With Dutch visitors over the Christmas period we wanted to take them to somewhere different from home. Previously visitors have enjoyed going to the Isle of Purbeck where the cliff scenery is quite different from the dunes and beaches of the Netherlands.

One place we have never been to as a family is Kimmeridge. Our eldest son is a surfer and said that the reefs, cliffs and fossils there were very interesting. On arriving there on Christmas Eve we were struck by the darkness of the cliffs in contrast to the limestone and chalk of nearby West Lulworth or Swanage. This is shown very well on the University of Southampton website.

The dark shales (some looked more like slates) of the cliffs dominate the cliffs however there are very distinct layers of yellow sandstone. On some parts of the beach there shales go out as flat plates into the sea.

The shale and that sandstone makes for very colourful contrasts.

Although the cliffs are famous for their oil shales, which occasionally burn, an obvious feature of many rocks was the presence of iron ore. A lot of rocks looked really rusty.

There were obviously a lot of fossils. Ammonites - or rather fractions of them were very common - and quite a few rocks showed imprints of shellfish.

Larger ammonites were quite visible in various states of erosion in both shale and sandstone rocks.

My eldest son and his cousin found some small but well preserved ammonites in shale in rocks below the cliff.

Another cousin found parts of an ammonite in a rusty rock.

While neither good geologists nor expert fossil-hunters this was a very interesting beach!

My wife and I have been noticing that the tree colours are more spectacular this year than ususual. Autumn or fall colours in North America (particularly in the NE) are more spectacular than in the UK due in part to different varieties of tree - loads of maples for example. When we lived in Bavaria it was wonderful to experience the Goldener Oktober especially near the Alps; the trees are similar varieties to the UK but seem to achieve a better colour through a sharper change in termperature. I do not know why our trees look so good this year - we have only had one frost and it is mild - but they look great.

Regrettably we have not got out for walks recently with various trips for our kids, a funeral and an 18th birthday. However yesterday was a glorious sunny day so we managed to get out after church. We went to Danebury hill fort near Middle Wallop. This is one of the most accessible iron age hill forts but the hill also happens to be covered with beeches. Beeches are one of the best trees to see at this time of the year.

We had limited time so chose to walk around the outside of the hillfort rather than wander into the middle. While there are some things I do not like about American English, one thing I do like is the use of 'Fall' rather than 'Autumn'. It is the older English word, presumably somebody a few hundred years ago thought that a French word would be posher, and I think has a beautiful symmetry with 'Spring'. Spring and Fall are often our most beautiful seasons when our deciduous trees show delicate green or golden/brown colours respectively.

Danebury has a large inner rampart/ditch pair and a smaller outer rampart/ditch and out path went outside the outer ditch.

Beeches can be seen for more or less the whole work. After taking this picture, I handed my camera to my wife, then surreally a young woman with long, light brown hair and wearing just a crop top and sports shorts walked by with her dog. While the sun felt warm the air temperature (back at my car) was only 12 C; she obviously felt the heat more than we did.

We kept seeing beautiful views of the beeches. The photo above shows the final brown stage of the beech leaves. In other cases the leaves were at a green or golden stage. With a clear blue sky and sunlight there were many stunning upward views. In many cases the leaves had a lovely backlighting.

This photo shows the leaves at green, golden and brown stages.

Further on we tried to take pictures from the inner ditch. There were great views to some of the beech boughs, but they did not photograph so well. Underfoot there were already plenty of leaves and we often saw toadstools poking their "stools" through the leaves.

Fungi are not my strong point, so I have no idea what these were and whether or not they are poisonous!

At the end of the walk we just walked to the entrance of the hillfort where there was one splendid lone beech. On walking to the trunk and looking upwards my wife suddenly said "look at that". In the shadow I first thought a squirrel had squezed nuts into cracks in the trunk but it was a large group of snails hanging there.

We then returned to prepare lunch - spicy lamb and couscous - but it was a superb day. We truly saw creation it all its glory.

About 10 days ago we went to the Netherlands for my mother-in-law's funeral. We stayed the night with my brother-in-law who lives between Rotterdam and Gouda. After the sadness of the funeral the following morning he took us out for a walk in Hitland which is just north of the river Ijssel.

It was a beautiful morning with a clear blue sky and mist hanging over the Hitland polder. Towards the south cows and sheep were silhouetted in the mist. Unfortunately I did not ask for the car to stop in order to take photos....

