The 50th Birthday Walk for Prostate Cancer UK

Later this month, I will turn 50 years old. I wanted to mark the occasion with something more than some gifts, a few cards and a hang-over. Four years ago, I was diagnosed with prostate cancer and it was by no means certain that I would reach 50 years old. Thank goodness, that is now in the past. In celebration of my new "all clear" tumour-free status, I decided to do something to raise money for Prostate Cancer UK.

I have been amazingly lucky. I was diagnosed with cancer the very first time I had a PSA test (which I thought was going to be a formality as I had no symptoms, it just seemed like a good idea). Through a combination of a great GP in Downton and a new treatment being trialled by Consultant Urologist Chris Ogden's team at the Royal Marsden Hospital, I have not only survived it but have done so with all my bits intact and in working order. The secret was High Intensity Focused Ultrasound. After lots of MRI scanning and a god-awful operation called a 'mapping biopsy' where 74 teeny bits of my prostate were snipped out and tested, one half of the organ was zapped with a laser-like beam of ultra-sound. This turned the plump pink lump of my prostate's left hand side into a frazzled scrap of flesh. It was pretty dramatic stuff and I really hope that it sounded like a diving Spitfire, super-charger screaming and guns blazing; but I think that in reality the only noise was the sound that urologists make when they are concentrating: perhaps a slight hum or a tuneless whistle. (For more information about HIFU and the various trials, read more here: http://www.cancerresearchuk.org/about-cancer/cancers-in-general/treatment/other/high-intensity-focused-ultrasound-hifu and get the info sheet here http://prostatecanceruk.org/prostate-information/our-publications/publications/hifu). Having been this lucky, I wanted to do what I could to give other men the same chance.

A few weeks ago, I put up a Just Giving page (https://www.justgiving.com/David-Blake7), set a target of £200 and started to plan a walk of about 25 miles from my partner's house in Erlestoke, across Salisbury Plain and the West Wiltshire Downs, to my home in Chilmark. I managed to persuade nearly twenty sponsors to donate various sums that amounted to over £450 (THANK YOU!) and on Sunday 15th November, I set off.

7.30 am, ready to go.

From Erlestoke, I climbed up through Erlestoke Woods and Coulston Hollow to join the Imber Range Perimeter Path (IRPP). This is sometimes a wide metalled road and sometimes a farm track. It is part of the public path that goes right round the Army's Salisbury Plain Training Area (SPTA). As I joined it at the top of Coulston Hill I was met by a young gale that was driving across the wide expanse of Salisbury Plain.

I screwed my iPod ear buds in a bit harder, turned up the volume on my collection of 70s and 80s guilty pleasures and marched off. This is what the Army call an ARE (Acronym-Rich Environment), but as you pass the Videttes (cavalry-speak for look-out), they pit up signs in Civilian-ese so that we mere mortals can understand what they are about.

The SPTA is always being used by units on it somewhere. There are a few 'open days' when you can access the interesting places such as Imber Village, but most of it, such as the Impact Areas, remain closed off. The Army has been using the Plain since the 1890s and there is an awful lot of stuff lying about that has yet to explode. You see more innocuous things like Illume flares cases and parachutes, old smoke grenades, sandbags, spent cartridge cases and masses of barbed wire lying all over the place. Training for war is a messy business!

I passed a bit of early morning Army traffic as I made my way round Edington and on to Bratton. Redwings and fieldfares were feeding across the ploughed fields. At one point they all rose up in to the air, clacking in alarm as a sparrow hawk sliced across the track in front of me. On the top of Bratton Down I passed Bratton Camp, an Iron Age Hillfort built close to a Neolithic long barrow. This is the site of one of the greatest and most decisive battles in British history. It was here that King Alfred's army of Saxon farmers engaged Guthrum's viking army of Danes and Norsemen. Guthrum made his shield wall across the ramparts of Bratton Camp, inviting Alfred to break his army of amateurs on the mailed might of his professional warriors. Alfred lead his men into battle and they pushed the vikings back over the precipitous slope behind them, sending them skittering down into the valley to be slaughtered. Now it is a place where locals go to walk their dogs, look across the vale to Trowbridge. There's also a good view of the old cement works and when they finally come to knock down the chimney, Bratton Camp will once again be thronged with people!

I was now no longer walking directly into the wind as I skirted the Westbury Chalk Pit and walked on to Upton Cow Down where I turned down across a wide coombe and headed towards Warminster.

The trackway of the IRPP gives way to a grassy track, and then to a chalky, wet climb up the other side.

