Category: Suffolk Wildlife Trust
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Outfoxed
A piece written for Suffolk Magazine’s Wildlife Diary It is over 12 months since I last saw the foxes here. A cub that fixed me with orange eyes, ears pricked in perfect triangles almost too big for her head, before disappearing back down a path that curves into woodland. That must have been in late…
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Working the woods
We follow the tractor and its fishtailing trailer along the track, making our way slowly towards where the woodsmen have been working for the last two months. The sun rose red over Bradfield Woods a few hours ago, but in amongst the coppices the night’s cold still lingers. Puddles splinter and crack underfoot and the…
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Oak hearts
Near the entrance to Old Broom is the first of the old oaks. Its heartwood exposed and ridged like a giant mammoth’s tooth. The children jostle each other with their elbows as they huddle into the door-shaped space, running their fingers around the raised lip of the bark and the exposed surface that marks more…
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The Badlands of Suffolk
This is a piece written originally for the Suffolk Magazine. There are hundreds of eyes on me when I walk on to Wangford Warren. Herds of rabbits. They skitter away in heart-quickening gallops or stand alert like prairie dogs. Cotton-tailed sentinels in the shadows of the razor wire and fences of Lakenheath Airbase . I…
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Brock star
This was a country diary piece written for the Suffolk Magazine about Suffolk Wildlife Trust’s badger hide. Dusk is falling as we arrive. Birds are bidding an explosive farewell to the light while owls ke-wick in greeting to the dark. They are marking a changing of the guard, that special time of day when the…
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Fox, deer and bone-chilling cold
This was originally a country diary piece that appeared in Suffolk Magazine It’s about an hour before dawn and the fingernail moon is the brightest thing in the sky over Lackford Lakes. Although there is little sign of the sun, the darkness feels like it is softening and features of this meadow are slowly starting…
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Wildness and the impermeable bog
In a time of flint tools and real wildness, there used to be bear and beaver at Roydon Fen. Even now, when this fragment of marsh is framed by a cul-de-sac that echoes its name, it’s easy to imagine them, toothy and paddle-tailed. Gnawing through the alders. I leave my car by the entrance sign and…
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Tracks and treasure at Knettishall Heath
This is a country diary piece written for Suffolk Magazine When I first saw the Exmoor ponies they were more murmuration than herd. Galloping hard across this ancient furzy heath, they formed a twisting, athletic ribbon of dun browns and treacle blacks; their hooves pounding through the heather and into my ribcage. In truth, I think…
Matt Gaw 