Wild food (19) – Hedgehog Fungus by Ian Carter

The feature that gives this fungus its name is both a godsend and a pain in the neck. The mass of spines on the underside, instead of the more usual gills or pores, make this otherwise rather nondescript species virtually impossible to confuse with anything else. So, if you are relatively new to foraging and…

Climate change and birds revisited

Last week I was thinking a bit about climate change and birds and thought I’d had a good idea. And I had had a good idea – it’s just that others had had it too and published a paper on it two years ago! The good idea was to look at the ‘envisaged potential’ bird…

Kittiwakes

Blue Planet blues? Think of the Kittiwake. This really is a ‘sea’ gull – the most marine of all our gulls.  It’s a classy looking bird with its black legs and ‘dipped in ink’ wing tips, smooth elegant grey plumage and friendly, intelligent and coquettish look. A strong contender for the Audrey Hepburn of the…

18,847 ahead

Yesterday was the last day of the grouse shooting season for 2017 – Gavin Gamble’s e-petition seeks to make that cessation a permanent one and following yesterday’s thunderclap his e-petition is approaching 19,000 signatures and the list of ’50-signature’ constituencies has reached 64 constituencies (last week – 51).  Each of these constituencies has more signatures…

Bye bye Blue Planet

Yesterday evening was the last of the seven episodes of Blue Planet 2 – I’ll miss it next week. This closing episode addressed sideways on, if not completely head on, the fact that we are screwing the planet.  It was a brave attempt which was partly successful.  ‘There is hope’ appeared to be the message…