There were plenty of wet areas in the polder and a good network of footpaths and cycle tracks. We headed south on a path towards the dike of the Ijssel. There were plenty of waterbirds to be seen - swans, different duck varieties, coots and moorhens. Grey herons were everywhere.

I never cease to be amazed at the watery landscape in the Netherlands. As shown above, the polder lies well below the level of the dike. The river level is higher than the polder.

Once we reached the dike we were above the remaining traces of the mist and the visibility was very clear. A 100-year old three-mast barge which runs tourists between Rotterdam and Gouda sailed past.

After a kilometre or two walking along the dike we returned into Hitland - but now into deciduous woodland. My brother-in-law said that with woodland and polder next to each other a very large number of bird species have been recorded. As we walked through the woods we disturbed yet more grey herons and the odd buzzard.

By the time we completed our circuit, it was almost ten o'clock and the mist had almost completely gone. While I am a person who prefers mountains and hills to flatland, I can certainly not say that walking or cycling in polders is boring. Morning mist or frost can add to the experience.

I was just looking at some holiday photos that we processed and I was reminded of how much I enjoyed the breaking waves around Peniche and Baleal. I always find the sound of running water refreshing whether it is breaking waves, a waterfall or even rain on my terrace.

While the waves were not particularly strong in August they were spectacular when breaking against rocks like here in Isla do Baleal.

Since using a digital camera I find that I cannot time a moving shot as well as with an old fashioned-film camera. Still the waves breaking here must be 3-4 metres high. I wonder what it is like in winter in an Atlantic storm for the house in the picture...

The swirling froth and eddies are always interesting too.

This breaker was at the end of the Peniche peninsular opposite Berlenga Grande.

However, some of the most spectacular waves were seen on the surf beaches like Lagide and Supertubos. Sometimes they broke cleanly providing tubes for body boarders and surfers but sometimes the break was more spectacular like this one at Lagide at the water's edge.

The tide was high and just on the sea side of the water's edge the sand shelves sharply. The waves broke spectacularly at the top of the shelf.

When I was a child, I was fascinated with raptors. Unfortunately in East Hants at the time I never saw anything other than the ubiquitous hovering kestrel. Never saw a sparrowhawk until well into my thirties. Going to Scotland to the Highlands on holidays was a thrill with loads of buzzards hanging out on fenceposts and even the odd eagle.

When we lived in Bavaria it was thrilling to see so many different raptors when on a walk (even in our small town) or driving. I was surprised how often we would see sparrowhawks either circling overhead or doing surprise attacks in the housing estate. Once I saw a male follow a gutter line of a long terrace with the aim of hunting unexpectedly round the corner. Once we were having dinner on our terrace on a summer evening. We were surpised as a sparrowhawk flew over with a blackbird (or similar sized bird) in its talons.

Since returning to the UK I was delighted to see how raptors have recovered. In our Hampshire town it is not uncommon to see a soaring sparrowhawk or buzzard over the town. Once or twice even a red kite.

Yesterday my youngest son called me to the kitchen very excited. He had been standing at the back door when a raptor crashed into the window then perched (presumably seeing stars) on a garden chair. It had flown off before I arrived. He described its distinctive yellow eyes and identified it in the birdbook as a sparrowhawk. Two years earlier I was talking to a neighbour over the hedge when 10 metres away a sparrowhawk - obviously a young and inexperienced one - landed on the hedge for about half a minute before flying off.

Today I was in my office in Reading. I had a meeting in a colleague's office and there was a view to the Madejski football stadium behind her. I suddenly realised there was a red kit soaring over the stadium. I have occasionally seen red kites over the North Hampshire Downs for some years and in recent years between Basingstoke and Reading. But this was my first sighting over urban Reading.

I spent most of my childhood in a small town in East Hampshire - part of the Western Weald. It was a beautiful area of woodland and healthland that is easily the equal of the New Forest in beauty - though it lacks the ponies. However it has an interesting wildlife including snakes.  I recall walking or jogging through woods and often there were sandy patches that had a little sunlight. Often you would see adders basking there only to race away once they realised a human was nearby. Even more fascinating was the occasional sighting of the rare smooth snake. The Western Weald is one of the few places in this country where this interesting reptile can be seen; it has the interesting characteristic that it can 'hibernate' for up to 2 years!

