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In dull, rainy January there are few wildflowers around to brighten up the day. Gorse ( Ulex europaeus ) is one exception which is always a very welcome sight. The small, yellow, pea-like flowers of gorse will cheer up any winter walk. Gorse flowers from January, reaching the height of its brilliance in Spring to early Summer. Common in a variety of habitats, from woodland, heathland, grassland to coast you can find this spiky shrub UK wide.

Grey by name and grey by status: the UK’s biggest goose sometimes seems inappropriately classified as “wildlife”. Common in flocks of mixed geese in the fields around Otley, the Greylag is the ancestor of most domestic geese, domesticated at least as early as 1360BC, and many are comfortable around humans. They are to be found in many a park, and I remember seeing one nesting in the middle of York Hospital car park, but the RSPB say those seen in Scotland “retain the special

The old railway line is a great place to walk this time of year, to discover fungi, lichen and mosses you might never have seen before. Named for its whitish colour and (look really close) its tooth-like pore surface, as it ages it become a dingy yellow colour. Milk-white toothed polypores have a wide distribution across the temperate world, and spreads across the sides and bottoms of fallen wood, and fulfils an important ecological role of breaking down dead wood. It is one

Another find along the old railway, a yellowy grey or pale grey-green lichen with a cracked crust and studded with black spots. This lichen has distinctive black apothicia (the part that contains the spores) forms a mosaic on mature trees, appearing on smooth barked trees and fences, this one was spotted on Common Ash. As organisms without roots, lichens obtain their nutrients from the atmosphere and so are highly susceptible to changes in atmospheric chemistry. Areas with le

Even though Sparrowhawks are our second most common bird of prey (around 40,100 breeding pairs in the UK and increasing) they fly among us largely unseen, because rather than hanging around where we can see them, such as above road verges, they skulk in the shadows of dense cover, in hedgerows and woodlands. With their increasing population and shrinking habitat, they are found more and more in our gardens. Where we often make it easy for them to hunt, with bushy garden shrub

Despite its name, it is actually lichen - Oakmoss grows primarily on the trunk and branches of Oak trees, but can also be found growing on other deciduous and coniferous trees. The ‘branches’ (what we call their thallus) of oakmoss are flat and strap-like, branching out like deer antlers. The texture of Oakmoss is rough when dry and rubbery when wet. The lichen has a complex odour, woody and sharp, whilst Oakmoss that has grown on pines has a strong turpentine odour. Because

In bed, awake at midnight, I hear them calling to each other in the darkness as they fly overhead. Out in the snow yesterday, the same sounds, this time emerging from a cloud inversion. Each time I’m intrigued as to just where they’re going, up and down the valley, impressed by their sense of the collective, leaving no bird behind, checking in. Last Sunday evening a much smaller group made a real din over our house, repeatedly for about half an hour. Were they trying to find

Also known as Golden Jelly, Witches Butter or Yellow Trembler is a jelly fungus (helpfully named because they look like jelly, not because they taste like jelly!). It appears from underneath the bark of its host tree during wet weather, during dry spells it shrivels into a hard to spot thin rubbery patch. Although it looks as though this fungus is feeding on the wood, it is actually a parasitic fungus feeding on another unrelated fungus, which is feeding on the dead wood. Acc

These common trees are unusual in that they are deciduous conifers – their green needles go orange-brown in autumn and fall. There are lots of good examples on the Chevin, with their graceful, upward-sweeping branches. The timber is tough and waterproof, and as a result used to make small boats and cladding for buildings. It doesn’t even tend to rot in contact with the ground, and makes ideal fence posts. Another aspect of their durability is that they are rarely eaten by dee

My battered old copy of the Observer’s Book of British Birds notes that this is also known as the Water Wagtail or Dish-washer (no, me neither), but it is actually one of many sub-species of the White Wagtail. In many ways these slender birds have developed a happy co-existence with us: they find the bare landscapes of Otley’s car parks and school playgrounds excellent places to spot and pursue insects, and holes in stone walls and other man-made structures appeal to them as

With a population of 75 million, the field vole is one of the UK's most common mammals. To put that number in perspective, the UK’s human population is 66 million, there are around 14% more of them than us! Unfortunately they are a bit harder to spot, but signs they are nearby are much easier to find. What are called ‘runs’ (little vole subways running from their burrows to their feeding sites) can be found anywhere grass has been allowed to grow long enough that it collapses