of the individual focal organisms. Continue reading Making a case for compassionate entomology
I live my life caught between conflicting impulses: on one hand, a wish to escape the shackles of human management; and, on the other, a reticence—out of ecological respect—to roam beyond its already-excessive bounds. Continue reading The lie of the beholder
Three summers ago, I typed the words “most probably correct” in closing an Earth Tongues piece titled ‘Smiles and scowles: Puzzles in the Forest’. At that point, I felt that I had written all that I was ever going to on the subject of tourists experiencing curious English woodlands. But a recent encounter with an Italian couple, on a misty July morning, has set me penning this unexpected sequel. Continue reading Size of disappointment: Puzzles on the Moor
The man’s pin bore the encircled hourglass that has been adopted as the symbol for Extinction Rebellion, and, being a rather passionate objector to species loss myself, I was eager to strike up a conversation. Continue reading Beware the Batesian rebel
When you have the privilege of quietly observing these cold-blooded miracles going about their lives—when you watch them exist—the need to find any other justification for their being starts to ebb away. Continue reading Love, existence, and the nature of picture postcards
It was shortly after the winter solstice, eight years ago, when I did something that I had done nothing quite like before. Triggered by the cresting of a claustrophobia that had been growing for a decade-and-a-half, from the time I left my childhood home below the dark woods of a place named Dancing Green, it began with me shifting a sofa and an armchair tight against my living room wall and sliding an oak dining table across the carpet and into a corner. Continue reading WITNESS: The dissipation of wildness (a personal experience)
A few days ago, in London, I was strolling along a nondescript stretch of pavement, in the direction of a farmers’ market, when I hit my head on the branch of a tree. It was one of those collisions where you find yourself poking at the point of contact in expectation of blood and other subcutaneous leakage Continue reading Inconveniences at the farmers’ market
Sated with nature’s wonders, I find an unwelcome thought returning, and I reluctantly begin to turn the focus-wheel clockwise as I lift my binoculars to the opposite shore. There it is: the ghastly sight of a recent hillside clear-cut. The devastation is obvious without the aid of magnification. Continue reading Bare-faced forestry
Let me recount this short tale—a thin slice from my recent life—exactly as it happened. On a warm afternoon earlier this month, outside an old inn that overlooks an east-coast estuary and that was once owned by a prolific persecutor of witches, I met a recent immigrant to the British Isles. Continue reading A knowledge for thirst: Water, empathy, and kinship
Despite strong public opposition in France, hunting’s ever-thinning guise of heritage still remains robust enough to satisfy many politicians. Emmanuel Macron, the President, claims to be serious about biodiversity but is an advocate of the suite of barbaric practices that make up this tradition. Continue reading A liberté without freedom, an égalité devoid of fairness, and a fraternité blind to kinship: Life as a bird in France
This is the first post in a category titled ‘Beneath the birch and pine’. The uniting theme for this series—beyond the writer’s nature-centred standpoint—will be the inspiration that each piece finds in some aspect of life in the Scottish Highlands. Continue reading Beneath the birch and pine: Prelude to a series
As someone with serious misgivings about many technological ‘advances’, I do find there to be something oddly amusing in the resilience of the QWERTY keyboard. Continue reading Technoscepticism and the machine-proof Muir
Near the southern end of the modern border between Wales and England – on the side of the latter – the sea-seeking River Wye and the Severn Estuary provide the aquatic outline for a curious wedge of land. Continue reading Smiles and scowles: Puzzles in the Forest
In a grand revival of natural history lies a significant proportion of the work that needs to be done if humanity is to awaken to the appalling crisis of life’s erasure. Continue reading The zebras of Kidderminster
… on some of our walks, a sombreness falls cloak-like. These are the ones on which we pass the signs of a recent murder or evidence of a slaughter in progress. Continue reading Life and death in the suburbs
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