Nature allows you to find new, fascinating things every day
Recently, someone asked in an interview: "why should we care about nature?"
"Crikey!" I thought. That is a big question and it certainly made me think very deeply.
It also brought back some marvellous and, at times, funny memories stretching over the last 35 years, making me realise that nature has and always will have a very special place in my heart.
One of my earliest memories was at the site where my father was building our new house. Playing in and around a half-constructed house, I discovered a pair of spindly red legs hanging out of the unfinished wall cavity.
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On closer inspection I discovered they were still moving and unbelievably attached to a water rail. My dad helped the bird out of its strange hiding place and was none the worse for its ordeal.
At the time I wasn't interested in birds but the memory has stayed with me for the last 40 years.
One thing from my childhood that I still love to do is go to the local woods and look for fungi. I don't want to pick it or eat it, I just love the fantastic colours, shapes and smells that you get with these beautiful little life forms.
Even now if we go on an autumn walk, my older brother and I will still have a competition to find the first stink horn or fly agric.
I have had the privilege of working all around the country from Orkney in the north to Dungeness in the south and a host of many other breathtaking places in between.
From singing seals outside my bedroom on a usually uninhabited island to mighty sperm whales swimming in Scapa Flow off the Orkneys, I've certainly seen some amazing wildlife spectacles. But sometimes it's the small things right on your doorstep that you remember just as fondly.
There is not a day that I don't find something new, fascinating or just simply beautiful in the local countryside. For example, with the recent slight improvement in the weather, loads of different species of insects have come out. Of these, I particularly love hoverflies with their dazzling colours.
So why should we care about nature and save it? The simple answer is because it is amazing.
Don't miss a ticket offer for RSPB Blacktoft Sands in the Scunthorpe Telegraph, September 27.
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