I've just been watching some grey squirrels in our wood. Four of them were chasing from tree to tree uttering rather bad-tempered chirping noises all the while. Do squirrels play "he"?

Or perhaps spring is early and they are engaging in some courtship rituals. It's certainly very warm today: enough for lots of midges to be about.

Ah: a quick Google gives the answer: it's all about It rather than he!

Breeding behaviour

Postscript: when I was a kid, we played "he" in the playground or on the streets. Then the game was called "it" - perhaps for PC reasons, and most US readers will probably know the game as "tag". Wikipedia lists lots more names too.

to all my blog friends, and anyone else who drops by. See you in 2007.

Eeek: although it isn't even Christmas yet, the hazel catkins are already full of pollen. The unripe catkins were well-developed while the leaves were green, but I wasn't expecting them to flower so unseasonably early: normally I'd expect them in February. Strange times - I imagine it shouldn't affect the crop of nuts in 2007 too badly, since hazel is wind-pollinated, so doesn't depend on insects.

A friend who lives just down the hill has the first primrose in her garden. Perhaps not quite so surprising: primrose comes from the Latin for "first rose", indicating that they often appear early. The main blooming is traditionally around Mothering Sunday in March, when posies were gathered by children for their Mums.

It’s a bit clichéd to say “this book makes me see things in a new light” – but in this case, it’s really true – and what a wonderful (sky)light it is. As a schoolgirl, I learnt a bit of basic meteorology studying Geography A Level in the early 70s, so I had a vague idea about clouds: I could recognise cumulus, and knew that altostratus making a milky halo round the sun was the sign of approaching rain – but now I’ve read the book, I have started to see all sorts of new patterns and layers in the sky, and even worse, gaze admiringly out of the office window when I should be working. I’m afraid I may well become one of those weirdos who lie on the ground to watch the clouds flow past – as soon as the dry weather comes again!

When the review copy arrived in the post, I read a page or two at lunchtime, and sped through to page 84 by the time I fell asleep at night. I tried to be a bit more moderate after that, as I really didn’t want to get to the end! I have a bit of a magpie mind – so the mixture of different topics was ideal. And I imagine that that the way it’s written, as a series of short (sometimes cliffhanging) episodes, means it would be easy to dip into if you didn’t fancy a protracted read. So, a book for both the anorak and the dilettante.

The book is an engagingly-written and eclectic mix of mythology, gentle science, snippets of history and art, literature and philosophy, personal observations, and of course a comprehensive catalogue of the different types of clouds with spotter’s identification charts. There are moments of high drama – the airman who fell 47000 feet through a thundercloud and lived; and quiet reflection – the joy of a clearing sunset after a day of grey clouds and drizzle.

Physically, the book feels really nice in the hands, and has a rather endearing old-fashioned feel – both in typography, and the attractive woodcuts in the endpapers and facing pages for each chapter. The only things I didn’t like about the design were the rather flat b/w photo reproductions, and the sideheads, which tend to run into the text.

I found one or two small annoyances: the editor missed that oysters aren’t crustaceans (page 159) for instance, and the use of Imperial measures seems distinctly odd to me even in an old-fashioned book (but this was published in America, which is still in the 19th century in that respect!).

A few more diagrams to explain the scientific side would have been welcome: for example, there are some tortuous explanations of phenomena like arcs, haloes and sundogs that I didn’t really follow. And how the author manages to entirely avoid mentioning adiabatic heating and cooling is a mystery to me! Still, I am probably of a more technical turn of mind than most people who will buy this book, and perhaps expecting too much of what is meant to be fun rather then instructional.

So, all in all, a very creditable 9 out of 10, Gavin.

If you know someone who enjoys the natural world and has a lively interest in all sorts of stuff – then I think this would be a jolly good present. You aren’t just giving a book, but also the chance to see commonplace things anew: what more could one ask?

Related link:

The Cloud Appreciation Society