Climbing up towards Cradle Hill behind the rifle ranges, I was going up a slope that was greasy with churned up chalky clay, each footstep slipping back infuriatingly. From the top of Cradle Hill, I dropped down into Warminster Garrison and got great view of Battlesbury: another Iron Age hill fort.

Warminster Garrison is typical of many Army camps in that there is a huge amount of very neat mown grass. Garrison commandants obviously like to have things tidy, green and above all else short. What always amazes me is that, even though there is a]obviously some industrial-scale mowing operation going on, there is never a big heap of grass cuttings. I have a small lawn and a small mountain of cut grass. What does the Army do with all the cut grass?

Battlesbury Hill is one of a line of three hills in the escarpment that hangs over Warminster and the Wylye Valley like a great green wave. From the top of Battlesbury, I looked out over the garrison with its lines of parked armoured cars, lorries and tanks, still in desert camouflage from the was in Afghanistan.

In the distance, to the right of the image above, I could see Cley Hill and beyond that the wooded greensand hills of Longleat and Stourhead. As I climbed the defensive ditches of Battlesbury, I saw the last of the Clustered-Bellflower, still in purple flower after this very mild autumn.

The Clustred bell-flower is also called Dane's Blood, as it springs up wherever brave Wessex men slaughtered vikings and other Norse Ne'er-do-wells 

Then I had Middle Hill and Scratchbury Hill to climb. Siegfried Sassoon lived at Heytesbury after the Second World War - where I would cross down into the Wylye Valley. He used to walk up Scratchbury and do the kind of awfully clever thinking that only poets and novelists with large private incomes can afford. What I can never understand is why he moved from Teffont Magna, which is far prettier.

The views from Scratchbury out across the Plain are fantastic.

The white ribbon of road in the foreground is the southern military road that takes armour from Warminster onto the Plain without scuffing up the grass. It cost £20 million to build. It's great on a skateboard.

You can see deep into the Ranges; haunt of short-eared owls, hen harriers, merlins and (reputedly) big cats! It was not a great day for landscape photography. The heavy low cloud turned the light into a dull grey glow. The grass and greening fields reflected the grey-ness and the great rolling expanse of the Plain was hammered into two dimensions.

I reached the second highest point of my walk at Cotley Hill, which has a cairn on a round barrow and that means a photo has to be taken. It was a bit hurried as by now I was nearly an hour late getting to my rendezvous at Corton where joyous crowds were waiting to welcome me, so the selfie was a bit wonky.

Me - on a barrow, beside a cairn, for charity.

I was in a hurry now, as I was getting phone calls wondering what I was up to. As I dropped down into the valley and crossed the A36 into Heytesbury, I started to run and walk. Running for four strides, then walking four strides takes you forward in surges and eats up the ground. I crossed the Wylye at Heytesbury Mill, where a stoat ran down the track towards me, saw me, and zoomed back the way he had come.  I got onto a sloppy, sticky muddy track that took me to Corton and the The Dove where everyone was waiting. Rapturous applause of "What took you so long?" and "we've already had lunch" greeted me as I rolled in, puffing, red-faced and bathed in sweat.

A quick change of Tee-shirt (another one supplied by Prostate Cancer UK!), some more water and I was ready for the off. The next ten miles were much easier: a gentler pace and great company made it so much more enjoyable.

Tom and Fin, appropriately dressed in Prostate Cancer UK t-shirts,  ready to beat me with sticks should I slow down.

We worked our way up the Dairy Road to Snails Creep Hanging and then onwards up to the highest point of the whole day (204 metres) at Stockton Down. Here I introduced everyone to one of my favourite trees: a knurled old beech that is covered in carvings and memorials (some of them a bit rude!).

L-R Me, Lou George and Merlin, Fin, Laurie, Tom and DJ

From there we went through Stockton Wood, a quick dash across the A303 and then down the last two miles or so to Chilmark and home.

Then I remembered that I had left my house keys back at Lou's house. I had prepared milled wine and spaghetti bolognese for our triumphal return, so the final challenge of the day was to break into my own house. This was, of course, another photo opportunity!

If you are a burglar, please disregard this  photo.

A great day, with great friends walking across 25 miles of wonderful landscapes. Raising money for a very serious and important cause.

To all those who supported me, cured me and sustained me over the last four years - thank you!

Letting the cat out of the bag.

As the Lynx Trust UK moves towards making a formal application for a licence to release Eurasian lynx into Britain, we can expect that re-introduction of formerly native species will be the hot-topic in British conservation. It is going to be brought up in the media, in discussions at home and in the pub and in debates at conferences and seminars.

