urban

A Wildlife Lockdown Diary: Staying Sane in a Strange New World

Guest Contributor urban
Diary book

Guest post by Richard Harrison

On the 23rd March 2020, in order to reduce the spread of the coronavirus SARS-CoV-2, the British Prime Minster Boris Johnson announced to the House of Commons that the UK government would be informing people that they must stay at home and that certain businesses should close.

I therefore joined 1.7 million people and started working from home, with the inability to visit friends and family, and to only leave the house for essential business and for one hour’s exercise per day.

These are selected entries from the diary I kept during this unique period in our history, recording the wildlife in our small garden in a town near Oxford.

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Overlooked Urban Nature: the Surprising History of Some Early Spring Flowers

Guest Contributor plants, urban , ,
Rue-leaved saxifrage

Guest post by Miles King of People Need Nature

Early spring is possibly my favourite time of year. Day by day, Nature comes back to life in front of us. For me, it lifts my spirits. Even in this most bizarre winter, when the winter didn’t look like it was going to arrive at all, but finally did so in early March. But of course as the sun gets ever stronger, the cold nights quickly disappear and beautiful warm sunshine greets me as I let the chickens out first thing in the morning.

Nature survives at the margins

Today I found a particularly pleasing, though very small, sign of spring – Whitlow grass (Erophila verna) flowering here in Dorchester. Read more