[source Natural England http://www.countryside.gov.uk/LAR/Landscape/DL/new_designations/SouthDowns/index.asp]

I was shocked when I read in last Saturday's Independent  an article by Bill Bryson (Notes from a small piece of downland, 15 September 2007) saying that the Western Weald would be excluded from the planned South Downs national park. Apparently the Western Weald is not worthy of National Park quality. According to the Campaign to Protect Rural England (CPRE) the inspectors have said that the area does not meet natural beauty criteria. This beggars belief for the following reasons:

a) If it is important to make the South Downs a national park, we need to understand that the South Downs are part of the Wealden anticline. The Western Weald is the most interesting area geologically because chalkland, sandstone hills and wealden clay are in close proximity. We should be looking to protect the Wealden geology including the South Downs but not seeing the South Downs in isolation.
b) The Western Weald area that is now to be excluded includes some of the finest sandstone hills in Southern England. If the inspector feels that only the 'lofty' South Downs merit National Park status he should get out his OS map! 'Mighty' Butser Hill famous for being the highest point in the South Downs at an elevation of 270 metres is not as high as the highest point in the Western Weald. Black Down near Haslemere tops Butser with an elevation of 280 metres.
c) Midhurst and Petworth are beautiful small towns that are probably more worthy of being in a National Park than some of those in the shrunk national park.
d) I challenge anybody to find an area of SE England that is less densely populated and less spoilt than the area within the polygon Haslemere, Liphook, Rake, Petersfield, Midhurst and Petworth.
e) If the New Forest is worthy of national park status then the smaller Woomer Forest with equally interesting landscape and wildlife deserves to be part of the South Downs National Park.

I have written to my MP about this. If you agree with me please do the same. There is also an e-petition at http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/western-weald/.

With a lot of poor weather from May to August we have done much less walking than usual. With a clear blue sky this morning Mrs Oregano and I decided to go on a downland walk. I duly got out my 1:25 000 OS map and searched for a walk in a new area. We settled on a promising loop (about 8 km) in the Hampshire Downs at Upton near Hurstbourne Tarrant.

The loop is to the south and west of Upton and rises up to an elevation of 230 metres. The walk alternated between going through fields and woods. On the upward leg we disturbed numerous pheasants (actually for the rest of the walk too!). They are bred and fed in order to be shot later. I have nothing against shooting game - actually enjoy eating most game - but the number of pheasants we saw today was obscene and absolutely unnatural.

A highlight was coming across a slow worm basking on stones on our path. I have never seen such a big one (not seen many anyway!) but it was at least 25 cm maybe 30 cm long. It was aware of us and moved its head but was obviously content soaking up the sun. In East Hants in my childhood sandy glades in the woods were always at risk of being places where adders would sunbathe too. If the slow worm was snoozing it was living dangerously. I know buzzards are partial to a slow worm (or even an adder) and there were plenty out soaring today. Sadly my digital camera developed a fault a week or so ago so I can offer no photo

Our walk took 2 hours and the amazing thing was that after 45 minutes we did not see any house or sign of civilisation for a further hour. OK, we walked on about 300 metres of single track metalled road. It was unbelievably peaceful apart from panicking pheasants. There was frequently the cry of buzzards and we saw up to three at a time.

I always used to think that mid September was the beginning of the blackberry season. In our lane at home blackberries have been ripening since the second week of August. There were a lot of blackberries to be seen today but many were past their best.

Now we are reminding ourselves of our holiday in Portugal with a glass of vinho verde!

There is a group of islands about 10 km off Peniche called the Berlengas. The largest and closest to Peniche is Berlenga Grande which is about 3 km long and roughly 1 km wide (though very narrow at one point) the area is 79 hectares. The island is a nature reserve and is famous for its colonies of seabirds. Having visited bird islands in the UK we were curious to see what this was like. It was a 30 minute ride in a fast boat from Peniche harbour. On the way we saw some shearwaters - I do not know which ones but according to my birdbook we were in the range of the Sooty Shearwater.

A path rises steeply from the harbour and splits to go to the NE or SW ends of the islands. Near the path there was a lot of marsh samphire, however higher up the south side the rocks were covered with a larger succulent with purple and yellow flowers. I remember seeing a similar succulent at the Lizard where they said it had been introduced from South Africa.