As always in nature conservation, the more heat we have in a discussion, the less light is shed. Already, people are identifying with the battle groups that are forming; so choose your side because if you are not for them, then you must be against them. There is no room for any wavering go-betweens who are likely to get crushed as the battle is joined. The 'pro-wolf' lobby are clustered around their standard bearer George Monbiot. Facing them squarely are the 'anti-predation formation', struggling to come to terms with their new role as 'antis'. Skirmishing on the sidelines are the government agencies, representative organisations and charities that like to shoot both ways.

My concerns over this issue are not to do with Rights and Wrongs, but from our failure to learn a few lessons from the past. The first one is in the title of this piece - once the cat is out of the bag, you will not get it back in. A good example of this is the recent arrival of the beaver in Britain. This species is widespread on the River Tay and is breeding in Devon on the River Otter. Other populations are likely to be blooming as I write, either through natural spread or human intervention. Like it or not the reintroduction has happened and now we have to manage it. The impact of beavers, whether it's welcome or not, is never slight.

Beavers don't fell just small trees. This ash was about 50cm diameter at the base and 25m tall when the beavers chewed it off. (Taken in a wet woodland in a Polish marsh)

We are all going to have to get used to beavers causing change in our rivers and wetlands, but also causing problems and adding both interest and cost.

Beaver impact: this kind of activity will become more common across southern England and Scotland. (Taken beside the River Bug, on the Polish - Byelorussian border)

I am amazed that this lesson has not been learned. There are enough examples in our recent and more distant history. Twenty years ago, I often talked to colleagues and friends about whether wild boar would ever be tolerated in Britain. That is no longer a moot point because as we know, the wild boar is back. Populations in Kent and East Sussex, Dorset and the Forest of Dean have been supplemented by releases of wild boar and domestic crosses throughout Devon and Cornwall, in Dorset and many more sites in Scotland than is officially recognised. Intensive shooting is able to keep a local population under some sort of control, but eventually those populations will break out. How do we know this? Because we have seen it before. The grey squirrel was released in the UK in the late 19th Century. After nearly 140 years, they have not stopped spreading. They are the mammal species with which people are most familiar, they are the wild animal that more people can get close to than any other, they cause huge harm to all our woodlands and deliver a pox virus that kills the indigenous red squirrel. Yet with all that popularity on one hand, and being Enemy Number One on the other, we still can not control their populations or spread. Surely, so much love and hate would inspire us to decisive action? Is this testimony to the squirrel's secret super-power to over-come all opposition, or could it be something to do with us?

Easily introduced: but every attempt to control it's spread and populations have met with failure.

However, if we manage to get over the general confusion that has be-devilled every wildlife release programme and every wildlife control programme in the last few decades, then some of the real issues may become more apparent. On the one hand, we love the released animals (pick a species, any species) and many people wish to see them, know they are 'out there' and are thrilled, inspired and amused by them. On the other hand, we cannot sustain their impact and will not tolerate their presence in certain circumstances such as when our legitimate aspirations are harmed. In the ensuing fire-fight between different types of animal lovers, the animal itself is forgotten and just gets on with the breeding, feeding and wandering about that is no super-power; just it's nature.

A British wild boar. Here to stay.

When the controversy over a release programme dies down, such as in the case of the white-tailed sea eagle, we can start to ask ourselves what we did right and what we could have done better. The reintroduction of the 'flying carpet' to the Hebrides and the Western Highlands has been very successful. Salmon farmers are getting to grips with how to keep it out of their cages, sheep farmers have stopped blaming it for quite so many lamb deaths as they used to and the eagles have done a huge amount for tourism.

What we can see now is that the site for reintroduction (a remote island wildlife reserve in the Inner Hebrides) may not have been the best one. It was decided upon largely as a result of the personalities involved, some historical justification and the fact that it was so remote that it would not have much impact on people. If it was to be done again, I would suggest somewhere other than the Isle of Rum. I would go for the New Forest in Hampshire. Firstly, there's masses of food for eagles: far more than in the Hebrides with lots of coastal birds and fish in shallow waters. The breeding habitat is better too: lots of trees, tall buildings and cliffs nearby for nesting and there would be a great, instant impact on people.

The lesson from the sea eagle reintroduction is that you need to get people seeing, watching, appreciating and getting used to the released animals as fast as possible. The confusion and useless debates will only be dispelled by knowledge and experience. Imagine the sight of those huge birds over the Solent or circling around the Needles. Imagine them sitting on the cranes of Southampton Water or on the mast of a yacht on the Hamble. If we all could see them for what they are, then we would soon get used to them. Personally, I like to think of them in Lymington; catching the seagull that stole my chips last time I was there.

