Hide and seek with reptiles and other riverside creatures

Airedale, West Yorkshire Under one board are two young lizards, one buff, one a dramatic charcoal-grey; under another a dark-green frogIt's all gone a bit quiet down by the river. The breeding season has petered out, and by and large the birds have retired from public life: to moult, to regrow, to regroup. It's a drab, warm morning. One of the kingfishers hunches over the streaming shallows. A young bullfinch mopes in the low branches of an ash. Damp late-summer greenery - ferns, goosegrass, rosebay willowherb - chokes the pathways.Here and there, in the riverside woodland, the warden has laid down boards of planking for young adventurers to peer beneath. Typically there'll be worms and snails, sage-green slugs and hectic centipedes, perhaps a wood mouse's midden of neatly nibbled cherry pits. Continue reading...