I was with great sadness that I read that Phil Gates’s country diary piece was to be his last (Country diary: A lesson from my final diary after nearly 40 years – keep looking closely, 19 September). It has become my habit to check the column as soon as I get my hands on the paper to see if it was a “Phil Gates diary day”, then to savour it.
This is partly, perhaps, because his diaries are from my own county, but mainly because I have never failed to learn something new and interesting about some overlooked or unspectacular species in the natural world, despite this being my subject.