We turned to the NE part of the island which was a gull colony. The island is supposed to be famous for guillemots but we were too late for the nesting season (I assume May-July) and saw none. Early on we saw an adult gull viciously attacking a fledgling that looked sickly. We got a brief glimpse of a kestrel (too brief to know if it was the common one or lesser one). The rocks had a pinkish colour and were I assume granite. There were plenty of gulls on the rocks and I thought they were herring gulls. When my son checked our bird book he pointed out that herring gulls have a more northerly range and that we were in the range of the similar-looking yellow-legged gull.

The yellow-legged gull has a longer neck than the herring gull and the legs are a distinct yellow. The whole NE end of the island seemed to be covered with gulls - almost all yellow-legged with the odd lesser black-backed. Having seen great black-backed gulls take guillemot eggs I found it hard to image how guillemots could thrive with so many gulls around. Maybe their behaviour is different - the gulls are not living on a diet of ice cream, pasties and chips! There was also a surprising lack of gulls in Peniche harbour despite a huge fishing fleet.

The NE end of the island included some splendid cliffs and views to nearby islets and the next biggest island in the group.

We returned to the narrow neck of land near the harbour passing yet more gulls. Everywhere there were lots of lizards in evidence. I presume that gulls do not eat them otherwise they would not be so plentiful.

The other end of the island included some nice coves and a stone fort - Fortaleza de S. João Baptista. The fort is famous because its 20 person crew was attacked by a group of Spanish warships and they managed to inflict a massive amount of damage on the ships before running out of ammunition.

We had a pleasant trip back to Peniche and finished the day with a great meal at Restaurante Popular.

We went to Portugal for the first time in August. Our boys wanted to go to the Peniche area because of the excellent surf there. With peninsulars at Peniche and Baleal there are beaches pointing in different directions within a few kilometres of each other. This means that there is a good chance that one beach will have great surfing regardless of wind direction.

The hinterland consists of sand dunes and quite a bit of pine woodland with some cultivation. At Cascais do Baleal there are low cliffs ~10 metres high in a very soft sandstone. There is obviously quite a bit of erosion from both high seas and heavy rain.

The Isla do Baleal is now a peninsular. It was once a rocky island but is now joined to the mainland by a strip of sand and a road.

At the tip of Isla do Baleal there are two further islands the first of which is shown above. In this area the sandstone is much harder and there is an oblique strata.

The cliffs on Isla do Baleal are also about 10 metres high and can take a fair battering from the waves. This was not a stormy day!

The rock of the Peniche peninsular is also hard but has a somewhat darker colour. I estimate that the cliffs are about 20 metres high. In comparison to Cornwall or especially the Inner Hebrides there was not a lot of bird life. There were a few shags on an offshore stack and amazingly few gulls around the fishing port of Peniche.

This picture shows the coast leading north towards Nazare. There the cliffs are much higher - more than 100 metres was indicated at the top of the funicular railway.

After a break of many years, I have just had the pleasure of seeing black kites in the wild again today. I saw them along the Danube (Donau) in Bavaria a number of times in the 1990s. They had a wonderfully agile flight that looked a lot better than that of a red kite. I have just seen a lot of them (up to 5 at a time) near my hotel in Hyderabad.

My digital camera is just a simple one with a limited zoom and autofocus so the quality is not great!

The black kite has a tail that is less forked than that of the red kite. It does not have such distinctive dark and light patches on the wings as the red kite and lacks the rusty coloured head plumage. It is mainly a dark brown. Head on they tend to hold their wings roughly horizontally (unlike a buzzard whose wings are held tilted up) and there is a slight upward curl near the wingtip.

Just got the photos in time as the heavens have opened!

The Hawk Conservancy  in Hampshire has a very interesting black kite flying display that shows their agility. The owner, Ashley Smith, shoots bait into the air and can get a group of kites to fly together or to do a starburst.

Today I got a call from my eldest son down in Cornwall. He said that he had seen a family of perigrine falcons out hunting. Last year I was at the same campsite near Godrevy Head and we saw a family of 3-4 peregrines over the campsite on different occasions.

On one occasion we saw the family flying over and a young bird (you can tell by the brownish rather than slate grey wings) had a large black bird hanging in its talons. It looked like the size of a rook which I found surprising as I cannot imagine that crows are very appetizing! Shortly afterwards in a field nearby there was a big commotion from a flock of rooks there.