The south of Britain is an incredibly rich habitat, able to support a great amount of wildlife. While the biodiversity it supports has been reduced (fewer species),  the numbers of animals it supports is vast. Native species such as roe deer and badger have never been as numerous as they are today. The sheer productivity of the south lands make them the natural choice for reintroductions of large animals, especially predators such as lynx.

In areas of southern England with good habitat, roe can increase quickly to achieve very high densities. These roe were part of a group of 22 males and females living out on the fields of Wiltshire while other roe deer occupied the surrounding woodlands.

Yet we keep on hearing that Scotland is the place to do it. Never mind the poor thin soils, the short growing season and general paucity of the landscape, Scotland is held up to be THE place to carry out experiments such as introducing wolves, bears and the Poll Tax.

So, back to our bagged cat. There are two proposals for reintroduction that are getting serious consideration: lynx and pine marten.

Pine marten are likely to be with us in the foreseeable future. The reintroduction in Wales is in progress and sites for an English release programme are being looked at. There is a long-term expectation that polecats will remove the problems we have with grey squirrels. Scientists in Ireland have studied the interaction between pine marten and grey squirrel. In short, when pine martens achieve a certain threshold population density, the squirrels give up and go away. The sound of cheering foresters may then scare off the pine martens, but we'll only know about that if it happens. And I do say 'if', because that density threshold is pretty high. Between the arrival of pine martens in an area and the squirrels leaving there will be a number of years. Years in which the pine martens may cause no one any bother at all, but they might also eat some protected species such as dormouse, popular species such as woodpeckers and loved pets such as rabbits, guinea pigs, kittens and poultry. The people who suffer this impact may not necessarily want to see the demise of the grey squirrel, but they may well start to get pretty cheesed off with the pine martens and the people who released them. pine martens will also cause problems for gamekeepers. Pheasants are released into the wild every autumn from pens in the woods. Foxes and badgers can be kept out of the pens by stout wire netting and electric fencing. Not so pine martens, because they climb trees. Gamekeepers will not put up with large-scale losses of expensive pheasants.

Lynx Trust UK have suggested that they are looking at remote areas with low productivity. That is my description, not thiers. I have never understood how the potential lynx habitat is mapped in the UK. Lynx hunt roe deer preferentially. They are almost roe 'specialists' and roe are very keyed into lynx, even when there are no lynx around. Such a close association between predator and prey would lead me to guess that their habitat is the same: wherever you find roe deer then you might find a lynx. One might also expect them to develop a taste for muntjac, which would be no bad thing.

Or would it? Where did you last see a roe deer or a muntjac? I recently saw roe out on the open hill in the Western Highlands of Argyll. I have also seen them living out in the large fields around Salisbury Plain and I have seen them in gardens on the edges of towns and cities. Muntjac get much closer to home. This diminutive deer is very much at home in cities where they can slip between small patches of rich habitat: from allotments, to cemeteries, to gardens, to parks and back again. If the prey are hear on our doorstep, then that makes our doorsteps potential lynx habitat. So you may think that a pine marten eating a little girl's prized guinea pigs is a PR disaster, but wait until a couple of lynx cubs pull a labrador to bits on the back lawn while the family watches in horror and up-loads it to You-Tube.

Lynx do not need a neolithic landscape like the one that previously supported them. They do very well in modern Europe in a wide variety of Twenty-first Century habitats and landscapes. If the lynx release goes ahead then expect it to succeed and to do so very rapidly.

If there is a licence granted for a release, then our further expectations should be:

• Lynx will not solve problems such as the impact we get on forestry crops from deer.
• Lynx will cause additional problems - both expected and unexpected.
• The impact of lynx will be unpredictable and the people who suffer may not be the same people who gain from it. This inequality will be at the root of much of the controversy.
• There will be death and there will be new life; joy and horror; celebration of success and disappointment at the failures. 

It should be an interesting time ...

A West Country haven - but for whom?

This is the River Carey, it rises under the Sitka spruce plantations of the Forestry Commission's forests on Cookworthy Moor and winds it's way across North Devon to flow into the River Tamar. For part of it's journey, it slips through a secluded wooded valley and down a small waterfall at Coombe Mill near St Giles on the Heath.

The Carey rolls over ridges in the geology, creating a series of small waterfalls and riffles that fill the woodland with the sound of water.

Here, Jon and Janice have created a haven for wildlife and people, especially if you (like us) have been working hard and need a complete break away from traffic, work, home chores and all the other bits of life that seem to get in the way of actually living.

A small cottage, The Shippen, provides warm, comfortable self-catering accommodation for two. However, the real attractions are outside. When you get out of the car you are immediately aware of the river. When we stayed, the water levels were very low, but even so we could hear the gentle chuckle of the Carey as it slid through the trees behind the house.

