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SHOCKING: Mark cocker - What They Never Told You

Why willows put the rest in the shade when cricket goes planting trees

In today’s newsletter: a tree that has provided for the game over hundreds of years is now protecting it for the future

The Guardian - UK · Jul 6

Country diary: Our patch of snowdrops is part of the family

Buxton, Derbyshire: Their ‘parents’ were planted 50 years ago by my wonderful late mother. Yet we all have a connection to these uplifting flowers

The Guardian - UK · Mar 7

Country diary: A fly is never just a fly

Buxton, Derbyshire: St Mark’s flies are out in force, food for the swifts and starling chicks, and everything else besides

The Guardian - UK · May 20, 2025

From analysis to the latest developments in health,
read the most diverse news in one place.

Country diary: A rare plant with a sense of the dramatic

Cromford, Derbyshire: The stinking hellebore is intricate, strange, exquisitely symmetrical – and poisonous. And this patch of them has one hell of a view

The Guardian - UK · Feb 20, 2024

Country diary: A destructive piece of artistry

Lightwood, Derbyshire: In the years since I first found this fungus, it has gorged on the heartwood of a beech tree, allowing the river to pass straight through

The Guardian - UK · Dec 19, 2023

Country diary: May the circle be unbroken

Shimpling, Suffolk: An imperfect ring of wonderful milkcap toadstools brings to mind how the landscape here is supposed to be

The Guardian - UK · Nov 6, 2023

Country diary: No rose is more lovely than a turkey-tail fungus

Buxton, Derbyshire: Where a 150-year-old beech has been felled, the fungi have moved in in extraordinary colour

The Guardian - UK · Oct 17, 2023

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Country diary: The most beautiful monuments on a moor not short of them

Bleaklow, Derbyshire: The ancient Barrow Stones reveal so much on close inspection, if you unleash your inner whim

The Guardian - UK · Oct 3, 2023

Country diary: Invisible crickets add to the summery hum

Millers Dale, Derbyshire: On this breathtakingly abundant bank, scent and sound blend into something magical

The Guardian - UK · Aug 15, 2023

Country diary: Fritillary abundance on a blessed slope

Coombs Dale, Derbyshire: Their presence is bittersweet – the reason these beauties are here is the same reason warblers and flycatchers are declining

The Guardian - UK · Aug 1, 2023

Country diary: A great migration at my feet

Buxton, Derbyshire: I moved with tai-chi-like slowness among the grass, which seethed with tens of thousands of baby frogs and toads

The Guardian - UK · Jul 17, 2023

Country diary: A 30-year journey from fertilised farmland to wildlife heaven

Cosford Hall, Suffolk: The biodiversity here is astonishing – and our goal was to find the owners 10 new species

The Guardian - UK · Jun 20, 2023

One Midsummer’s Day by Mark Cocker review – soaring with swifts

Wonder and gratitude drive a revelatory account of this vital summer visitor

The Guardian - UK · Jun 16, 2023

In brief: Because I Don’t Know What You Mean…; One Midsummer’s Day; Imagine a City – reviews

Josie Long’s first story collection brims with wry wit, Mark Cocker pays philosophical tribute to the swift, and Mark Vanhoenacker offers a pilot’s-eye view of urban life

The Guardian - UK · May 28, 2023

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The Guardian - UK · May 16, 2023

Country diary: Here, at least, martins and swallows are abundant

Castro Verde, Portugal: In contrast to my Derbyshire home town, the numbers are vast and their blue-and-white flight lines glorious

The Guardian - UK · May 2, 2023

Country diary: Wild daffodils are rarer than you’d think

Monsal Dale, Derbyshire: Compared with their cultivated cousins, they’re subtly different in shape, and endlessly restless

The Guardian - UK · Apr 18, 2023

Country diary: The glittering star of many a lawn

Lightwood, Derbyshire: Mosses are a wonderfully rich and underappreciated subject – often living right under our noses

The Guardian - UK · Apr 17, 2023

Look up, listen, and be very concerned. Birds are vanishing – and their crisis is our crisis

More than 40m birds have disappeared from UK’s skies since 1970: a trend that imperils the network that gives us life, says naturalist Mark Cocker

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The Guardian - UK · Apr 4, 2023

Country diary: This frog chorus is a purr, not a ribbit

Lightwood, Derbyshire: It’s frogspawn season, and what a delightful thing it is to stay for a while at the pond, just watching and listening

The Guardian - UK · Feb 20, 2023

Country diary: My favourite tree in this hamlet

Knotbury, Staffordshire: This wind-felled elder seems to be hanging on, held upright by what strength remains in its seven rotting limbs

The Guardian - UK · Feb 7, 2023

Country diary: Never have I seen a sparrowhawk so long or so well

Holt, Norfolk: After 50 years of glimpses, I thought I knew how they looked. Then one arrived at a friend’s bird table

The Guardian - UK · Dec 2, 2022

Country diary: Returning to an old haunt after nearly 50 years

Spurn Point, Yorkshire: The cliffs may be eroding at a pace, but the birdlife and landscape still brings a deep pleasure

The Guardian - UK · Nov 15, 2022

Country diary: Waking up to the glory of waxcaps

Buxton, Derbyshire: This previously overlooked group of fungi are the best of autumn – you can find up to 40 species in just one field

The Guardian - UK · Oct 20, 2022

‘I’m shedding tears of rage!’ How the Tories’ ‘war on nature’ outraged everyone from the RSPB to farmers

Liz Truss’s ministers seem determined to rip up environmental protections. But they’re facing resistance from an extraordinary alliance of wildlife charities and green-minded Conservatives

The Guardian - UK · Aug 16, 2022

Country diary: A stony desert in the heart of the Peaks – and it’s thriving

Longstone Edge, Derbyshire: A lot of work has gone into making this a place of infertile land yet abundant wildlife. And pride of place goes to the rare spined mason bee

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