Later I was walking on the coastpath on the cliffs towards Portreath. Again I saw a young peregrine flying with a parent. It was high above me and I was amazed that it stooped on a great black-backed gull. It very nearly connected, the gull did a neat swerve. The falcon gained height again and went for another attack. By this time the gull was flying steeply down towards the sea. The young falcon came very close to the gull again but decided it was too close to the water for comfort and flew on.

I wonder if these attacks on the rook and the gull were serious hunting - for food - or simply learning the technique of catching birds on the wing.

Although we have been spared the flooding of the Severn or Thames valleys (though my office is on the edge of the Thames flood plain!) my family and I have not had to worry about our house being flooded. Last Friday a collegue of mine had to rush home because runoff water from a field had gone into his ground floor.

On the few evenings I have been able to sit outside in the last few weeks, I have almost always heard the cries of the swifts as they gather for their night flight; I love the sound. I understand that they fly overnight so need sufficient height at the end of an evening. I am also aware that birds like swallows adjust their daytime height to match the height at which insect prey can  be found. I have a great memory of driving our family car down a farm track in Germany one dull day and seeing swallows at eye-level. Insects obviously low with the poor weather. Conversely I have seen swallows hunting at a high level with fair weather.

I have no way to estimate the height at which I see swifts in the evening. However, yesterday evening they seemed about double the height I had previously seen them. I thought maybe the weather would improve. Despite this weather today has been absolutely sodden. Maybe what swallows do does not translate to swifts!

We have a small garden pond that is about 3 metres long and 75 cm deep at one end. Over the last 3 years many little frogs have grown up there and there are plenty of water snails. We have also seen the odd newt and have seen dragonfly larvae in the water. Doubtless the dragonfly larvae feed well on the tadpoles! Although I have often seen damselflies by the pond I had never seen adult dragonflies until last night.

My eldest son is back from university and on Saturday he noticed that there were a number of dragonfly casings at the edge of the pond. Last night he took out the torch and saw a newly emerged dragonfly.

The newly-emerged dragonfly is on the right of its old larval casing which is attached to the bottom of the water lily leaf.

This morning all that was left to see was the empty larva casing on the lower side of the leaf.

If somebody told me 15 years ago that if you were out jogging you might get attacked by a buzzard I would have thought they were talking complete rubbish. In my experience buzzards were very shy and never allowed you close unless you were driving past at a fair speed in a car.

When I lived in Bavaria my favourite jog was out of our small town along a cycle path to the next village. You left the village then passed a large wood on the left for about 200 metres then hit open countryside. About 10 years ago around this time of year I was doing my early morning jog. I had noticed that at least one buzzard pair had nested about 100 metres into the wood and noticed that the pair were soaring nearby. To my complete amazement one of them did a V-shaped dive behind me coming within a metre of my head; my head being the bottom of the V. There was a big whoosh of a downdraught. Then the mate did the same. They then let me jog on to the next village undisturbed. I was quite worried as I would not have wanted talons or the hooked beak to connect with my head. I concluded that they showed strongly territorial behaviour because of chicks or fledglings in the nearby nest.

In 2004, I read about a buzzard attacking a cyclist in Devon. It seemed like a similar pattern. Cyclists being attacked by buzzards was reported in early June near Zeist, Netherlands.

This week I had a day in Munich on business and was interested to read the TZ newspaper. This paper (27 June 2007) had headlines of a jogger being attacked by a buzzard (a search in www.google.de shows that this was not isolated).

This jogger near Rosenheim experienced a hard hit on the back of his head and thought a branch had fallen on him. He heard the wingbeat over his head then the buzzard went onto a tree 20 metres away and screamed at him. He then realised his head was bleeding a lot. A local falconer said that buzzards with freshly hatched chicks defend their nests up to a radius of 200 metres. However real contact attacks are rare; I'm just glad I got off lightly!

When I started this blog, I had in mind blogging about mountains, moorland, downland and coasts. However outdoor pleasures can be much closer to home and very simple.

Whenever my wife and I either had a garden flat or house we had the priveledge of a reasonably positioned terrace. In Germany we rented a garden flat at the base of a highrise block, then later a large terraced house; both had due south-facing terraces which were great in summer. Our current property has a SW facing decking which gets good use for eating outside or sitting outside when temperatures allow it.