The river is over-hung with trees, giving it a secretive atmosphere and muffling any disturbing sounds from  the surrounding countryside.

We unloaded quickly, got into boots and went down to the river. The sense of intimacy in increased by the way in which you approach the streamside: through low-hanging coppice, old apple trees and across a shaggy meadow. You find the river running over brown stones and gravel, mossy branches of alder and sallow sweep low and into the stream itself. The roots of old ash trees curl along the banks, buttressing them against the frequent flashy floods.

A favourite sprainting site and foraging area for the resident otter family.

A little way down stream of The Shippen there is one stretch, pictured above, that is closely over-hung with big old sallows. Their boles bear the marks of otter and fox. The resident otter family, a female and two well-grown cubs, visit these trees each day to mark them with their spraint (dropping) and hunt around their roots for cowering fish. Jon has set up one of his trail cameras overlooking the main branch used by the otters. His footage of them slipping out of the water and then plopping back in again gives you an insight into their private lives. Trail camera footage (and I use it myself, so this is no criticism) always makes me slightly uncomfortable. Watching unsuspecting animals from a hide seems somehow more acceptable than this remote, voyeuristic recording. One short piece reveals the female being courted by a large male. He nuzzles her and is clearly trying to get her attention. She is barely tolerating him and goes into the water, followed by her suitor. I would love to have witnessed that, even though I have seen such interactions before several times they never lose their magic. Perhaps I am just unused to this new technology and the different perspective it provides?

The birds were a real feature of our autumnal stay. Kingfisher and dipper, classic species of small woodland streams, are constantly up and down the water. The kingfishers signalling their presence with high-pitched whistle and the dippers bouncing on rocks in mid-stream before fluttering away.

On our last day we had a close encounter with a young roe buck. He had one broken antler. He stood looking at us as we stood just four metres away. Sniffing for our scent, his tongue dipped into each of his nostrils in turn, moistening the sensitive membranes and increasing his ability to differentiate scents one from another. After a few minutes, during which we stayed very still and he listened to the camera shutters thunking, he turned away from us and walked back into the trees.

Glimpsed through the leaves of hazel and ash, a roe buck stares back into my lens.

So who's haven is it? Well, it certainly provided us with a wonderful retreat for a couple of days; a chance to energise and re-connect with the natural world. When we left, we left behind a small part of England that is also a haven for the wildlife it supports and will continue to do so under the careful stewardship of its owners.

Getting to know and love pine martens

Over the last two weeks, I have had the enormous and exciting pleasure of getting to know a British native species that I have never met before. having been an enthusiastic and active naturalist for the last 40+ years, there are not many British mammal species that I do not have some experience with: but pine martens are not widespread and are pretty elusive over much of their range.

We know that we were, in all likelihood, going to see this species up close, but I wanted to stay within the Code of Conduct for nature photography. This meant that the animals needed to be baited with things that they were used to, but would do no harm. Personally, I'm convinced that any type of peanut butter is destructive of mind, body and soul. This is the usual attractant for this species, but I was reluctant to handle the stuff let alone feed it to unsuspecting wildlife. So we used raisins and whole peanuts: not perfect but we also hid the food amongst natural elements like logs, stones and moss so that some natural foraging behaviour was encouraged.

At first, we used the trail camera and to our great delight, two well grown cubs (identified by their fluffy coats and small heads) arrived and scrambled all over the feeding table.

Pine marten cubs search for goodies - infra-red image.

As time went on, the adults became bolder and we saw more of them. They chased the chaffinches around the bird feeders we had placed in some silver birch trees and pranced about on the rocks above their den. Long-legged and lithe, the pine marten seems to be moving on uncontrollable springs, bouncing across open space and leaping up into trees or onto the summit of prominent rocks.

Adult pine marten investigates the baited feeding table just after dusk. Loch and West Highlands in the background.

Once we had got the animals a bit more used to coming to the feeding table when it was lit with a gentle tungsten light, I could set up the Canon 5D Mk3 and Canon 300mm f2.8 to record their presence. The image below shows that even a comparatively small animals is of great interest to the West Highland midge!

Pine marten with a cloud of midges around it.

Pine martens are a fantastic photographic subject. I managed to get a couple of pleasing images, but I'm definitely hooked; they are a lot of fun and really challenging.

The nocturnal and crepuscular pine martens occupied the evenings, but each morning was devoted to otters. A different set up and in a different location: but that's for the next blog!

The Canon 5D III, 300mm f2.8 with x2 converter and an excellent otter location:  heavenly!

