‘Rude magnificence’ restored: following in the footsteps of pioneering naturalist Gilbert White

More than 230 years ago, the country parson celebrated the small but vital elements that gave the English landscape its wild majesty'. Today, Hampshire's farmers and volunteers are honouring his legacy

• Photographs by Jill Mead

It was more than 230 years ago that the Rev Gilbert White became the first person to identify the chiffchaff, willow warbler and wood warbler as three distinct species. The Hampshire county parson was also the first to describe the harvest mouse and the noctule bat, and to tell of swifts mating in flight, something not recorded again until the 1930s. He was fascinated by his pet tortoise, Timothy, and why he needed so much sleep.

White's careful, vivid and seemingly trivial descriptions of the wildlife he encountered around the village of Selborne as he walked between parishes made him a pioneering naturalist. His Natural History and Antiquities of Selborne, first published in 1789, has never been out of print.

A statue of White, created by sculptor Peter Lyell Robinson, has the naturalist sitting on a bench, notebook in one hand, a swallow being released from the other