Our German rental house had a typical Bavarian design with a one metre roof eave. This generally meant that unless there was a strong south wind the rain rarely hit our windows - saving window cleaning - but also meant that you could sit outside when it was raining and stay dry. Most of our neighbours sat out a lot in summer evenings but my wife and I often enjoyed sitting with rain falling. Like the sound of waves breaking or a waterfall I find rainfall soothing.

When we designed our current home I wanted to have a one metre overhang again (though it is our 1st floor bedroom rather than the eave that overhangs). Yesterday evening, after our evening church service, we decided to sit out with a glass or two of wine. The rain was fairly strong and persistent but the sound was soothing after a hard week. Even the trickling sound of the drainpipes was enjoyable.

Now back to the grind....a 2.5 h wait for a connection at Helsinki airport. Oh to be sitting outside....

While dandelions are not much loved by gardeners, I love the way a field can burst out in yellow when the dandelions come into flower together. I noticed that a few weeks ago at home then last week in Finland.

When we were in Germany we were out for an early evening walk with the sun getting low in the sky. The field we were in was full of dandelion clocks and my wife suddenly pointed out how the setting sun was picking out the dandelion clocks. I had a long lens with me and took the following photo.

And finally... a bit of trivia. I did not realise until a year ago that "dandelion" is a corruption of dent de lion (lion's tooth) in French; the meaning being obscure. The german word is Löwenzahn which means the same. In contrast "daisy" apparently comes from "day's eye" due to it opening up during the day.

Although I have been familiar with bluebells in woods since my childhood, it is still a sight I try to see every year. Bluebells are only wild in western Europe and I think restricted to UK, France and Spain (though the Spanish variety is different).

I find that the beauty of a woodland carpeted with bluebells is very hard to convey in photos. In the foreground you see individual flowers and in the background the flowers combine to form a "haze".

This Saturday we got up early to see them at about 07:00. They have flowered a few weeks earlier this year. I often think of them being at their best around May Day but they were probably at their peak a week ago.

In many bluebell woods there are also patches of wild garlic. They usually flower at the same time too. This Saturday was no exception and there were whole banks covered with white blooms.

We had visitors for Easter from the Netherlands. We decided to take them to the Dorset coast as the cliffs there would be very different to the sandy beaches and dunes back home. We went rather predictably to West Lulworth and not surprisingly it was packed with day tourists.

Although the door is famous, the views further to the west are also quite spectacular. Swyre Head (middle) is a very steep walk up from the amusingly named Scratchy Bottom; according to OS it is 98 m high. Further away Bat's Head has a tiny arch (Bat's Hole) and a small chalk pillar.

Although I have seen it many times I still like seeing Durdle Door. It is quite different in colour from the nearby clifss - grey limestone as opposed to white chalk.

Between the chalk and the limestone (which is also visible at West Lulworth at the entrance to the cove and at Stair Hole) there is a softer sandstone which has eroded more rapidly leaving the limestone to stand out.

We revisited Fosbury Down on the Hampshire/Wiltshire border at the weekend. It is an easy downland walk ending at an iron age hillfort. There were clear blue skies and a heathaze that limited visibility; unusual so early in the year. At the beginning of the walk there was a sparrowhawk circling; there are plenty of them these days while I never saw them in my childhood.

The fields looked white (from chalk and flint) with just a green hint of the crops growing through. The woodland had plenty of dog's mercury, wild arum, bluebells and wild garlic. The bluebells were just beginning to flower so too early to see a 'blue haze'. With no leaves on the trees the woods had a light quality and it was easier than usual to see the roe deer. Above the wood you could hear buzzards calling.

At the top of the down there was the song of skylarks. There are one or two very splendid beech trees on the edge of the hillfort that are a lot wider than they are tall with roots exposed by the ditches. We saw a soaring bird or prey rising out of the valley and visible above the ramparts. It was a single red kite. We have occasionally seen red kites in the area; including one occasion further north when we saw eight at a time! There were plenty of buzzards - most in pairs, but there was one group of four soaring.

A surprisingly good early April day.

In late winter 1994-95 I noticed a raptor in the same tree almost every morning beside the autobahn when driving to work. It was in a field close to the old Munich airport just one junction before the exit for my office. Again and again I puzzled over what it was as I shot past at speed.

I got fed up with this and ended up taking my camera and 500 mm lens with me to work some days and illegally parking on the hard shoulder. My first photo did not help much as the plumage did not match anything in my bird book. From some angles it looked very white - too much so in my view then to be a buzzard - but lacked the markings associated with other species.