Ardnamurchan: first few days

My long-awaited trip to the Ardnamurchan Peninsula has finally come. At the weekend, we drove up from Wessex to Glenborodale on the banks of Loch Sunart. On our first day, while doing a recce in the canoe, we came across a female otter foraging in the loch. It was oblivious of us until we had drifted in to just a few metres of her. Pine martens, porpoises and red deer have provided us with some close encounters. Tomorrow, we will be completing a recce of some sites on Mull before getting down to some hard-core waiting and watching in the next few days. Here's a picture of one of the locations that is close to an occupied holt and a favourite foraging site for the local female.

Sign up to the blog for more updates from the glorious, tranquil and otter-rich Highlands and Inner Hebrides!

The birds and the bees: keeping wildlife gardening simple

Bees and wasps are having a hard time of it. Changes in the way we use and manage land, changes to our houses and gardens, have all meant less food and fewer nesting sites for all types of bees and wasps. This is bad news for people. Bees are vital for pollination of the plants we rely upon and aspire to grow. Wasps are hugely important for pest control. Most wasps are not the yellow-jacketed, stingy, bad-tempered banes of every picnic; most of them are solitary, small and parasitic. They target all sorts of other invertebrates as hosts for their eggs and food for their larvae. But there are some simple things that we can all do in our gardens and allotments. Easy things that benefit bees, wasps and birds too.

Knowing what we can do for bumble bees depends upon understanding a little bit about their lives. Bumble bee queens hide away during the winter in the soil. Hibernating, sheltered from frost and rain, she lives out the cold dark months on her own. She emerges when the soil starts to warm up and the first thing she has to do is feed. The winter flowering Viburnam and wild snowdrops are good sources of nectar and pollen for these early queens. If you have a hedgerow, then putting some blackthorn into it will also help provide early flowers. Daffodils are usually useless as they have been bred for looks rather than scent, so they have little nectar and pollen that the bees can get at. These early flowering shrubs and plants are also vital sources of food for beetles that are emerging from hibernation or have just transformed into their adult form.

The bumble bee queen’s first job is to establish her nest. She stores nectar in tiny wax pots that she makes and lays eggs alongside them. She lies over the eggs and makes sure that they stay warm and well-ventilated by shivering her body. When the first workers hatch out they need to gather large amounts of pollen and nectar. In my garden, the best source at this time of year are the sallow trees (pussy willows) beside the stream. On a sunny spring morning they are alive with bees, flies and beetles. Every evening they attract moths by the hundreds. In the lawn, I have established some bugle in the wet patches, crocus on the banks and marsh marigold beside the stream. I have also planted native bluebells under the beech hedge, but I have removed the Spanish bluebells because they hybridise with our native bluebells producing an inferior hybrid. These wild plants are better for insects than many horticultural varieties and will look after themselves.

As spring turns into summer, the bumble bee nest grows. More worker bees are produced which in turn need more food to sustain them. I have planted a lot of geraniums in areas where they can spread. Their long flowering period make them great for bees. Borage and comfrey are good as well, The comfrey does well in the shade of the horse chestnut tree. With the help of a kind friend who works in a garden centre, I have established a large herb bed. There will be lots of thyme, marjoram and mint when the bees return next year. I added some Verbena as well. In areas where I have cleared away scrub and invasive plants over the winter, I sowed the seeds of annual corn field plants. Corncockle, field poppies and corn marigold are all great for insects.

Corn cockle, with a thick legged flower beetle and a couple of flea beetles.

In high summer, bees and bumble bees are bringing their nests into full ‘production’. They start to produce eggs that will turn into fertile females (new queens) and males. This takes lots and lots of energy and protein. So our gardens have got to be up to the job of providing it and this is the time when you will see the most insect activity. Now you need to concentrate on how you garden, as there is no time left to grow extra plants. One of the best things to do is not cut your lawn. I have left about two thirds of the grassy area uncut until the end of July. Self-heal sprang up and more will come into the area next year, particularly if I can establish the parasitic plant yellow rattle that will weaken the grasses, creating gaps for wild flowers. I have also left the lawn uncut for a fortnight at a time. This allows the white clover to flower. Bumble bees in particular, love clover and the lawn was busy with small furry bodies hopping from one flower to the next, a happy drone permeating the air as I swung in the hammock.

You should also take advantage of the opportunities presented by your weeds. I decided to leave some sow thistles to grow big and branched. When they set seed, the goldfinches spent each morning feeding on the downy heads. Watching them was the perfect peaceful accompaniment to the BBC Radio 4 Today programme. After they died down, I noticed that some woolly thistles were rising up. These are better for bumble bees. They seem to love sitting fatly on the fluffy flower heads, six legs and head buried in the flowers, buzzing softly. When it sets seed, the woolly thistle will attract the goldfinches back. Another great common weed is burdock. Bees love the purple flowers, as do flies and butterflies. Goldfinches and linnets love to perch on the big branching stems all winter, picking away at the seed heads.

