Finding Harmony

Posted on February 21, 2026 by Roger Gosden
King Charles III

We have a similar birth date and the same hometown, but otherwise I have nothing in common with Charles III, except a passion for nature that grew out of childhood and has never faded. I am no apologist for monarchy, but I applaud the King for his love and care for the beauty and bounty outdoors.
I admired his grit when it was unfashionable to be called an environmentalist, to advocate for organic farming, or to criticize grotesque objects of modernist architecture. I am glad he has lived long enough for his prescience to be acclaimed.
Finding Harmony is his 2026 documentary on Amazon Prime, declaring a belief in the need to reconnect with nature for the sake of our bodies, our souls, our land, and the survival of humanity. Far more than musing on the throne, he has inspired practical solutions that pitifully few people in like positions of wealth and influence can match. The documentary will delight the fawning flatterers of royalty, but that should not discourage viewing the history and philosophy of this man.
The title resonates with thinkers, poets, and scientists who have believed that harmony with nature is not a retreat from civilization but a reorientation of consciousness desperately needed in these times and materialistic civilization.
From Lao Tzu in ancient China to Mary Oliver in modern America, there is a common thread of thought that human flourishing depends on remembering we are not separate from nature.
Nature is not mere scenery nor scripture for Henry David Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson; it is an open book through which moral and spiritual truths are revealed. To walk outdoors is to step through pages of instruction, which William Wordsworth reverently echoed, seeing nature as a teacher, healer, and moral guide.
The ecologists John Muir, Aldo Leopold, and Rachel Carson had insights into this connectedness from the experience of immersion in nature. Harmony is not sentiment, but meant survival to Chief Seattle.
Albert Einstein and Thomas Henry Huxley, to name just two scientists, believed we gain wisdom by observing nature’s patterns rather than imposing our own interests and arrogance on them.
These are the common threads:

  • Belonging — We are participants in nature, not outside observers.
  • Attention — Wisdom comes from patient observation and wonder.
  • Reciprocity — To live well is to live gently. When we cause harm to the earth, we hurt ourselves.

Posted in Environment, Nature | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Blackbird Migration

Posted on February 13, 2026 by Roger Gosden
Bird migration
Screenshot

It is mid-February after the coldest weeks I can remember in south-east Virginia. Our summer visitors are still wintering in balmier latitudes; they won’t fly north for another month, but some locals are on the move.
A cloud of Common Grackles and Red-winged Blackbirds often land to feed on our lawn and chase smaller visitors off the bird feeders. The noisy, boisterous flocks look Hitchcockian, numbering a few hundred, but when I walked the dogs, I heard a vast twittering flock approaching from the east, too high to land nearby or even identify. (The headline image is not either of these species)
They kept coming … and coming … and coming. It took three minutes for the flock to pass. I estimated the column at over fifty wide, but they flew so fast I couldn’t do more than guess at the total, certainly many tens of thousands, and likely ten times ten the number.
To use a hackneyed word – they were awesome. But they didn’t perform the kind of murmuration that Starlings are famous for, the collective acrobatics that forces a stop for watching the performance. The blackbird flock, probably a mixture of the two species plus some fellow travelers, flew in a steady stream toward an unknown roosting place under the setting sun. I saw a Sharp-shinned Hawk race after a straggler. There’s safety in numbers except for tail-end Charlie!

Red-winged Blackbird

Image credits, respectively: Pexels (Aleksandar Pasaric) and the late Inge Curtis

Posted in Birding, Nature | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

The Chill of ICE

Posted on January 30, 2026 by Roger Gosden
Icy scene
From Unsplash

I dash from the porch and promptly do battle with ice,
Stagger to join rows of bundled-up neighbors, gentle as mice,
They stamp frozen feet and wave with woolly mitts
Slogans on floppy placards, too chill to move lips,
And dream of springtime to melt the grip of ICE.

Image credit: Yuriy Bogdanov (Unsplash)

Posted in Nature, poetry | Tagged , | Leave a comment

The Afterlife of a Beekeeper – an ode

Posted on December 20, 2025 by Roger Gosden
Beehive

I lost my beekeeper buddy a week ago and wondered how to leave a tribute for her. This is my timid offering, celebrating the continuity of life.

Honeybees on the comb

The brood snuggled down against the dark,
Since she sealed hive boxes tight as an Ark;
She barred the drafts, drew entrances tight,
Only a timid guard peeped out at the biting night;
She left them honey on the comb, a golden crown,
But they settled down to sleep, all spellbound,
While the beekeeper has gone to ground.

Christmas decorates the street with flame,
Bronzed beech leaves rattle, still the same;
Behind drawn blinds, children hold their breath,
Outside it is cold as a lingering death.
The hive has chilled, save where the queen is found,
Wrapped in a quilt of bodies, mound on mound.
No hum to stir the ear; all seems unbound,
And the beekeeper has gone to ground.

But wait awhile till frost yields as dew,
When something stirs where none would do;
The first to test its wings and lift into the air,
Lands on Mahonia stamens, sweet and fair.
“And all shall be well,” is the old mystic’s prayer,
“All manner of thing shall be well.”
The beekeeper soars with her brood in the air.

Honeybees

Explanation: Mahonia is the first plant to flower for the bees before the spring. The quotation is from the medieval English mystic, Lady Julian of Norwich. Line drawings from my book The Boy Who Could Bee

Posted in Nature | 2 Comments

Paying back Spain in kind with Red Kites

Posted on November 22, 2025 by Roger Gosden
Red Kite
Image credit Don Coombez (Unsplash)

Red Kites were familiar sights in London in Shakespeare’s day. He mentioned them in several plays, but not always with compliments. The Winter’s Tale tells a complaint that “My traffic is sheets; when the kits builds, look to lesser linen.”
They fill the ecological niche in Britain and Europe that vultures occupy in other continents. The Tale refers to the habit of stealing clothes drying outside on washing lines to decorate their nests. Such mischievousness irritated people who forgot they were virtuous scavengers cleaning streets of rotting carcasses and other detritus that encourages disease, much as our two species of vultures clean roadkill to the bones.
Poisoning and shooting brought British kites to the verge of extinction. I went in student days to see the last holdouts in mid-Wales at Tregaron Bog (also known as Cors Caron). Recovery of the inbred residue looked doubtful at best.
Two conservation organizations a couple of decades later introduced young birds as potential breeders from Sweden and Spain, where they were still common. This has been an outstanding reintroduction program. Thousands of birds thrive now in suitable habitats up and down the country. With laundry safely stowed in tumble-dryers, the Tudor complaint is redundant. I haven’t seen them yet on my return trips, but family and friends have gushing compliments for the birds that hover over fields with shallow forked tails.
The story of Red Kites is circular. They have suffered a catastrophic decline in Spain from eating poisoned bait intended for varmints. It affected other raptors, but they are recovering. British fledglings have been returned to their ancestors’ country, where we hope they become successful breeders and won’t behave badly as they are wont to do in England, putting their reputation at stake again.
The Henley Standard published a story in 2023 of a Red Kite swooping for a sandwich a girl was about to eat while sitting on a bench beside the River Thames. When it dropped a slice, it beat her to pick it up. Other kites favor croissants, and one snatched a slice of pizza from a boy’s hand. This is the price the public pays for making birds too cocksure by befriending them with tidbits.

Posted in Birding, Nature | Tagged , , , , , , | Comments Off on Paying back Spain in kind with Red Kites