It's begining to look a lot like Autumn....

...down on the canal.

Seven Favourite Books!

I was recently challenged elsewhere in social media to name my seven favourite books.

Much head scratching followed.

The 'rules' were that I should not comment, just identify them but I would like to explain my choices.
So I reproduce them here with some comments.

Funny, inspiring and how we miss the intelligence and wit of Douglas (who I once nearly met)! Mark is fortunately still with us - still writing and still urging action for biodiversity.

 This is a two volume 1879 edition of the first popular natural history book: Oliver Goldsmith’s A History of the Earth and Animated Nature. The first edition appeared in 1774, but it was published as some twenty further editions over several decades and was increasingly highly illustrated, one of its main selling points.

Well of course - long before the TV series came the books by Gerald Durrell, most of which concerned his animal collecting adventures to distant places. Gentle humour with some foundation in fact. 

This book and the others in the 'Narnia series' helped me breathe!

Without being too dramatic, when I was a little boy and repeated trapped in my bed by reoccurring attacks of asthmatic bronchitis, C.S. Lewis's fantasy world brought me a gentle escape. I read his series over and over again. Later I discovered his fantasy series in outer space and recognised the Chrtisian teaching he had interwoven into his books. .  

As a home-sick student in my first months away from home, I listened and laughed to the wit of Douglas Adams on my radio. His originality shone through and many of his finest phrases have stood the test of time and resonate today. I have captured a few above. 

This is great science fiction from a great writer. The xenobiology theme really speaks to me and, even if you don't like or don't know the 'Ender' universe that provides the backdrop to this complex and moving story, I recommend it to you.

If I could add more to my list I would look to the wonderful Ursula K. La Guin (perhaps ‘Wizard of Earthsea’);

or Jerome K Jerome’s bucolic ‘Three Men in a Boat’;

or pretty much anything by Neil Gaiman;

or the finest graphic novel to date, ‘Watchmen’ (from the pen of Alan Moore);

or, of course, anything by A.A. Milne (Pooh to you);

or Kenneth Graham’s ‘Wind in the Willows’ (I was once cast as Badger);

or some major text on marine mammals that I use a lot;

Dicken’s 'Christmas Carole';

Attenborough’s 'autobiography';

Azinmov's robot series;

Zelansny's fantasies and many more.

And finally - last but not least -

Not a surprise on anyone's list!
A masterpiece from an author who until very recently had only published this one book.
It remains an important and inspiring moral story. 

Some Beautiful Bardsey Seals

A lovely lady grey seal showing the latest in seal fashion.

A handsome bull.

A moulting pup hauled up onto the grass at the top of the shore. 
At this point its mother has left it and over the next few days all the while hair will come off (some is visible in the grass already).

Mother and whitecoat pup at the sea's edge. 

Adult seals canoodling - female to the left, male to the right. 

Another  mother and pup.

A tiny white-coat pup on the shore. Its mother will not be far away.

Return to Fabled Bardsey Island

The 'Island of Twenty Thousand Saints' - a lightly inhabited chunk of rock which sits in a boiling sea with sheer cliffs turned against the mainland of North Wales - is home to thousands of birds and hundreds of seals.

Here are some views.

Looking across Bardsey Sound to the mainland in the evening light. 

Looking from the western  tip towards the 'mountain'. 

A view of the Bird and Field Observatory at the Foot of the Mountain.

An ancient boundary.

Seals in the main island bay.

A Bardsey Wren.

A fly past by a gannet.

Herons

A merlin hunting in the grass near the lighthouse

The ferry to leave!