Turnstones and Turtle Doves: nature-watching in an Essex parish, Jenny Coumbe (New Generation Publishing, 2025) ISBN: 978-1-83563-919-1 £12.99
Everybody needs a sense of place, and every place needs people to have that sense, to love and nurture it, enjoy it and help keep it safe from the ravages of modern life. That is just what Jenny Coumbe has done here for a small part of the Tendring Peninsula in Essex, the area around her home. It is an area I know well, especially from a couple of decades ago and it is a pleasure to find out that much of what I remember still remains.
The book starts with a few pages of Foreword, well-written prose that evokes well the author’s hopes that the readers will take inspiration and look at their local patches in the way she has. And add natural colour to their lives in doing so.
In fact, the Foreword is so evocative that the short-form writing style of the bulk of the book could be seen as disappointing, an opportunity missed. Arranged as a series of short paragraphs grouped by season and spanning six years, the writing is sparse. But as the introduction explains, they originated as extracts from nature diary entries. A more familiar description today may be that they are like a series of self-contained tweets (other social media platforms are available!).
Others may complain that the information therein is not quantitative, and thus has limited ‘scientific’ use. But that is also to miss the point. Consider parallels with the mass observation programme of the 1940s in which ‘ordinary’ people captured the details of their ‘ordinary’ lives as the first citizen social scientists, leaving an unparalleled archive of a time of great post-war upheaval.
Well, nature is at that pivotal moment right now, where what we have all grown up with may not be available to our descendants, our children and grandchildren. And if they don’t know about it will they ever want to recover it? Anything we can do to foster desires to challenge Shifting Baseline Syndrome has to be a good thing.
This lovely little book, with well chosen photos by the author and Nick Levene, fills an essential gap between the hopes for, and the reality of, the natural world. It is a gentle beacon of hope in an uncertain world, as well as an advert for that most maligned of counties, Essex. Nothing links each short paragraph, other than the season and location. There is no attempt to curate the entries into stories: it just lets the reader create their own mental world. Read it right through in one sitting, or dip into it at will, there is no ‘best way’ of enjoying it.
Turnstones and Turtle Doves is an unashamedly modest book that can hold its head high on the local interest and natural history shelves of any bookshop. It epitomises the glorious unexpected, the wealth of change and events that give meaning to the life of any naturalist. Inspiration indeed!
Paperback available online £12.99, e-book at £4.99. Also available from Wrabness Community Shop and Red Lion Books, Colchester.