IN THE run up to Christmas, holly trees get a battering. It’s not just a few sprigs to decorate the house, there are also commercial collectors who sometimes cut down whole trees.

CALM NIGHTS at this time of year often get rather noisy in my part of the world. The culprits are foxes, which mate between late December and early February.

I LOVE trees but I’m not sentimental about them. In fact at this time of year I enjoy cutting them down, turning them into logs and burning them.

OUR CHRISTMAS traditions often have rather strange and obscure origins.

THE road I drive to get to my local village includes a section with huge fields of winter barley on both sides.

I LIVE in the country, and although I quite often repeat the comforting cliché that lovers of wildlife who are misfortunate enough to live in towns or cities can still find a lot to enjoy if they examine their environment carefully enough, somewhere in the back of my mind I’ve never fully believed these words of consolation.

WHEN MINK first started to spread around the country, there were a lot of worries about what the impact of a new species of carnivore would be on other wildlife.

MOST of the leaves have now gone from the deciduous trees in the wood.

THE other day I went for a walk with my son Sam and our dog. It ended up with a bit of an incident. We were crossing a field full of cattle when suddenly the cattle attacked and the dog decided to defend.

LAST WEEK I wrote an article on this page about jays. I noted that jays were more numerous in the south and east of the country but that the pattern seemed to be changing, with the population slowly shifting north westwards.