Concept

After a long fallow period I’m now re-engaging with my blog and I also hope I can reconnect with at least a few of the wonderful bloggers I followed before. I’ve also realised how out of date much of it is so the plan is to bring it back up to date.

I no longer live in Histon, I’m now in Lower Cambourne, west of Cambridge, UK, where the landscape is quite different and I live three minutes walk from a nature reserve. I’ve only just started to explore my new neighbourhood but I’m hoping there’ll be at least as much wildlife here as I found in Histon, and if I do I’ll be trying to photograph it to share with you here.

One sad note is that my old dog Copper who kept me company around the Histon fields for so many years is no longer with me. He ran out of steam in 2018 but he was 15 years old so he lived to a ripe old age. Despite that he was a lovely old mutt and I still miss him.

I said below that I planned to make a respository for the sightings data I collected around Histon. I did that, never imagining that ayone other than myself would be interested, but in 2018 as a result of the records I kept, I was asked to help build the case to gain Local Green Space status which would confer a degree of protection from development. The proposal made it into the Local Neighbourhood Plan and the village voted in a referendum in 2021 by a majority of 90:10 to award Green Space accreditation. So if you’re minded to make notes and keep records of the wildlfe in your neck of the woods please do, it can make a big impact in helping to make sure it’ll be there for future generations to enjoy too.

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The Naturephile was created by myself, Finn Holding, to share my encounters with local wildlife in and around Cambridge UK and on travels further afield.

I am based in Histon, north of Cambridge, UK. I love all forms of nature and wildlife and I’ve been keeping a wildlife diary since summer 2009 of all the sightings and observations from the local farmland around Histon, and the annual diaries are in spreadsheet form and can be accessed by clicking on these links:

2009 Histon Wildlife Diary
2010 Histon Wildlife Diary
2011 Histon Wildlife Diary
2012 Histon Wildlife Diary
2013 Histon Wildlife Diary

The format of the diaries is evolving with time. After starting off by simply listing regularly sighted species, I now enter text for new sightings of previously unobserved species in red. Also, more recent entries have figures for maximum number of a species sighted at one time and the number of sightings of that species. The diaries are named ‘Histon…‘ and as I live in Histon the majority of  sightings listed are from here. However, I also enter sightings from trips further afield and these have a green background.

The diary has been badly neclected for the last year or so up until 2013, but I’ve made an early New Year resolution for 2013 to get on the case and start filling them again!

The diversity of wildlife to be found around Histon is amazing, so hats off to the farmers in Histon who think it is important enough to adapt their practices to accommodate nature by adopting wildlife-friendly methods. I explore the countryside several times a week while I walk my dog, Copper:

I always take my camera, binoculars and a notebook in order to make records of the birds, mammals, plants, insects and fungi I find. If you go to the ‘North Histon field walk‘ post of the ‘Home’ page you can find links to my wildlife diaries and a map and photographs which hopefully give a reasonable idea of the places I’m talking about.

Eventually I also plan to adapt, or link, my blog to a repository for general wildlfe and species information illustrated with my photographs. This is a longer term idea which I plan to slowly evolve. Watch this space.

Thanks for looking at my blog, I hope you enjoy it.

Finn