Mark Cocker
'It takes a whole universe to make just the one small black bird'
Photos of the month
this mammalian furred plant is …. well see if you can guess? Clue. Think sloe gin. 
This is Cressbrook Dale the subject of my diary this week 
The thickening upholstery of the moss gives purchase, as in this thorn bush, to lichens and, elsewhere, to ferns such as hard fern. 
one of the most beautiful light-filled and evocative landscapes in the Scottish highlands is birchwood carpeted with mosses. 
Here at Strath Dionard the lumps of granite had a toupee of mosses and lichens that was probably hundreds of years old 
here is another example and here … 
is a close up of sphagnum fuscum rusty bog moss (or is it acute-leaved bog moss Sphagnum capillifolium?) but both create these glorious fractal patterns 
another of the mosses on the Strath Dionard granite is this landscape-creating beauty named wooly fringe-moss Racomitrium lanuginosum 
is is nigh impossible to convey the sheer scale of the Flow Country, one of Britain’s most impt landforms in a world context, and which meets all criteria as a UNESCO world heritage site but …. 
we are so stupid, given that it is the most efficient sequester of carbon of all European habitats, we prefer to cover it in non-native conifers to give tax breaks to the wealthy.
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.
writing
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…
latest news
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…
Derbyshire Days
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…
Mark Cocker 