Give me one moment in time

Award-winning wildlife photographer Stephen Dalton explains his lifelong love of Nature and why, when it comes to capturing creatures on film, persistence and experimentation pay off

- Stephen Dalton

I WAS very lucky during my childhood as, for nearly 20 years, I lived in an old mill house surrounded by ravishing Surrey countryside riven with ponds, streams and woodland. In those golden days, wildlife was rich—grey wagtails and kingfishers were taken for granted and even water shrews and otters occasionally made an appearance. Insects were especially abundant, because, as we all know, water is a powerful magnet for them. The mill and the water around it were renowned for hosting numerous kingfishers and hardly a day passed without hearing their shrill cries. From our windows overlooking the mill stream, we saw them fishing from the low alders around the pond and glimpsed them streaking down like glittering blue low-flying missiles. We may not have had central heating or iPhones, but the wildlife on our doorstep was compensation beyond measure.

For those who remember the wealth of flora and fauna in the 1950s and 1960s, its catastrophic decline is hard to accept. Insects, my particular interest, seem to have come off especially badly. Many of us today have no concept of what we have lost over the past 60 years, just as my own generation, in turn, cannot imagine the abundance of wildlife even earlier in the 20th century—an insidious phenomenon known as ‘shifting baselines’. That is why we need to treasure what we have left.