Woolly thistle - superb weed much loved by pollinators and seed eaters.

I also left the ragwort to grow up and flower. This is a much-maligned flower that is one of the best for late summer insects. Ragwort-hate comes from the fact that if the stems and leaves are gathered in with the hay, and that hay is then fed to horses, it does them great harm causing irreversible liver damage. However, in your garden it will not be able to harm any horses; so let it flower and then, if you don’t want it to spread, cut it down before it sets seed. I leave mine because the land around me is sheep-grazed and they will eat it in the winter.

An Hemipteran bug (probably Blepharidopterus ungulates or another member of the family Miridae) enjoying the ragwort flowers.

A very small bee gathers pollen from the ragwort flowers.

I have saved the best until last. This is the easy bit. Imagine a flower that is so abundant it grows in almost every habitat in the UK. It flowers from early spring until the autumn. It is a native species and is loved by almost all the invertebrates that look for pollen and nectar. You don’t have to imagine it – it’s a dandelion. I leave dandelions in my lawn to flower wherever I can; I leave them to grow up in the vegetable patch and under the trees. They are so plentiful that you can weed them out of the areas where you don’t want them, confident that they will appear where they can be kept. If you allow them to set seed, the famous dandelion clock will be a wonderful food resource for seed-eating birds like goldfinches.

This is a picture of four overflies (Episyrphus balteatus) on a dandelion head in my veg patch. But there were another four flies queuing up, hovering around, waiting to get on the flower head.

This is a picture of Great Cheverell Down, part of the Salisbury Plain Training Area. There must be a million dandelions flowering there during April. It is no coincidence that Salisbury Plain has the highest diversity of bumble bees in the country. So if you can’t do anything else for wildlife, leave a few dandelions to flower.

Ethics: what difference does it make?

Ethics are really, really important in what we do as photographers. They guide us in divining what is right and wrong in a given context. GK Chesterton wrote: “The word "good" has many meanings. For example, if a man were to shoot his grandmother at a range of five hundred yards, I should call him a good shot, but not necessarily a good man.” 

Imagine that a photographer sees a great picture of a lion, taken in Africa, in the wild, and is inspired by it. He then goes to a safari park and produces an image that is at first glance very similar. He feels happy with his image, publishes it and wins acclaim for his prowess as a wildlife photographer.

So what's the difference between the two images? Some might say that the main difference is that while the first photographer bothered to go out to the wilds of Africa, the second man was cleverer in that he created a similar image at a fraction of the cost, avoided carbon-guzzling global travel and was not exposed to any risk of personal injury. I say that this is the same difference that GK Chesterton so pithily pointed out: both images may be good photographs, but only one person is a good wildlife photographer. And it is not the bloke who went to the zoo!

Wessex Wildlife Photography was born out of my intense frustration that so many photographers in the UK find it very hard to get the images they want of our native wildlife; so they end up in zoos, deer parks and 'wildlife centres' where there are prepared hides. It is not hard to get close to nature; the skills I teach and the knowledge I can give you is all quite simple. They can be used in the open countryside, in the wildest places to be found in these lovely islands, in a wildlife reserve or in the suburban park near your home. But when you go out to capture images of nature, you must be aware that there are right and wrong ways to behave towards the subjects and the people around you. Not everyone is aware of all of the things they need to consider, most people are aware of some of them.

So here are a few of the ethical considerations that inform what I do as a photographer and how I operate as a photographic guide.

I always operate under this rule, "the welfare of the subject is more important than the photograph". 
This applies to everything: birds, bats, beetles, fungi and foxgloves. It applies to the places that they are found and the people who own and care for those places. It applies particularly to birds protected under Schedule 1 of the Wildlife & Countryside Act 1981 (W&CA) and to animals protected under Schedule 5 (and their habitats as described in Schedule 9) and plants listed in Schedule 8 of that Act. It also includes the more comprehensive and modern lists of Priority Species and Habitats that fall under the aegis of the Natural Environment & Rural Communities Act 2006 (NERC), Section 41 and relevant Scottish legislation.

The Precautionary Principle applies.
In this case, I define the Principle as being "if in doubt, don't do it". We might expose ourselves to personal risk, but we do not take risks with plants, animals, fungi, habitats or landscapes. Risk means, in this context, disturbance, physical damage, anxiety, consequential predation or lessened reproductive success. This is particularly important on protected areas such as Sites of Special Scientific Interest and when dealing with protected species.

