Obsessed with the weather? If you’re a British reader, then the answer is certainly yes. Thanks to our seasonal climate, we have always been a nation with one eye on the sky – and it’s only a short hop from there to observing how our flora and fauna respond to these ever-shifting conditions. Being in early winter now, it’s the time of year for geese and gales, starlings and mistletoe, tree rot and fungi in staggering variety. There is always, always something changing about our wildlife, day by day.
This is the foundation on which the Guardian’s Country diary column flourishes. It’s a sort of slow-motion version of the BBC programme Springwatch – one short piece each day, from a different writer in a different part of the UK, each focusing on a different aspect of nature.
It’s such a simple concept – perhaps that is why it has endured for so long; after all, Country diary is, remarkably, the longest known newspaper column in existence, having run since 1904. Its longevity is also a tribute to the many distinguished writers who have contributed, past and present.
How do we keep it blooming over a century later? I’ll explain, after this week’s most important environmental reads.
Essential reads
Fury as US argues against climate obligations at top UN court
‘Straight in harm’s way’: can Trump open up Alaska’s 19m-acre refuge for drilling?
In focus
Back in the diary’s earliest years, there was but one writer, Thomas Coward in Cheshire, who, God forbid, had to file an article to his editor every single day. At first principle, you could hardly find a more suitable subject for a daily series than the natural world. After all, wildlife has evolved a truly dizzying array of creatures, and accompanying ways to survive and thrive – of late, readers have learned about rare glow-worms, deadly thorn apple, and strange magpie behaviour.
But the diary is also far from just a “what species is that?” column: recently, we’ve had our resident farmers writing on the post-budget protests and the return of bovine TB. Last month, we had Mark Cocker waxing about the hunter’s moon in Burnlaw, Northumberland, and Nicola Chester (from Berkshire) celebrating the 100th birthday of her rural village hall; further back we had Phil Gates (County Durham) on “footpath furniture”. Soon, on the winter solstice, we’ll have a dispatch from Mary Montague in Northern Ireland, about the remarkable Newgrange in County Meath, a neolithic monument that is designed to be illuminated as the shortest day of the year begins.
Like many of its writers (I suspect), the diary rises early, publishing at 5.30am, and I’m told that for many readers it is part of their morning routine, taken with a cup of tea and Wordle, or with a takeaway coffee on a packed train. In a world of hard edges and relentlessly hard news, it provides some brief respite, taking you out into the fields, the woods or the garden for your daily constitutional. I’d also like to think that it contains a little of that vanishingly scarce commodity: charm.
As with anything related to nature, of course, there is also grave news to be found; indeed, the diary is fundamentally a piece of journalism, so it is duty-bound to report on the climate crisis and its effects on species and systems. Our fine writers can at least bring some elegance and/or anger to the topic. Some notable examples I can recall are Paul Evans’s damning diary after the 2022 heatwave, and the bittersweet chase that Charlie Elder undergoes to see the increasingly rare cuckoo in the Dartmoor mist.
One of the true values of the diary is that, having run for so long, it is now a vast document that tells the story of British wildlife and rural affairs over the past 120 years – from the modernisation of agriculture to the winners and losers in our index of species. On that note, it is worth mentioning that the daily diary is sometimes accompanied by an archive diary too, written on the same day of the year in past decades. These show the cumulative importance of all those daily snapshots. Archive pieces can be startling to read, with their casual references to, say, seeing nightingales or turtle doves as if they weren’t critically endangered; or their passing mentions to God Save the King (the 1940s version), mead or horse-drawn ploughs. But they are also reassuring, bringing home the resilience and constancy of nature: while everything else changes, the first butterfly of spring or a flock of long-tailed tits look the same today as they ever did, and draw the same responses.
In September this year, a Country diary “best of” called Under the Changing Skies was published by Faber. It covers the period between 2018 and 2024 – a drop in the ocean of the ongoing, living record that is the diary. While I couldn’t begin to be a student of the entire span of the diary since its inception all those years ago, what I can vouch for is the brilliance, dedication and love for the subject that the current crop of writers have, all of which is borne out in this collection. And you never know, perhaps the diary will still be going in 120 years time.
Paul Fleckney is editor of the Country diary. To catch up on the daily series, click here. The Guardian is also taking submissions for this winter’s Young country diary, until Friday 3 January.
Read more of the Country diary:
Composted Reads
The good news
The bad news
On the Grenadian island of Carriacou, even the dead are now climate victims
Countries call for binding targets to cut plastic production after talks fail
Climate hero – Amaya Edwards
Profiling an inspiring individual, suggested by Down to Earth readers
The Young country diary, written by nature-obsessed children across the UK, is another wholesome part of our long-running column. Amaya, who is 10 years old and has autism, is one of many budding climate heroes who contribute.
Her parents, Gavin and Colette, say: “Being outside helps Amaya to regulate her feelings and emotions, and is a way for her to feel free and at one with her surroundings.”
Amaya’s devotion to nature began when she watched a documentary about an injured wild dolphin who was given a prosthetic tail. “Amaya related, as she felt the dolphin was different and so was she,” her parents say.
Her love of the natural world only grew from there. She regularly joins beach cleans, once saved 24 jellyfish (as she wrote about here) and wants to be a marine biologist when she grows up. Gavin and Colette say: “She once saw a deceased seal with a ring around its neck. This prompted her to design a poster for rubbish to be put in bins and not left on the beach – the local mayor was so impressed he put the poster around the town and made 500 postcards of it. Amaya donated the proceeds to Sea Life, raising £500. She then wrote and illustrated a book about saving sea animals, with her support dog Boo as the main character. This has spurred further books and she now writes a blog which details her nature work.
“We are proud that, at the age of 10, she is so passionate about the environment and wants to not only help save and preserve it, but also educate others to do the same.”
Nominated by Paul Fleckney
If you’d like to nominate a climate hero, email downtoearth@theguardian.com
Climate jargon – Vulnerability
Demystifying a climate concept you’ve heard in the headlines
Vulnerability describes how at risk people or ecosystems are from the adverse effects of the climate crisis. High vulnerability is often the result of a combination of environmental, social and economic factors that increase the danger of harm from climate impacts.
For more Guardian coverage of climate vulnerability, click here
Picture of the week
One image that sums up the week in environmental news
Credit: Maria Nunzia
Sticking with the Country diary, take a moment to study this peaceful snowy picture from Brogyntyn park in Oswestry, Shropshire. Squint and you may see that the picture, which accompanied 29 November’s Country diary by Paul Evans, captures not just a beautiful lime tree, but a barely visible flock of fieldfares, in their grey, chestnut and speckled coats. The birds, which fly in from Scandinavia and Russia in autumn, were singing “a soft bubbling song like snow through winter trees,” Evans writes.
For more of the week’s best environmental pictures, catch up on The Week in Wildlife here
Guardian and Observer journalists who belong to the National Union of Journalists are taking industrial action on December 4 and December 5. Please note that journalists who have written and edited this newsletter did not produce their work on strike days.
