41 - Field Studies of Behaviour and Life-Changing Events

Summary

My field experiences have been life changing. I grew up in the field. My parents bought a plot of land in the early 1960s, on the edge of the ballast cliffs at Erith in Kent. The land was probably sold for a pinch, as likely or not anything built on top might one day find itself at the bottom of a landslide. They built a bungalow on the widest patch, to which we moved when I was four. The strip of land to the east of the house was deemed too narrow to build upon and was abandoned to run wild. That was my first field site. Although my mother forbad me to go down to the ‘lower site’, no doubt for fear of me toppling over the unfenced cliff, I nonetheless spent my childhood there. Heavily wooded with English elm, sadly lost to Dutch elm disease in the 1970s, and rich with beds of nettle and bramble, I spent long summer days capturing butterflies: small tortoiseshells, peacocks, red admirals and comma being the most common. I would lie in the long grasses for hours, listening to the stridulating grasshoppers. To this day I recall the thrill of capturing a large male stag beetle, and the screams of my mother when she found it in my shorts pocket that night. I kept a bird list and explored the sand cliffs, searching for nests, and I am ashamed to say I added many eggs to my collection. My time on the lower site developed within me a passion for the field, for natural history, and it kindled the biologist I am today.