Richard Bell's nature sketchbook since 1998
Another character from the Do You Say . . . ? ‘poem’ and all that I really know about ‘de Z cow’ is that she’s been known to ‘utter’ the occasional ‘grouse’. Could it be that she’s rather proud of her ancestry? If she really is ‘de Zeeland’ that’s not so far from Freisland, so she could be a pedigree Holstein Friesian.
More likely ‘DeZee’ is a randomly generated name-tag number and she probably usually gets called ‘Daisy’. I have a feeling that she won’t like that.
We’ve been saddened to hear of the untimely death of a member of Wakefield Naturalists’ Society, Karen Nicklin, who also – as in my cartoon – volunteered at the RSPB St Aidan’s reserve.
“As a really keen walker and hiker, Karen spent time planning and undertaking walks that combined nature and the landscape and I remember well the talk she gave recently at our members’ evening when she wowed us with views of the spectacular scenery and wild flowers from a recent trek in the Austrian Alps.”
John Gardner, President, Wakefield Naturalists’ Society, wakefieldnaturalists.org
It’s just three weeks ago that we last saw her on that pre-‘Rule of Six’ Naturalists’ field trip to St Aidan’s. As she served me a socially-distanced shade-grown coffee (shade-grown saves trees) afterwards, I asked her what the news was from the Loch Garten ospreys. She replied that, because of Covid, she’d missed out on volunteering there for the first time since 2004. She told me that she hadn’t even managed to add an osprey on her year list. She was obviously missing them, and we’ll miss her.