NATURE: The politics of nature, the nature of politics

November, at least for now, has become my favourite time of year. I met with James for the first time in months. He agrees that November is indeed a fine time to be alive.
This late autumn brings dramatic colours, bold skies, fragments of late summer dissolving in a haze of frozen mist, tatters of blue in an afternoon rag of storm, and black skies at night, these lit by far-off stars and an occasional meteor streak. We have lapwing where before there were none; we have winter thrushes falling like leaves upon bushes filled with berries, and the angry heron stalking through the shallows.
The whole world seems on then move. Badgers change bedding under cover of dark. The fox now strays from his home where he scoured the moor for beetles and worms. Finding the night too cold for even these, he steps boldly into the farm amid the rich scent of fattening fowl. Our owl shrieks over the fen, hawks hunt through an early dusk and night pales silent into dawn, devoid of birdsong, though but for a while.
Occasional warmer days blow up from the south, bringing queen wasps and hoverflies to feed on ivy, which is in full flower. I watch for late butterflies, thinking of painted ladies with continental wind at their skirts, of brimstones brought out from winter sleep in that same ivy, or tortoiseshells bounding from one late-flowered bramble to another. Patience. Patience is required.
Walking lakeside, we found where the fallow buck cleaned his antlers and scored the bark of willow in the process. Nearby was his soiling pit, into which he peed and paddled, then rolled to anoint himself, thinking his stench somehow attractive.
“There’s lessons in nature,” James ventured. “Look at this lad, now. He has the loudest voice of all the herd, or the biggest pair of horns, and, no doubt, a well-padded paunch to match. The others daren’t draw near, for fear this lad would gouge them out. So the fields ’round here are his to hold, for as long as his bluster might last.”
I wanted to tell him about the island buck, whose grunting, piglike calls had resonated through the dark of last month, and of the young that skipped and played, as yet unaware of the connivance of man. I have learned to say little, for those who join the present war on deer are many, and their collective voice more loud than a rutting herd.
I had no chance to speak, for James was in full flow, regaling the world with a stream of metaphor.
“That’s the way of it all,” he went on. “Those with the biggest horns hold sway, and the cock that crows loud has his pick of the hens. Rather than looking for strength and building on that, a beast finds weakness in another, shouts him down and drives that one away. That buck has no thought for others any more than a feather-pecking chicken does, only for himself and his place.”
We paused to look into the lake, where a tightly packed shoal of perch whorled as a many-striped, amorphous mass. They looked ill at ease, and a few moments later the reason became apparent, for shadowing them was a pike near three feet in length.
This larger fish held himself at an oblique angle to the circular shoal, using minimal effort to glide just out of striking distance. The perch knew what was afoot, for I dare say that pike had fed from their midst since they came into that bay.
“It’s hard to know the worst of evil.” James was getting to the point. “There’s those who bully their way to the top and others using guile and a sidelong glance. It’s sharp horns or sharper teeth. If people worked together there’s nothing they might not achieve. But there’s only one seat at the top of the table and they all want it, every last one.”
He looked at me then. “Who are you going to vote for?”
“You know me,” I told him (we’d had this conversation before). “You know how people fought for the right to vote at all…”
James finished my usual refrain: “…and that there’s places in the world where they make you do the same, where some still fight for the right to abstain.”
“We have peace out here,” I smiled, “and room to think for ourselves. This breeze will still blow when we’ve blown ourselves out.”
“Isn’t it grand,” said James, “to just be alive.”

Michael Kingdon, a naturalist and keen fisherman, lives on the shores of Mayo’s Lough Carra, the best example of a shallow marl lake in western Europe and an SAC of enormous ecological and conservation importance