I’m always amazed that some people are content to live in places other than Bristol. Eejits. My dear friend Martin, for instance, has to come all the way from Cardiff (a poor imitation of Bristol with added delusions of Welsh grandeur, of all things) to get a decent night out ... Read More...

Nige brings us this week's poetry feature: the 'thin uncomprehended song' of a swarming insect... A few years ago I heard a report on the radio about the spectacular mass hatching of Periodical Cicadas in the eastern seaboard states of the US. It put me in mind of Richard Wilbur's poem, Cicadas: You ... Read More...

Is it a giant cormorant? A particularly vicious mosquito? Or something else? The Wikiworm consults this  weird Wikipedia article to get to the truth behind the fantastical boobrie... The boobrie is a mythological shapeshifting entity inhabiting the lochs of the west coast of Scotland. It commonly adopts the appearance of a gigantic ... Read More...

Nige reviews The Moth Snowstorm: Nature and Joy by Michael McCarthy, published this month, and finds a book 'full of joy and wonder and luminous moments'... If you're of a certain age - I guess 50s and upwards - you'll remember this: driving in the country at night (well, being driven ... Read More...

Luxuriating in his suburban idyll, Nige considers the blackbird, and an effusive Victorian poet... There are sometimes nights when the sun is out, the air is warm, and one is able to enjoy that supreme expression of the suburban idyll - sitting out in the garden in the cool of the evening as ... Read More...

What do the unsettling and astonishing multi-generational migratory habits of the monarch butterfly tell us about humans?... The multiple life stages of butterflies were strangely upsetting to me as a boy. Their transformations were supposed to inspire wonder, and the eruption of the adult butterfly from the pupa, I was told, ... Read More...

Want to get your hands on one of the best nature books of the year? Read on to find out how you can win one of 3 copies of Meadowland by John Lewis-Stemple... What really goes on in the long grass? Meadowland gives an unique and intimate account of an English meadow’s life ... Read More...

Today's poetry and painting piece features Edward Thomas, Paul Nash, W.H. Davies and birds' nests... In addition to their intrinsic beauty, the bare trees of late winter and early spring offer an opportunity for the discovery of birds' nests.  This thought brings to mind Edward Thomas, who was a great searcher ... Read More...

You will be familiar with the slow food movement, particularly if you are a Guardian reader living in an ecotown. Less high profile, but more amenable to the Dabbler demographic, is slow botany. So I am going to tell you all about it... Slow botany developed as a reaction against all ... Read More...

Spring is coming - time to keep your eyes on the ground, suggests Stephen in this week's Dabbler Verse feature... There is something to be said for winnowing, for paring down.  The culture around us encourages short attention spans and hyperactive grasping after chimeras. Don't get me wrong:  I am in ... Read More...