The Shepherd and the Bear (film review)

 

This documentary explores the conflict provoked by the reintroduction of brown bears in the midst of a traditional shepherding community in the heights of the French Pyrenees. The film follows Yves, an ageing shepherd who struggles to find a successor, and Cyril, a teenage boy who spends his free time tracking and photographing the bears.

The shepherds are losing sheep to bears, which have been reintroduced into the area, with apparently little support given to the shepherds (they are given no compensation for lost sheep and the bear-scarers and electric fences they are given don't really seem adequate to the job). I love the idea of bears being reintroduced into areas where they used to live, but if I were a shepherd in that area I would expect at the very least compensation for lost sheep and sturdy electric fencing to corral the animals at nightime. The arguments of both the shepherds, the photographer and the conservationists are all sensitively presented and the audience is left with a sense that this is a conflict full of nuance and with no easy answers (well except maybe good compensation and sturdy electric fences). 

The documentary doesn't shy away from showing the bloody side of farming, including dying livestock. On the other hand, it is prevented from becoming too heavy with interludes including a wedding celebration and an extended chase scene involving a feisty rooster. 

The stunning cinematography and immersive storytelling show us a world of tradition, community and humanity’s increasingly fraught relationship with a vanishing natural world. 

Currently screening at The Filmhouse in Edinburgh and probably elsewhere, check your local independent cinema.  

Hazel Catkins

We enjoyed a walk round Saughton Park and along the Water of Leith on Saturday. We didn't take many photos as the weather was very dull. I did manage however to get some photos of Hazel bushes, which not only show the dangling male catkins but also the tiny red female flowers. Look carefully at the twig in the photo below. To the right of the catkins are two tiny red flowers. Can you see them?

 

The Coral Bones by E J Swift

This novel interweaves three stories, set around the Great Barrier Reef in Australia. One follows Judith, a young woman on a sea voyage in the mid-19th century, the second follows Hana a marine biologist in the present day, and the third follows Telma, a representative of an ecological Restoration Committee, two centuries in the future.

Judith's story is the most engaging, partly because it is an old fashioned adventure, partly due to Judith's obvious delight in finding the pristine reefs, but also because to me she felt like the most well rounded of the characters, with the most engaging voice. 

However, the present day and future stories are most valuable for what they say about the state of the coral reefs and how we might begin to save them in the future. There are some excellent descriptions of the life around the reefs: 

'Rafi had included footage of seadragons mating. Telma watched a dance between pairs, mesmerised by the slow gyre of their movement, the ritual undertaking between male and female, an act that had been staged for countless millennia, and then never again. Their baroque bodies turned in the current, each seadragon endeavouring to mirror the subtle actions of their mate.'

There is also a lot of thoughtful consideration of what we risk losing if we lose the coral reefs to climate change. In some cases, these observations from the future are already being witnessed by coral scientists and divers today:

'Imagine a place you know intimately. A home, beloved, each brick and pane and furnishing and dirt or grease mark on the wall, every inch of the architecture infused with memory. Imagine one day you return and find nothing remains but the foundations. The ceiling is gone, the windows have vanished. What was a house is hollow. Even the air feels different. It is not a haunting, there are no ghosts here; the memories have been wiped. There is only absence. You stand, turning on the spot, looking about you. After a while, the doubt creeps in. You begin to disbelieve that this is the place you knew. That you were ever here at all. Such is the transformation, you cannot truly take it in. There must be some mistake.

Gone were the vivid reds and oranges, the yellows and pinks, the umbers and siennas, the gentle sepias, all the infinite hues of coral that make a healthy reef. These colonies were long past bleaching; algae had grown over their bodies,'

I really enjoyed how the novel brings together stories of the reef from different time periods, historical and imagined and leaves us with a sense of hope that it may not be too late for the Great Barrier Reef.

The Coral Bones by E J Swift, published by Jo Fletcher Books, an imprint of Quercus.   

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Meanwhile, I've posted a wee piece about World Wetlands Day (which was on Monday) on my Crafty Green Poet Substack. You can read it here.  

