The recording of natural history

A modern approach flourished around 1972 with Kenneth Allsop's In The Country book and column in the Daily Mail, but marking the doings of fauna and flora has attracted many pens, some pouring out reams of wording or some, like a favourite of mine, the late Eileen Soper, amalgamating words and watercolour in exquisite fashion.

A simple gardening record can be one way to begin, with a system whereby availability to return and expand a date and its content makes for more detailed focus.

Photographs are useful here for it is an eye-opener to flip back and see how fast the trees have grown, or the raw difference of the place in January compared to high summer. A bonus comes as the garden diary overlaps to involve birds and butterflies, plus fish and amphibians if a water feature is part of your patch.

Logging the natural world is at its best as a specific affair. One chap I used to read about a decade since was Mike Cinderey of Carlton-in-Cleveland, who kept highly detailed daily records of temperatures and weather conditions for his village.

Other people also pinpoint the particular: the not-so-common house sparrow for example, has come under regular surveillance by Dennis Summers-Smith of Guisborough - regular meaning 50 years of study, qualifying him as a world authority on Passer domesticus.

Foxes have ever been my passion - first live sighting on a camping trip in 1957, its graceful form cantering easily across the early morning fields above Staithes, a special image still. And, apart from keeping a detailed diary of local foxes from 1972-74, I follow their trails today whenever opportunity presents itself.

One fine July evening of this summer on a Friday return from Pickering, a familiar shape caught my eye in a field below Skipster Hagg. By the time I had turned up towards Appleton and reached the common, the young fox was sitting in a gorse-edged glade watching a magpie watching him. Totally unconcerned, he followed a pattern of flies whirling about his head while the magpie bounced around like something demented.

I watched the lanky cub from the car for some minutes until another magpie turned up: two for joy; but the fox didn't get much. Deciding that two magpies came close to harassment, he ambled off into the scrub and end of observation.

Sunday evening, August 13, 1995: going through Skelton Ellers, a gloomy, rather spooky dip in the road towards Guisborough, and a dangerous stretch. At 7.30, driving behind a keen cyclist, a wild mink unexpectedly shot out of the woodside and performed a first class forward roll into the cyclist's front wheel. Said gentleman wobbled alarmingly, the mink completed a further somersault to finish, and within seconds both parties continued their individual course; the cyclist somewhat miffed and, I suspect, unaware of what had hit him, glaring round before setting his nose for home. End of typical wildlife snippet.

Diary entries at a set time of year can be a close repeat of the last, or past years even, as so little may have changed. Certainly the September touch of nippy mornings, whistle of wood pigeons' wings, and the drip-drip from the trees overhanging Kirkdale Ford is a long familiar aspect.

St Gregory's Minster takes on enigmatic mood in autumn as twilight falls and wraith-like mists begin to form across the north field. High in the blue, skies are etched with trails of the modern traveller in search of adventure, but here aerial activity is centuries old, from the darting antics of pipistrelles along the lane to the silent flight of tawny owls through Kirkdale's woodland.

But I have on record perhaps the most exciting piece of natural history here, which remained unseen for generations until revealed by Professor Philip Rahtz and Lorna Watts in the closing years of the 20th century. Excavation exposed, in their most basic state, a number of people from Kirkdale's past. Dignified in their vulnerable repose, it was a most impressive sight and a privilege to witness. No markers, and no names; just simple patterns of bone against the dark earth to stir the imagination.

Outside the Minster walls in late September, close behind Tom Jeffrey's memorial seat, dark clusters of ripe elderberries hang, while all along Kirkdale's narrow lanes there is an inevitable rusty look to the hedgerows.

Below the swooping swallows beneath the ash trees, tall elegant skeleton stalks of hemlock display their umbrella seed heads.

This plant was chosen the image for many a mid-20th century country book illustration and landscape painting. Fascinating structures, they became popular as house decorations at that time too, enamelled with silver or white, set in tall vases and placed on the landing.

There were some wonderfully sunny days worth recall at the end of this August; butterflies moderate in number, peacocks predominant as always and a few more red admirals than usual.

On August 29, at 9.50am, the thought passed my mind that it is not only cats catching birds which can irritate, and found myself wagging a finger at our resident bluetits skulking about the buddleias with intent.

Struck like a cobra one did, the little beggar, to gain purchase upon a large cabbage white; then both off in triumph to engage upon ten-o-clocks in some secluded corner.

* A full and richly illustrated account of the Kirkdale excavation can be found in Kirkdale Archaeology 1996-1997, by Philip Rahtz and Lorna Watts, supplement to the Ryedale Historian No 19 (1998-99).

Updated: 11:19 Thursday, October 11, 2001