Three magazines arrived at home last week and I’ve enjoyed reading each of them – and each is packed with good wildlife information.
Birdwatch – for which I write a monthly column (the political birder) – is always excellent. I was talking to another Birdwatch contributor the other day and we agreed that we were glad to be featured within its pages. I do always read through my column before looking at anything else – that’s natural isn’t it – because I will have submitted the column up to a couple of months before (and another one since, and am thinking about the next one). But after that I start flicking through the pages, admiring the photographs of rare and common birds alike and learning all the time. It’s a good mixture each month. The January issue (Fieldfare on cover) contains many things including new columnist Lucy McRobert, routes to see 100 species in a day in January, Caspian Gull identification and wintering Blackcaps. My column suggests you write to your MP to ask the government what evidence exists to demonstrate that the annual release of 40+ million Pheasants is benign to our native fauna and flora. Just because we are rather accustomed to seeing Pheasants doesn’t mean that they don’t cause damage.
BBC Wildlife is glossy, full of amazing images and always interesting. I occasionally write for them and this issue has an article by me about the BTO/BWI/SOC Bird Atlas. All cuddly life is here: Koalas, Bill Oddie and Badgers. But also, BBC Wildlife features wildlife with teeth too: Bill Oddie (who says you can’t be cuddly and bite back?), Wolves, Richard Mabey and Brown Bears.
Wild Travel is an excellent magazine and my last monthly column for them (they are changing the magazine’s format) appears in this month’s issue. Here I write about climate change and give the Atlas a plug again. I’ll still be buying and reading this monthly magazine.
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We live near a pheasant shoot and get quite a few in the garden – they glean the seeds the birds drop. Apart from eating my bulbs etc – could you describe the damage they do please.
Anne – I don’t think it’s certain, and it is made up of lots of bits. All that food they eat that could be feeding farmland birds (voles etc), they boost fox, crow etc populations by being a winter food source, and we now know that they gobble up lots of reptiles and amphibians too. That’s for starters. Watch this space.
Thank you. Very interesting. Probably accounts for the fact we don’t see many frogs now. Guess they could take young grass snakes too. Will have to start discouraging them somehow.
British Wildlife too is an excellent magazine, not as ‘commercial’ perhaps as the three you mention. But some good meaty articles over the years as well as the recent newcomer “Naturally Opinionated” pieces and then there’s “Twitcher in the swamp” as well. I think they deserve to be congratulated on their 25 year innings.
Yes, always a pleasure when BW drops onto the doormat along with the bills and the junk mail!
I understand that editor and founder, Andrew Branson is retiring and handing on the reins to someone else. Whoever it is I wish him or her well and hope that she or he can maintain the standard that Andrew has set.
Re British Wildlife – I agree, it is an excellent publication and at £21/year it offers good value for money. Long may it continue.
Mark – I found Decembers ‘Naturally Opinionated’ article very interesting. I hope that this is a subject that you intend to return to sometime soon in this blog.
Ernest – I do!
Ernest – I do!
The new RSPB Not Birds magazine arrived last week, I flicked through it and chucked it in the recycling bin.