 

 

 

Witch Hazel and other early signs of Spring

 On Saturday we had a lovely walk around Corstorphine Hill. We started at the Walled Garden, where we were delighted to find two Witch Hazel bushes in full bloom. The flowers on the two bushes were slightly different in colour, one being more orange and the other being more yellow. Both were beautiful and I was pleased to get some decent photos

 

It was also lovely to find these snowdrops growing in the Walled Garden

 We also enjoyed walking around the wider area of the hill

 

Polar Corona by Caroline Gill

 

Polar Corona by Caroline Gill, a winner of the Hedgehong Poetry Prize, is a crown (corona) of seven interlinked sonnets about Antarctic exploration and penguins. The last line of each sonnet becomes the first line of the next sonnet and the last line of the final sonnet is also the first line of the first sonnet, connecting the whole sequence together and underlining the interconnectedness of life at the Antarctic. 

The sonnets display not only well crafted rhthm and rhymes (often half-rhyme) but also occasional effective alliteration:

a wilderness of wind upon a chart,
a sea of storms to keep the watch alert,
a yard of graves to mark the men who died.  

from Crown.  

The sonnets about the penguins are particularly appealing. Often I can imagine them being spoken by David Attenborough over documentary footage: 

The youngsters need to eat to fill out fast;
they peck and jostle for each scrap of food.
Survival instincts may resemble greed,
but soon the time will come to quit the nest.  

from Birth 

The sonnets here were inspired by a poetry course / residency at the Scott Polar Research Institute and Polar Museum in Cambridge, England. The result is a beautifully produced book containing well crafted poetry that shines a light on the southern-most part of our world. 

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Polar Corona by Caroline Gill, published (2025) by Hedgehog Poetry Press  

 To order a signed or unsigned print copy please contact Caroline.

 Further details and purchase of eBook only: Hedgehog Press. 

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Meanwhile my latest post has just gone live on my Substack! You can read it here.  

 

First signs of Spring in Figgate Park

We had a lovely walk round Edinburgh's Figgate Park on Saturday. The weather was dreich - dull and damp - and not really ideal for photos! 

We were delighted to see catkins on the Hazel trees, these are the male catkins, the tiny red female flowers haven't emerged yet. I took several photos, but only the one below really worked out. 

I also enjoyed watching the patterns of the willow branches where they overhang the loch

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I'm delighted that one of my poems has been published by The Ekphrastic Review amongst the responses to the multi-media work 'We Are All Eve' by Monica Marks.  

What a Fish Knows by Jonathan Balcombe

 

This is a fascinating book for anyone interested in fish, whether you've kept them as pets, eaten them or wondered at them swimming in our waterways. It's full of interesting science, which is complemented by anecodotes, which, the author notes "carry little credibility with scientists, but ... provide insights into what animals may be capable of that science has yet to explore and they can inspire deeper reflection on the human-animal relationship". This mix of science of anecdote worked really well for me, and gave a more well-rounded overview than would have been possible relying purely on science, vital  though that is.

We're told about the evolution and ecology of fish, taken through how they perceive the world and given insights into their social lives from how they travel in groups to their parenting styles. I learned a lot about fish that I hadn't previously known, including how they can use the reflections on the water surface to see things out of their direct line of sight and that they can produce an 'alarm chemical' to alert other fish to danger, they can even use tools and engage in social play. 

My favourite part of the book was the in-depth exploration of the complex relationships between cleaner fish and their clients. Cleaner fish hang around reefs waiting for larger fish (and other animals) to come by and then pick off the mites and other parasites from the larger animals' bodies. 

The author takes a strong moral position on the value of fish as thinking, sentient beings, opposing industrial fishing operations and sport fishing alike. I was very impressed too by how he also outlines his ethical misgivings about some of the scientific experiments he cites to back up his arguments. 

This is an excellent, engrossing read. 

What a Fish Knows by Jonathan Balcombe, published (2016) by OneWorld Publications.  

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I posted a new piece on my Crafty Green Poet Substack today, you can read it here.