Mark Cocker files 1,000th Guardian country diary after 39 years
Mark Cocker is completing his 1,000th article for the Guardian country diary, 39 years after his first column described a jay burying acorns near Norwich in autumn 1987. His next dispatch will turn to changing birdlife at Flint Clough in the Peak District.
Mark Cocker files 1,000th Guardian country diary after 39 years
A column since 1904
The Guardian country diary began in 1904 with the nature-loving dispatches of Thomas Coward, a retired textile bleacher from Cheshire. More than a century later, about 30 diarists write it, spread from Cornwall to the Cairngorms, among them farmers, scientists, conservationists, a vicar, a thatcher and a forager.
Cocker pens a fortnightly dispatch, usually from his local patch in Derbyshire. After Phil Gates retired recently following nearly 40 years on the diary, Cocker is now the longest-serving diarist. Between him and the legendary Lakeland diarist Enid Wilson, whose place he took when she fell ill, the pair have covered a span of 76 years of the column.
From acorns to 360 words
His first diary, in autumn 1987, sat in a field near Norwich watching a jay burying acorns for the winter ahead. The break came after a conservationist friend complained to the Guardian about a surfeit of inconsequential diaries about cricket matches. She told him: "The Guardian needs to get its boots and hat and coat on, and get out into the wild".
Early columns covered chiffchaffs, silver-studded blue butterflies and sparrowhawks. Cocker says it took him 10 years to master the deceptively difficult craft of a compelling rural story in just 360 words.
"It's like a haiku. You've got to awaken the subject from its dormancy and get straight into the theme."
He calls the trick of the diary the connection between the moment and the universal. He never writes from a preordained list, seeking instead powerful encounters that move him personally: "I have to feel the article viscerally. I have to feel that it moved me".
Birdlife changing in Derbyshire
His next column will reflect on the changing birdlife around Flint Clough, in the Peak District. Cocker first marvelled at rare birds aged 12, devouring bird books in his bedroom. As a boy he would find cuckoo, golden plover, ring ouzel and twite, a once-common bird now virtually extinct in England.
On a recent visit to his patch he counted a different picture:
- a whole slew of buzzards
- two peregrines
- two marsh harriers, the first he has ever seen in Derbyshire
- several red kites
The bigger picture
Earlier this month Cocker published The Nature of Seeing, a collection of recent diaries alongside new essays. The book points to the surprising number of literary greats who have also kindled a passion for wildlife, from Margaret Atwood to Vladimir Nabokov. One passage describes Inuit fishers navigating home through fog by recognising the subtly different patterns of snow bunting songs. "That is the level of attention to the living world which we've lost and need to recapture," he says.
For all the diary's modesty, Cocker believes its time has come amid the climate and biodiversity crises. "it is a repository now for a sense of the impending crisis which assails all life," he said, adding that the diary has become a valuable philosophical place for big ideas to be shared.
Country diary editor Paul Fleckney paid tribute: "Mark is a gift to the diary. What you get from him is hyper-detailed knowledge with one eye on the bigger picture".
