I have been reading Goshawk Summer which manages to blend the nature diary with some of the queasy uncertainty of the initial outbreak of the COVID pandemic in the UK. The bulk of the book covers a spring and summer spent filming a goshawk nest in the New Forest.

Nature takes the foreground with divergences into the management of land and the balance of demands on the natural environments. The author grew up in the New Forest so occasionally there are snippets of nostalgia, autobiography and memory. The basic beat of the nature diary, the succession of seasons and inevitable drumbeat of live moving through it phases underpins this book in the way it does for the entire genre.

Later with the lockdown lifting the thoughts become darker as the forest fills with people, litter and anger. The respite of lockdown proves fleeting and as with carbon emissions the world rushes back at speed.

A passing mention of the inability to meet with family sets up a darker still epilogue that reveals personal tragedy and combines it with the impact of the forest visitors on the ground nesting birds.

The other diversions are to provide insight into the behaviour of animals and the ecology of the forest and biological systems in general. The balance of information is generally right here. Enough to inform, not so much as to derail from the central narrative.

Natural life exists within the turning of the seasons; but lurking at the back of everything in our current time is a clock ticking that cannot be turned back and which may advance without us and many of the other animals that cling precariously to their space within a human world.

Simply and directly written, the book moves swiftly and satisifies as the summer unfolds. The joy of the nature memoir is to share in the moments of sublime observation without the often difficult waiting that accompanies the wait. The successful writer brings us the beauty and allows us to elide the difficulties in experiencing it for ourselves. We live vicariously for better and worse through our observer. The elegant trick here is also to tap into the emotions of a recent shared experience and set it against ancient rhythms.