Open Country

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Factual: Science & Nature: Nature & Environment

Countryside magazine featuring the people and wildlife that shape the landscape of Britain

Countryside magazine featuring the people and wildlife that shape the landscape of the British Isles

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Open Country: Closed Country: A Spring Audio-Diary with Brett Westwood

Closed Country: A Spring Audio-Diary with Brett Westwood

BBC Radio 4 - Open Country, Closed Country: A Spring Audio-Diary with Brett Westwood

Spring - an audio diary with Brett Westwood

Spring - an audio diary with Brett Westwood.

It seems hard to believe, when so many of us are coping with lockdown and more, that the power of nature continues unfettered:  Spring, in all its fecundity, is altering our landscape as it always does.  To chart this time of great change we gave the naturalist, Brett Westwood, a microphone at the end of March and asked him to record a nature diary.  He lives in urban Stourbridge in the West Midlands, which doesn’t sound an obvious setting for a spring journal but actually it’s perfect:  What he sees at close quarters, with his expert eye, is available for us all if we know where and how to look.  His sightings include feather-footed flower bees who live in the brickwork of our houses, buzzards that might steal frogspawn from your pond,  bee-flies which coat their eggs with dust before shooting them at the nests of solitary bees, and mistletoe... which doesn't sound as intriguing, but it really is: Brett can explain why our behaviour is causing it to spread further than ever before. 

Note: The podcast contains extra material that couldn't be squeezed into the original programme: see the 'related links' box below for how to access and download the BBC Sounds App.  

Producer: Karen Gregor

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