I’ve written a few books and it’s lovely to get feedback on them – especially positive feedback (but negative feedback sometimes makes me smile too!). Recently there has been a wave of positive feedback and offers of help. Emails, of various sorts have arrived to tell me how brilliantly well-written are my books (so true!),…
Author: Mark
Born Bristol, UK
Educated: Cleeve House School Bristol, Bristol Grammar School and Downing College Cambridge
Ph.D. University of Aberdeen, Winter activity of pipistrelle bats.
NERC post-doctoral Research Fellow, Edward Grey Institute, Oxford University
Former Conservation Director of the RSPB, 1989-2011
Sunday book review – This Beautiful Country by Edward Cutler
I’ve never been to Italy despite the food and the culture, and that is partly because I was rather of the mind that it wasn’t a great place for wildlife. I think that may have been based on an overly bird-centric view of wildlife as Spain, Greece and the former Yugoslavia exert stronger pulls for…
Sunday book review – Planning for Nature by Simon Marsh
The author worked in my directorate at the RSPB for many years and so I know him and I know he knows this subject well. I didn’t know that he could write as well as he does here, though. Simon admits to being a town planner in his first words in this book and he…
Sunday book review – The Butterfly Season by Lea Korsgaard
The author spends a spring and summer trying to see all the butterflies that occur in Denmark. She doesn’t seem to know quite why she wants to do this but she does. And she starts from a position of a great deal of ignorance about the 60+ species on her must-see list. The butterflies of…
The Nature of the C of E
Yesterday I posted a very short blog with links to the Guardian story about a decision on nature conservation made by the Church of England (CofE) and the two papers which formed the background to the decision. I’ll call the first paper the Proposal and the second paper the Response. The Guardian article But let’s…
Yesterday’s decision by the C of E on nature restoration – some reading
This was the Guardian’s report of yesterday’s decision which was leapt on by campaigners. Take a look at the paper that was put to the meeting: And take a look at the paper in response: I’ll come back to this later this week.
Henry Mayer-Gross
UPDATE – this post and its sharing on Bluesky @markavery worked! Thank you for sharing and responding. More news in due course if I am allowed. I’ve been contacted by the Looted Art Commission who are trying to track down Henry Mayer-Gross (an ornithologist who was appointed as the BTO’s first Nest Records Scheme…
The evolution of Chris Packham
I hardly ever watch Chris Packham on TV – he’s a friend and I just sit there slightly nervously hoping he isn’t going to say anything that gets him into trouble. But I’ll watch this 5-episode series on evolution because it’s a challenging subject to tackle and it is right up my street. Also, Chris’s…
Foxes eat gamebirds
I’m grateful to Dr Nathan Williams for sending me a link to this study he carried out as part of his doctoral research on the diets of Red Foxes in central southern England. Once I got past the phrase “Anthropogenic resource subsidies” which are non-natural sources of food made available deliberately or unintentionally by people…
RSPB – UK could be set to lose its first bird species due to climate change
UK could be set to lose its first bird species due to climate change The UK’s breeding Dotterel population has declined by 89% since 1988 The rate of decline has increased since the last national survey in 2011 Declines are similar inside and outside of Special Protection Areas, suggesting climate change could be one of the main causes Results from…