The overall impact of any baiting should be positive. 
Baits are either natural (such as carrion) or they are non-injurious (such as peanuts), but are not used in such quantities as to cause a local population to become dependent upon it or that it changes the local vegetation (through trampling or nutrification). I use baiting (and calling) when I think that it is necessary to get the shot or if the welfare of the subject is enhanced by doing so. For instance, calling deer towards you may be much less stressful for the deer that trying to stalk close to them. With some exceptions, this will be done outside the breeding season and away from breeding sites such as dens and nests. Baiting near breeding sites will tend to increase competitive stress and may attract predators.

The effect of wildlife photography should be positive.
Habitats are not disturbed, they are conserved. In several of the places that I go to take pictures and where I take clients, I also carry out habitat management work such as cutting scrub. I provide the land owners and managers with images, advice and increase their understanding and knowledge. 

The truth of the final image
My images depict the essential truth of what I saw at the time it was taken. Any post-processing enhances that truth, it does not alter it. I do not take images of controlled, home-bred or captive subjects. the one exception to this are the plants I grow as part of a conservation project. These plants are then planted out into carefully selected sites as part of a planned project (http://www.ccwwdaonb.org.uk/our-work/stepping-stones-project/)

To finish, here's a wild lion. She was the dominant female of a pride in the South Luangwa Valley. She carried the recent wounds suffered while she killed a buffalo: large open wounds to her leg and abdomen caused by the sharp horns. She would have wrapped herself round the buffalo's head, clamped her mouth over it's nose and mouth then hung on as it banged her against the ground. She was tough, a real killer and I like to think that some of that truth about her and how she made me feel come across in this image.

Invasive alien species - has the debate become unbalanced?

The UK is full of non-native species and here is Wessex we have our fair share. Some species have been here so long they seem like natives, such as shepherd's-purse (Capsella bursa-pastoris) and some of them are welcome, like the orange hawk-weed (Pilosella aurantiaca) in my lawn. But some are not welcome at all, because they are agricultural pests or they are invasive. By that, we mean that they take over the ecological niches occupied by native plants and cause a local drop in plant diversity or even local extinctions. So it is never a case of of "native good, alien bad"; there is much to be gained from active and determined management of the issue.

No one should be in any doubt as to the severity of the issue. World-wide, alien invasive species is one of the top three or four reasons for the accelerated extinction rate we are experiencing in modern times. In the UK, we like to lay blame and the finger is most often pointed at the horticultural sector.

In some quarters, the debates that go on about this topic are becoming confused. None more so than in horticultural circles where people can feel a bit embattled. A recent letter in the Royal Horticultural Society's magazine "The Garden" is a case in point. A paper published by two academics was described as if it was more authoritative than it really deserved. 

So I quickly penned a reply back and I am glad to say that it is published in the latest issue of "The Garden".

Non-native species
Your headline ‘No countrywide threat from non-natives’ (News, May, p10) was overly simplistic. Thomas and Palmer’s paper has been quoted as if it were the last word on the subject. The effect is to cloud the issues around biodiversity conservation in the UK.
The lack of increase in non-native species observed in the Countryside Survey data (the raw data on which the research was based: no new field data was gathered) may well be due to the huge effort being taken to combat them. Between £1–2billion a year is spent in the UK to control and eradicate non-native plant species; this obviously affects the distribution of their populations. That we have still not succeeded in saving our precious landscapes, despite this considerable expenditure, shows just how intractable the problem is.
Habitat loss is the main driver of the loss of biodiversity, but not usually the total destruction of a wood, heath, mire or moor. Rather it is the gradual degradation of the habitat’s quality, a major cause of which is the effect of non-native plants. For instance, an ancient oak woodland may be protected in that the trees cannot be cut down. But if cherry laurel (Prunus laurocerasus) or Rhododendron x superponticum are present, and unless they are controlled and ultimately eradicated, the writing is on the wall for that entire fragile plant community.
Professor Thomas’s bizarre point of view that non-native plants have ‘supplemented, rather than excluded, native species’ is not supported by the experience of decades.
A chalk stream’s riparian plant community is not ‘supplemented’ by Himalayan balsam (Impatiens glandulifera); the presence of Japanese knotweed (Fallopia japonica) is indeed a threat to any UK native habitat. I work for one of the 46 Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty, in every one of which we are fighting to save our wild plants at landscape scale. I feel that giving this single study such prominence can only cause confusion. 

For more information about this subject, or to join the debate, have a look at Trevor Dines' blog http://www.plantlife.org.uk/about_us/blog/loving_the_alien