Britain's butterfly and (especially) bird life is rich and various, but, for all its beauties, those who take an interest in such things have to acknowledge an underlying tendency towards inconspicuous brownness. Large numbers of species - especially of birds - are pretty small and nondescript and come in unsassuming ... Read More...

Today's Dabbler Country is a guest post by Guardian writer Patrick Barkham, whose book The Butterfly Isles - A Summer in Search of Our Emperors and Admirals is published by Granta this month. For those of us who join the likes of Vladimir Nabokov, John Fowles and the famous clown Joseph ... Read More...

The other night at home, there was a dark moth fluttering around the ceiling light. Idly wondering what it might be, I waited for it to settle - which it eventually did, in a most unmothlike manner. It was a butterfly, a Speckled Wood  - and having one of those in ... Read More...

A Dabbler Country double bill today. We are delighted to present a post from Martin Wainwright. Martin has written numerous invaluable books about the countryside, is the northern editor of The Guardian and is a prolific blogger on the subject of moths... As an increasingly ancient journalist, I’ve lived through many stories ... Read More...

Waking to a sunny morning - at last! - and conscious as ever of my duties as The Dabbler's Jack Hargreaves, I was up betimes with a song in my heart and the Surrey Hills in my mind. Pausing only to don the metaphorical Norfolk jacket, set the metaphorical trilby ... Read More...