Daniel Bardsley meets Alec Bull, a living legend of Norfolk nature, now in his 91st year.
The contents of Alec Bull's front room leave no doubt that his interest in natural history is over and above that of the casual enthusiast.
His bookshelves contain dozens upon dozens of books on the subject, everything from 'The Liverwort Flora of the British Isles' to 'British Pyralid Moths', 'Grasses of the British Isles and volumes one to six of 'Fungi of Switzerland'. In a similar vein, his walls feature beautiful paintings and drawings of butterflies, bees, birds, flowers and trees, while on one chair there is a cushion covered with a photo of a bearded tit.
This impressive collection attests to a fascination with — and detailed knowledge of — the natural world that has made Mr Bull one of East Anglia's foremost naturalists.
He can recognise countless hundreds of animal and plant species and has made an important contribution to recording in detail what is out there, especially when it comes to plant life. As well as writing several books on related subjects, he has played a key role in the local work of national natural history organisations.
Recently Mr Bull celebrated his 90th birthday, and his active interest in natural history is as strong as ever. In 2017 alone the great-grandfather has found 275 species of moth in the two-acre garden of his home near East Tuddenham.
Luring the creatures in with a small strip light, Mr Bull is able to identify most of them himself, although with some of the more difficult types he sends off a photograph to an expert for a definitive identification.
Picking up a small pile of photos, he shows off a recent picture of a beautiful grey dagger moth, pointing out the striking dagger markings after which the creature is named. Another of his pictures shows an attractive yellow-orange ghost moth, Mr Bull noting that the colour of this female contrasts with the white male.
Brambles are another of Mr Bull's areas of interest. Indeed, he has written an identification guide to them and has about 220 types in his herbarium.
'There's another 100 or so I haven't seen because I've not been to the right places,' he said.
'Not many people take up brambles. Brambles are too difficult. You've got to have the right eye.'
Although one of the foremost experts on the flora and fauna of Norfolk — his best-known book is probably the 320-page 'A Flora of Norfolk', which he co-wrote with Gillian Beckett — Mr Bull actually hails from Suffolk, having been brought up on a farm at the village of Hitcham. He left school aged 14, during the Second World War, to help with the farmwork. An attractive painting of the area by his mother sits on his living room wall.
'It was mostly arable but during the war we had a small dairy herd, which I had to look after because dad didn't like cows,' he said.
His interest in the natural world can be traced back to the mid-1940s when, in his later teens, he heard on the radio about an ornithology club for young people. It piqued his interest and he decided to join. He went on to sign up with another organisation, this time a local one.
'There was a piece in the East Anglian Daily Times by Claude Morley, who was the founder of The Suffolk Naturalists' Society, asking for information on a certain subject. I sent some notes,' said Mr Bull.
'He wrote back and asked if I would like to be elected to the society. I did and I've been a member ever since. That was 1944.'
His initial interest was in birds, but that same year it expanded to plants when there was 'a tremendous show of dog roses', the attractive flowers that indicate that summer is arriving.
'I then took up botany. There were a lot of overgrown places and so on at that time,' he said.
Armed with the Observer's Book of Flowers, cigarette cards and Typhoo Tea cards to aid identification, he went on over the years to develop a great expertise in the local natural world.
All this time, Mr Bull continued to work in farming, mostly as a cowman, taking employment in a number of farms in Norfolk and Suffolk at a time when 'everybody had a herd of cows'.
'I've gained a continuous interest in [natural history] because there's always something happening,' said Mr Bull, who lives with his wife, Rita.
'Even if you're milking the cows, you might go outside and there might be a tawny owl sitting in a tree.'
Mr Bull remembers, among other places, his time in Cranworth in central Norfolk.
'Cranworth was a wonderful place for naturalists. Red squirrels used to run across the churchyard wall. You won't see that now,' he said.
He began a long-running census of the birdlife on 246 acres of the farm at Cranworth, and carried on with this even after moving away.
His census work for the British Trust for Ornithology lasted for a total of 29 years, and during about half of this time Mr Bull was a regional representative for the organisation.
In the 1980s he began surveying local flora and he continued with this after retiring from farming in 1992.
'I had to occupy myself. I started doing south Norfolk on my own,' he said, explaining that the surveys were done as a series of 'tetrads', each of which consisted of four squares of one kilometre by one kilometre.
'As the years rolled by, quite a number of other people came on the scene and helped round Norwich and further north. I kept on with it until the flora was published [in 1999].'
Such surveying is important for conservation efforts and, over his lifetime, Mr Bull has seen an enormous amount of upheaval in the countryside.
As he puts it, 'times have changed immeasurably'. There was the move away from using horses to relying on machinery and, in later decades, efforts to further intensify farming by enlarging fields.
'I suppose it really started around 1970 when there was wholesale hedgerow destruction. In some ways it still goes on,' he said.
The release of 'A Flora of Norfolk' by no means marked the end of Mr Bull's work. He continued surveying and writing, and six years ago, in his mid 80s, published a flora of the Stanford Training Area or Stanta, the area north of Thetford taken over by the military authorities during the Second World War.
It has remained in their hands ever since and, even though residents were moved out of the area 75 years ago, leaving behind ghost villages, Mr Bull has on his surveys of the area in recent years found garden plants such as autumn crocuses.
As well as providing wider society with a marvellous body of natural history literature, Mr Bull has also given his family a great love of nature, with his children and grandchildren mostly having inherited his keen interest in the natural world, while his son-in-law David is the county grasshopper recorder.
'I think it's something that's bred in them,' said Mr Bull.
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