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Welcome my website.

Here you can find out a little more about my past, what I'm working on at the moment and what my plans are for the future.

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You can contact me on any natural history subject, request a Walk & Talk or slide show presentation.

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Fifty years nature watching

with a camera.

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"This extraordinary fellow's journey through Britain, and indeed life, is an inspiration.

From press, radio and television to

photo exhibitions to guided walks & talks.

If you want to know Steve, take a moment to

read a few paragraphs here and in his

natural history CV below"

Michael J. Loates Artist/Illustrator

I was born in Brighton, southern England, but as an adult in 1987 I moved north to the

Cumbrian Lake District after reading a book called 'Nature Detective' - by Hugh Fulkus.

The legendary fellow and I met shortly after my arrival by complete accident, we were both in Cockermouth post office at the same time buying a Fishing Licence.

Occasionally I still take a fish for supper, such as the invasive Rainbow trout in this page background, that decimate the native Brown trout population,

but I now prefer to use my camera to 'catch' fish!

I subsequently spent twelve years exploring a totally different world to the one I grew up in,

but but returned to Sussex when my beloved South Downs become a National Park.

In particular as I feared that some of the mistakes, as far as nature is concerned, that were made in the Lake District might be made on the Downs and hoped that I might, albeit in an amateur capacity, be able to advise younger folk trying their best but not having the years of knowledge that I had accumulated, and that I might find time to follow up, with their help, to uncover and describe natural history events that fascinated me but had, so far, been overlooked.

( i.e. The symbiotic relationship between, red mites, Marbled whites and Jackdaws.)

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I hope you might like what I have written and what I aim to do here with this website.

I very much look forward to meeting new friends, naturalists and like minded people. SJH

This is my Grandfather on my mother's side, Harold Victor Mason

with a very large flatfish he caught in Newhaven Harbour c1950

He was known to most as 'Billie' a name given to him by his friend Rudyard Kipling who thought him, his diminutive size and his

story of being lost in a far away land, was like that of the character Billie Fish in Kipling's tale ' The man who would be King.'

During WWII he was stationed in Africa and spent 2 years with an

indigenous group of nomadic Pigmies who taught him to hunt, forage and be part of nature responsibly and sustainably.

Thereafter he always wore a suit and tie when fishing to remind himself to be as respectful as possible when taking the life of

another creature in order to feed himself and his family.

When I was just 10 yrs old Grandad woke me very early one morning to go look for a legendary Pike with sharp pointy teeth that lived in the stream beyond the woods, across the sugar beet field, at the back of his house in Bognor Regis.

What I was about to experience was completely new to me, another world that I had no idea existed, it changed my life and made me who I am today.

I dressed as fast as I could and we passed through the back door and into the 4am darkness of a summer's dawn. The air was heavy with scents of damp earth, wet grass and honeysuckle blossom; and all enveloped by a cathedral of bird song.

"Talk if you must" he said. "but in a whisper or you'll l break the spell that is the magic hour."

I stood speechless for a moment.

"Don't just listen to things, 'hear' them and don't just look at things, 'see' them" he said.

Those words were etched into my mind.

We crossed the field towards the trees under a dark royal blue star studded sky.

The woodland floor was almost the same! A carpet of Bluebells studded with white wood anemones. "Roll your feet gently as you walk so as not to make a sound" he said;

"Slowly slowly, catch ye monkey"

The sky had lightened a little and my eyes adjusted as we reached the far side of the wood.

Out in the water meadow yet another fantastic scene. A sea of ground mist, purply pink from the coming sunrise. Cows, seemingly with no legs, 'floating' on the mist. The moment is still hard to describe but at the time I said it all by just facial expression to Grandad, those same facial expressions he later taught me to use if I wanted to stop a Fox in it's tracks for a while.

He paused, then nodded for me to look to my left, a fence post not ten feet away, it had eyes!

A fabulous barn owl sat there, almost a part of the sun bleached wood, it's eyes staring straight into my brain. It turned, leaned forward and dropped, with wings open, into the pink 'sea' and outward, the tips of its wings flicking up little spirals of the mist. My life was changed forever.

We never did see the giant Pike but I think that might just have been a trick

to lure that little boy me, out of my bed.

It was in the late 80's that I went on an adventure to The Lake District, I stayed for 12 years and still have so much unfinished exploring that I need another life,

and perhaps an assistant!

Fairy Glen, Stonethwaite beck, Cumbria.

"It's in that first valley on the left of the background photo".

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I risked my life for this photo of a wild Atlantic Salmon, plunging fully clothed into the ice cold water in December,

I just had to get that picture!

Not a typical day by anyone's standards but this is how I spend most of my time, sometimes just a short distance from other folk but seeing things that might as well be a thousand miles away from them.

I now live back in Sussex where I was born, and have settled in Lewes next to

the Railway Land Nature reserve by the River Ouse.

Half way between Lewes and the sea at Newhaven, is an old swing bridge

at Southease in the Southdowns National Park. I spend a lot of time here with my camera.

Here's a little winter movie from there.

Below is my Natural History CV which I hope will prompt you to continue exploring my site but first let me tell you how

I came to take out folk on guided Walks.

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While chatting to a young boy recently

about the things I know, he asked;

"Who taught you all that stuff mister?"

Referring to my Grandad, I replied;