Author Archives: Debra
Hiatus
When I started this blog in June 2022, I questioned whether the world really needed another one. I had also seen blogs that had been started but not updated for a while, and I didn’t want this one to go … Continue reading
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Sweeping Solastalgia
Although the emotions I felt last week on the allotment were mainly caused by a negative outlook brought on by recent personal events, the growing sense of unease about the negative changes I and many others are witnessing in the … Continue reading
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Tagged #30DaysWild, local nature, record, report, solace, solastalgia, volunteer
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A Dispatch from the Depths
Or a wallow in the mire… Look away now if misery memoirs aren’t your thing… (Normal service will be resumed…)
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Tagged allotment, birds, despair, magpies, nature, one for sorrow rhyme, silent spring, tenacity
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A Return to Tranquillity
At the end of June 2022, I spent a few days on a birdwatching course at the Field Studies Council’s Rhyd y Creuau centre near Betws-y-Coed. On the final evening, I was determined to visit a place I’d not been … Continue reading
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Tagged Betws-y-Coed, church, churchyard, godsacre, nature, peaceful, St Michael's Old Church, Wales, wood warbler, yews
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Spring’s Shifting Soundscapes
As I walked around Speke-Garston Coastal Reserve recently, I noticed the difference in the birds occupying both the soundscape and the landscape. Residents had given way to visitors, the latter muscling their way in to sing their own songs and … Continue reading
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Tagged birding, birdsong, birdwatching, common whitethroat, grasshopper warbler, nature, reed warbler, sedge warbler, Speke-Garston Coastal Reserve, walking
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A Whirlwind Weekend of Wonders
I learnt a very helpful piece of information during a recent weekend’s birding (14th-17th April): bird for spring migrants on a rainy day with a south-east wind blowing. It seemed counterintuitive to this fairly fair-weather birder and walker until the … Continue reading
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Tagged birding, birdwatching, connections, farmland, nature, Oglet, redstart, ring ouzel, wheatear, whinchat
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A Good Friday’s Birding
On a glorious Good Friday, I visited a new (to me) birding site with a friend. Target species: yellowhammer – another species in rapid decline, as I’ve mentioned before on this blog (https://wordsanddeeds.co.uk/not-the-bird-we-were-looking-for/). The reasons are numerous: farmers sowing crops … Continue reading
The Magical Mersey
Today’s blog post celebrates the River Mersey, and is a combination of a wonderful wildlife encounter I experienced earlier this month and a poem written in response to Lancaster LitFest’s call-out for its ‘From Source to Sea’ poetry co-creation project … Continue reading
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Tagged connection, estuary, harbour porpoise, Lancaster LitFest, nature, nature writing, poem, poetry, River Mersey
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Weeding and Wondering
This piece provides a contrast to an article I was invited to write for MONO literary journal on how walking informs my nature writing (Words Made by Walking, https://www.monofiction.org/post/words-made-by-walking-an-article-by-debra-williams), as I am ‘fixed’ in one place – although still thinking! … Continue reading
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Tagged allotment, Anthropocene, Celtic rainforest, nature writing
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A Walk through History at Calderstones Mansion House
Looking through my notes on the various talks I have attended in the last few months, I found that I had not written about the very interesting one that took place at Calderstones Mansion House last October, as part of … Continue reading
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Tagged ancient stones, Calderstones Park, history, Mansion House, nature, poems, poetry, walk
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