Nature Studies

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Nature Studies by Michael McCarthy: The winter solstice, festival of rebirth

Friday, 24 December 2010

Let us celebrate the day then, the long-awaited day, the great midwinter feast, and let us give thanks for what it represents, most of all, its restoration of hope. I'm not referring to tomorrow, though, I'm not referring to Christmas. I'm referring to last Tuesday: the winter solstice.

Nature Studies by Michael McCarthy: Cancun was a triumph for global co-operation

Friday, 17 December 2010

It is difficult sometimes, when one understands a situation but imperfectly, to make an accurate assessment of it; and such may be the case with some of those who have belittled the achievement of the United Nations climate conference which ended in Cancun, Mexico, a week ago.

Nature Studies by Michael McCarthy: On the trail of the resplendent quetzal

Friday, 10 December 2010

What do you think is the holy grail of wildlife watching? For some people undoubtedly it would be the big beasts of Africa, whereas others might say the great whales, or polar bears, or a tiger in the wild. Me, I've long held more modest ambitions: I've never seen a hawfinch.

Nature Studies by Michael McCarthy: Climate change can't be stopped. So adapt to it

Friday, 3 December 2010

Watching global warming negotiations in a Caribbean beach resort when the news from Britain is of deep snow at the very beginning of winter has an incongruous feel about it, to say the least, and it strikes me forcibly, here in Cancun, Mexico, where the UN is holding its latest climate conference, that the number of Britons considering this climate change gubbins to be all a load of old cobblers must, in the last week, have risen appreciably.

Nature Studies by Michael McCarthy: The end of abundance

Friday, 26 November 2010

If we ask ourselves what has been lost, that we really care about, in the last 50 years, what has gone from the natural world in Britain that was special and is now much missed, we might come up with many different answers.

Nature Studies by Michael McCarthy: A rare glimpse of the glorious woodcock

Friday, 19 November 2010

Sometimes you only get a glimpse, but a glimpse is enough. A week last Tuesday, I was tramping across a Surrey heathland, a place that was but 15 minutes in the car from Guildford but looked so wild, with its dark heather plains and its pine-clad and birch-clad horizons, that it could have been Russia. In fact, it has represented Russia in movies more than once. Surrey continues to amaze. You think it's all London suburbs. Half of it is wilderness. It's the county most taken for granted.

Nature Studies by Michael McCarthy: The chestnut that conquered the world

Friday, 12 November 2010

It is curious that the horse chestnut tree, whose nuts are useful only to small boys playing conkers, is so much better known in Britain than the sweet chestnut, whose nuts have supported whole societies.

Nature Studies by Michael McCarthy: Kingfisher blue, nature's most enchanting colour

Friday, 5 November 2010

If you were asked what is the most memorable colour in the natural world, what would you reply? Off the top of my head I would say the lipstick scarlet of poppies comes close, and maybe the lustrous orange of the large copper butterfly (now extinct in England, but you can see it in Holland) or perhaps the pale purple flash along the flanks of a rainbow trout.

Nature Studies by Michael McCarthy: Two lives on one quest for British butterflies

Friday, 29 October 2010

It's not often that you're brought up with a start, right at the beginning of a book, but here's an insight from the first page of a new volume on butterflies which did that for me. "For most of us," writes the author, "butterflies are bound up with childhood."

Nature Studies by Michael McCarthy: A toxic question on mushrooms

Friday, 22 October 2010

Why are some mushrooms poisonous? I must admit the question had never occurred to me until last weekend, when it suddenly thrust itself into my consciousness in the middle of a mushroom-gathering expedition in France. We were in Bellême in southern Normandy, a small hilltop town which is bidding fair to be France's wild mushroom capital: every autumn it hosts a four-day national mushroom festival centred on the nearby Bellême forest, 6,000 acres of exquisite oak woods where fungi grow in astonishing profusion.

Nature Studies by Michael McCarthy: A celebration of the English apple

Friday, 15 October 2010

Why might one feel passionate about English apples, but not about English green beans? For if you examine the proposition, is it not the case that Cox's Orange Pippins excite enthusiasm in many people when even the juiciest and most flavoursome English runner bean is unlikely to do so, although they are both in essence the same thing, namely seed pods?

Nature Studies by Michael McCarthy: Welcome signs that winter's on its way

Friday, 8 October 2010

If we greet the bringers of spring with elation, should we greet the bringers of autumn with gloom? Logically, I suppose we should. But we don't seem to and I wonder why this is. Anyone close to the countryside knows the delight of hearing the first chiffchaff singing in March, having returned from the Mediterranean, and then the first willow warbler a little later; and even more, the pleasure of seeing the first swallow in April, just back from South Africa. The intensity of our welcome of these migrant birds is in large measure a seasonal one: they are signalling the great change in the calendar, the shift from warm to cold, from dark to light, and even more, the move in the natural world from death to rebirth. No wonder the first sound and sight of them make many hearts skip a beat.

Nature Studies by Michael McCarthy: Why are some alien invasions welcomed?

Friday, 1 October 2010

Stick insects are some of the world's most curious and recognisable creatures. They provoke fascination not only for their startling resemblance to sticks or leaves, a perfect piece of evolved camouflage, but also for the sheer anorexic skinniness of many of them; perhaps there is an ancient gene in us that triggers alarm at the sight of anything preternaturally thin.

Nature Studies by Michael McCarthy: The missing contribution to the great debate of our age

Friday, 24 September 2010

Anyone who saw the Hollywood movie Gladiator will remember its villain: the demented young Roman emperor Commodus, played by Joaquin Phoenix. The most vivid historical picture we have of Commodus is by Edward Gibbon in his Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire; Gibbon hated him because he felt it was with Commodus that the Roman rot set in, after four emperors who had ruled wisely and well, the last being Commodus's own philosopher-father, Marcus Aurelius.

Nature Studies by Michael McCarthy: Rarity has a value all of its own

Friday, 17 September 2010

Why is rarity so prized? What deep psychological roots in us does it tap? It clearly has nothing to do with the inherent properties of a given object, as a tatty and overprinted postage stamp will have immense allure for stamp collectors, if very rare, whereas a clean and exceptionally beautiful stamp which has just been issued in its millions will carry no cachet.

Nature Studies by Michael McCarthy: It's time I embraced the word 'biodiversity'

Friday, 10 September 2010

What's your reaction to the word biodiversity? Do you know what it means? Legend has it that when John Prescott took up office as the Environment Secretary in the New Labour government of 1997, he thought it was a washing powder. But of course he soon learned, as all of us learn, that biodiversity is basically a portentous way of saying wildlife.

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