John Tyler

Hallmark. Report by Mike Piercy

Though we live in the middle of an AONB, we are often not mindful of our surroundings and fail to notice the glories of nature all around us. Not so for John Tyler. John would be quite happy to spend an entire morning sitting in a wayside field watching an unusual spider weave its web.

John was born and brought up in Lacey Green before moving away to study Zoology and Conservation at university. After graduation he was lucky enough to get one of the few available jobs in ecology, developing wildlife areas in rundown parts of east London.

However, he felt that he was not the “city type” at heart, so after a few years he moved out to the Sevenoaks area where he got a job as warden of a nature reserve. He had a small cottage on the reserve and once the day-visitors had gone home, he lived in glorious seclusion with only an occasional passing angler (or poacher!).

For 22 years he surveyed, planned, planted and tended the reserve exactly as he pleased. However, a few years ago the reserve was taken over by a large organisation who brought a more centralised, corporate culture that John did not enjoy.

Nowadays he has come full circle and has returned to Lacey Green where he lives with his mum Bette Tyler. He is a regular visitor to our local nature sites at Naphill Common, Bradenham Woods, Monkton Wood and the BBOUT nature reserve at Radnage.

John is well known to naturalists in the area through his various guided walks and slide show talks. He puts these on for a variety of interested local organisations such as The Chiltern Society, WI-U3A and ramblers groups. He describes his walks as “walk and talk” but it often includes more stopping than walking if there are interesting insects or fungi to be investigated. John’s walks cover nature reserves and ancient woodland across Buckinghamshire and Oxfordshire.

John is a firm believer in the old fashioned, but high quality, 35mm slide for his public talks. Though he is an enthusiastic user of digital photography as well, he believes that a 35mm projector gives much more vibrant colours than computer driven projectors. Sometimes the audiences are as fascinated in the old projectors and carousels as well as the subject matter of the slides! John has developed over 25 different nature talks over the years, some general and some quite specialised. You can view the selection on his web site www.johntyler.co.uk and book John to deliver one for a small fee.

John’s specialist subject is glow-worms where he is a renowned expert. In the summer he leads specialist evening walks to Brush Hill to study them as they briefly glow and mate. You can buy John’s book about glow worms through his web site or you can browse his thousands of photos of glow worms and other insects.

One of John’s hobbies (when he is not writing Hallmark Nature Notes), is wood carving. He delights in finding interesting pieces of wood and carving them into pieces of furniture or tableware. Some of you may remember seeing his wassailing cup on display at a Windmill Artists’ Exhibition at the Village Hall.

John has a special project for 2017, to make a wildlife survey of the full length of the River Thame. As there are few riverside paths, he is doing the survey from a boat - well actually it’s an ancient coracle that he built himself. He told me that wild animals have little fear of a man paddling a coracle, and foxes on the riverbank will stop and stare at him!

If you would like John to arrange a guided walk or slide show for your organisation then the contact details can all be found on his web site.