Nature Studies

Michael McCarthy, the Independent's Environment Editor, is one of Britain’s leading writers on the environment and the natural world. He has three times been Environment Journalist of the Year (1991, 2003 and 2006) and in 2001 was Specialist Writer of the Year in the British Press Awards. In 2007 he was awarded the medal of the RSPB for "Oustanding Services to Conservation" – the first time in the medal's 100-year history that it has been given to a journalist – and in 2009 he was given the Marsh Award for Lepidoptera Conservation. In 2009 he published Say Goodbye To The Cuckoo (John Murray), a study of Britain's declining migrant birds.

Nature Studies by Michael McCarthy: Survival skills of the highest order

Alpine Dorset: that was a new one on me, in the heart of that most gently rolling of counties, but such the landscape seemed to be as we trudged on Christmas Day up the slopes of Maiden Castle, the colossal prehistoric hillfort on the outskirts of Dorchester. As far as the eye could see the countryside was white, apart from the woodlands which were black against the snow, while above, all was blue: a high-pressure system meant there was no cloud in the sky, and the sun poured down unhindered. Blinding white, luminous blue, searing sun: I've only seen that palette high in the Alps, on skiing holidays.

Inside Nature Studies

Nature Studies by Michael McCarthy: The winter solstice, festival of rebirth

Friday, 24 December 2010

Let us celebrate the day then, the long-awaited day, the great midwinter feast, and let us give thanks for what it represents, most of all, its restoration of hope. I'm not referring to tomorrow, though, I'm not referring to Christmas. I'm referring to last Tuesday: the winter solstice.

Nature Studies by Michael McCarthy: Cancun was a triumph for global co-operation

Friday, 17 December 2010

It is difficult sometimes, when one understands a situation but imperfectly, to make an accurate assessment of it; and such may be the case with some of those who have belittled the achievement of the United Nations climate conference which ended in Cancun, Mexico, a week ago.

Nature Studies by Michael McCarthy: On the trail of the resplendent quetzal

Friday, 10 December 2010

What do you think is the holy grail of wildlife watching? For some people undoubtedly it would be the big beasts of Africa, whereas others might say the great whales, or polar bears, or a tiger in the wild. Me, I've long held more modest ambitions: I've never seen a hawfinch.

Nature Studies by Michael McCarthy: Climate change can't be stopped. So adapt to it

Friday, 3 December 2010

Watching global warming negotiations in a Caribbean beach resort when the news from Britain is of deep snow at the very beginning of winter has an incongruous feel about it, to say the least, and it strikes me forcibly, here in Cancun, Mexico, where the UN is holding its latest climate conference, that the number of Britons considering this climate change gubbins to be all a load of old cobblers must, in the last week, have risen appreciably.

Nature Studies by Michael McCarthy: The end of abundance

Friday, 26 November 2010

If we ask ourselves what has been lost, that we really care about, in the last 50 years, what has gone from the natural world in Britain that was special and is now much missed, we might come up with many different answers.

Nature Studies by Michael McCarthy: A rare glimpse of the glorious woodcock

Friday, 19 November 2010

Sometimes you only get a glimpse, but a glimpse is enough. A week last Tuesday, I was tramping across a Surrey heathland, a place that was but 15 minutes in the car from Guildford but looked so wild, with its dark heather plains and its pine-clad and birch-clad horizons, that it could have been Russia. In fact, it has represented Russia in movies more than once. Surrey continues to amaze. You think it's all London suburbs. Half of it is wilderness. It's the county most taken for granted.

Nature Studies by Michael McCarthy: The chestnut that conquered the world

Friday, 12 November 2010

It is curious that the horse chestnut tree, whose nuts are useful only to small boys playing conkers, is so much better known in Britain than the sweet chestnut, whose nuts have supported whole societies.

Nature Studies by Michael McCarthy: Kingfisher blue, nature's most enchanting colour

Friday, 5 November 2010

If you were asked what is the most memorable colour in the natural world, what would you reply? Off the top of my head I would say the lipstick scarlet of poppies comes close, and maybe the lustrous orange of the large copper butterfly (now extinct in England, but you can see it in Holland) or perhaps the pale purple flash along the flanks of a rainbow trout.

Nature Studies by Michael McCarthy: Two lives on one quest for British butterflies

Friday, 29 October 2010

It's not often that you're brought up with a start, right at the beginning of a book, but here's an insight from the first page of a new volume on butterflies which did that for me. "For most of us," writes the author, "butterflies are bound up with childhood."

Nature Studies by Michael McCarthy: A toxic question on mushrooms

Friday, 22 October 2010

Why are some mushrooms poisonous? I must admit the question had never occurred to me until last weekend, when it suddenly thrust itself into my consciousness in the middle of a mushroom-gathering expedition in France. We were in Bellême in southern Normandy, a small hilltop town which is bidding fair to be France's wild mushroom capital: every autumn it hosts a four-day national mushroom festival centred on the nearby Bellême forest, 6,000 acres of exquisite oak woods where fungi grow in astonishing profusion.

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