Phil Gates

2 weeks ago | theguardian.com | Phil Gates

On Sunniside hill a lively breeze twirls wind turbine blades that dwarf terraced houses, once homes to miners’ families. Down in this sheltered valley, along the lane known locally as the Mile Lonnen, the still air is heavy with the fragrance of lilac, a hedgerow survivor from a long-lost garden. A century ago, downwind of what was then Emma pit at Pease’s West colliery, the prevailing odour here would have been a sulphurous whiff of coal and coke.

1 month ago | ca.news.yahoo.com | Phil Gates

Sunbeams flicker through the translucent young foliage of the sycamore canopy overhead. A shadow darts among them: a blackcap, pecking aphids from the underside of the leaves. The insects hatched from overwintering eggs in early April, congregating on loosening bud scales, waiting for tender new leaves to unfurl. Now there are legions of them, aligned along leaf veins, hypodermic stylets plugged in, siphoning sweet sap while simultaneously giving birth to more.

1 month ago | theguardian.com | Phil Gates

Sunbeams flicker through the translucent young foliage of the sycamore canopy overhead. A shadow darts among them: a blackcap, pecking aphids from the underside of the leaves. The insects hatched from overwintering eggs in early April, congregating on loosening bud scales, waiting for tender new leaves to unfurl. Now there are legions of them, aligned along leaf veins, hypodermic stylets plugged in, siphoning sweet sap while simultaneously giving birth to more.

2 months ago | theguardian.com | Phil Gates

Through a kissing gate, into an old meadow of gently undulating humps and hollows, like the long swell on a calm green ocean. A hare, startled by the clang of the gate, lollops away into the hedge. In the far corner, abandoned among nettles on a rabbit warren, there’s an old rusting hay tedder. Its wiry whirligig wheels, spinning behind a tractor, finally came to rest here one summer day after turning its last windrow, the air heavy with the coumarin scent of sun-dried, new-mown hay.

2 months ago | msn.com | Phil Gates

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