Living in the west of Britain and routinely visiting Scotland with work, I have come to love the subtle effects of moss on landscapes. Nowhere more so than in the Chee-Millers Dale and Cressbrook Dale areas, where they evoke a sense of temperate rainforest. The latter place is the subject of this week’s Guardian country diary which you can read by clicking this. But in addition here are a few further pictures of their extraordinary beauty and resilience, given that they were among the first vegetation forms to colonise terrestrial habitats about 400 million years ago during the Devonian. I have captioned each image in the slideshow with a few more details. I should add that I am hopeless at identifying them so if you spot mistakes please let me know. I hope you will enjoy.
books BIRDS BRITANNICA 2nd ed 2020 (’05), ‘The great delight of my year, the book that made me feel I’d been waiting for it all my life, is the magnificently produced and completely enthralling Birds Britannica.’ ANDREW MOTION A CLAXTON DIARY, 2019 ‘Mark Cocker…
Eagle hunters on route to the Eagle Hunters festival near Ulgii in western Mongolia In the introduction to Birds and People, a book that took me five years nonstop to write – and nearly killed me – I said that ‘a world without birds…
I act as a freelance guide for individuals or small groups who wish to make day trips to experience the glorious wildlife of Derbyshire. Within a radius of 15 miles of my hometown Buxton there are about 30 different sites that are all wonderful…