However, photos did clear up some of the mystery along with a newly purchased copy of Birds of Prey of Europe, North Africa and the Middle East by Benny Gensbol. This is an excellent guide and there are systematic black and white drawings of many different raptors where the variation in plumage is very clearly set out. This book revealed to me how buzzards vary tremendously in colouring from dark brown to almost pure white. At the whiter end of the scale the markings on the upper wing like in the above photo are possible; the white patch on the shoulders with the rest being darker. The wing-tips are buzzard-like and there was a hint of bands in the tail feathers.

After getting a shot of the bird approaching its tree, it was clear that it was a buzzard. The shape was quite distinct from the silhouette and the narrow bands underneath the tail.

The whole experience opened my eyes to how much buzzards vary in colour. Since then I have seen even whiter buzzards in several different countries.

In spring 1995, I took my three small boys for a Sunday walk near Niederpframmern (in Oberbayern), a place where you could wander along unmade tracks across fields and forest. We had often seen raptors or roe deer there.

The area had plenty of voles which provided food for raptors and mammals. The snow had just thawed and the grass was still not a proper green. Suddenly we saw a movement and a dash of white. I had seen stoats in England but never in the white ermine coat before.

I was really surprised as the stoat was about 20 metres away - I'm afraid that these photos with a 500 mm lens are not quite sharp! However I later read that stoats are short-sighted but have an acute sense of smell. We were able to watch the stoat because we were downwind and presumably not clearly visible.

The Isle of Portland is a prominatory on the Dorset coast jutting out south into the Channel. It is attached to the mainland by Chesil Beach and by a causeway (this strip is only 200 metres wide). Although it is a major prominatory on the south coast I have never been there and had no idea what it would look like. I knew that a lot of stone from there had been used in London in past centuries.

The Isle of Portland is visible from both east and west as it is a lot higher than the coastal area around Weymouth. It is about 6.5 km from north to south and 2.7 km at east to west at the widest point.

There is a car park near the war memorial (OS Map 194, Grid reference SY690731). From the war memorial there is a great view north and following the coast northwest. Part of the coast path goes in a loop around the island and I picked this up in the car park yesterday and went round the whole island.

I picked up the path and followed it between the Verne Citadel - Victorian fortifications overlooking Fortuneswell - and the High Angle Battery. The Verne is the highest point on the island; no height is given on the map but it is higher than locations marked as 103 or 102 m. The path turns south and you get views across Weymouth Bay to the cliffs between Osmington Mills and Lulworth. The cliff is not steep so you feel well away from the coast. There was not a lot of bird life other than carrion crows and jackdaws; maybe most were grounded with the wind.

The path skits an HM Young Offender Institution and then there is the noise and traffic of quarrying on the inland side. There seem to be a lot of both disused and actively used quarries. The path drops down close to sea level at Church Ope Cove and for a while the east coast looks interesting.

The cliffs at this point were not very high - roughly 30 metres. When the path was lower there was a welcome shelter from the North wind!

The path goes for another short spell inland along a road (the inevitable quarry on the other side) then returns to the coast at Freshwater Bay. The coast follows the line of the cliffs southward and it is noticable that the cliffs are petering out. I was surprised to see that there were three lighthouse structures within about a kilometre of the Bill; two are disused.

Approaching the Bill there were numerous structures like garden sheds - holiday homes or beach houses without a beach? At this point I got the full blast of the wind again. Portland Bill itself is an anticlimax.

Just rocks going down into the water. No wonder I had not seen photos of it! I imagine that the Isle of Portland has layers of rock titling from north to south. Many of the rocks in the area appeared to be flat.

So next, it was north into the face of the wind. After reaching the third lighthouse it was clear that the west cliffs looked a lot more interesting than those on the east side. They seemed much steeper and were rising. The path is easy walking just gently sloping upwards to the north. There were a number of great black-backed gulls but few birds seemed to be in the air.

The path passes west of Weston then the final stretch is near an area that was obviously once quarried. There are large blocks of limestone on the cliffside of the path and even stone arches over the path. Finally Fortuneswell comes into view again and you can return to the car park.

This was not the most spectacular coast walk I have done but you can easily get a feel for the Isle of Portland. Based on the OS Map I estimate the walk to be 12.5-13 km.