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Sitter still
The hare hunkers poured into form, a dip in the land becomes a hump of back. Today the wind races alone, ruffles fur, flails folded sod all ends in a meanness of hedge. Old orange eye opens sparks with mad magic just watches just waits. Speed sheathed in sharp, folded lugs. Minutes pass. Hare stays…
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Searching for river ghosts
This piece appeared in the Suffolk Magazine, as part of a collaboration with photographer Sarah Groves. Her wonderful images and blog can be found at the bottom of this entry. It was written in February but I like to give the magazine some breathing space before posting here. The moon is beginning to sink as…
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Starlings on the Fen
This is a piece I wrote for the wonderful Caught by the River I drove past four starlings on the road to Redgrave & Lopham Fen. Rhinestone-coated ruffians, perched on a telephone wire in a conspiratory gaggle. Black shapes hunched against the pink, mackerel-striped evening sky. It seemed like a sign. An omen. But now…
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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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Swifts
A piece I wrote on swifts for the Suffolk Magazine. Already looking forward to their return. My wife is in Africa. A twelve hour flight across sea, mountains, time zones and desert. She’s tired when I talk to her. Hot and caked in red dust from the loose roads of the Rift Valley. The air itself,…
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Wild swim at Knettishall
I run down the mud and gravel beach and into the water at speed, my knees raised and teeth gritted. When it’s not possible to jump, the only option is to sprint; to get in quick, before the scream of protesting nerve endings can turn the body around. The water is bone-chillingly cold as it reaches…
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Toad song
This was a piece for the Suffolk Magazine, published back in spring. It’s hard to tell where one toad ends and another starts. It’s a throbbing knot, a slowly revolving mass of arms and legs. Male toads, smaller than the female, often hitch a piggyback to the breeding pond, sometimes riding pinion for three days…
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A Sweet, Wild Note
The good people at Elliott & Thompson asked me to review Richard Smyth’s new book. I was at a conference last year when one of the delegates balked at the idea of being called a nature writer. To be one of those, he suggested, would put him outside of nature: a false god looking down…
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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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Matt Gaw 