Mike Bagshaw

HERE in Ryedale we are blessed with more than our fair share of ancient woodlands – that is, forested areas that have been in continuous existence since the year 1600.

Countryside writer MIKE BAGSHAW springs into action with a trip down to the woods in Ryedale

HUMAN pollution of the natural world is one of the sad truths of modern civilisation. In 19th and 20th century Britain, the emission of smoke and toxic fumes from coal burning and heavy industry was a huge problem.

WALKING, or should I say “squelching”, along the Norton bank of the River Derwent is a fine way of spending the first day of a new decade, and that’s exactly what I did last Wednesday.

THE saying ‘Birds of a feather flock together,’ like many such homilies, is often true but not exclusively so. Some avian species are particularly solitary by nature and don’t flock at all; robins, for instance, are so intensely territorial that they cannot abide the proximity of another redbreast except for their mate and even then only during the brief spring breeding season.

I LOVE watching wildlife in winter. By that I mean that I love slouching in my favourite comfy chair with the wood burner roaring while I enjoy a good nature documentary on the telly.

FOR my tea one day last week I made myself a plateful of delicious penny buns but, despite the misleading name, no baking of cut-price bread products was involved. What I ate, in fact, were some of my favourite wild mushrooms, fried in butter with a hint of fresh garlic and mixed herbs.

BACK in 2016 I highlighted in this very column an ornithological mystery that had all the scientists baffled. What was causing the disappearance of our familiar house sparrow from many towns and cities around the country could not be found. The Independent newspaper even offered a £5,000 reward to anyone who could come up with a definitive explanation.

SEAGULLS are not a family of birds you would instinctively associate with landlocked Ryedale but they are undoubtably among our easier-to-see species.

DELUDED political extremists excepted, we are all in general agreement that man-made, global climate change is occurring and that it is, for humans at least, a very bad thing.