Here is a press release from the Woodland Trust: In November, the Woodland Trust and a group of independent ecologists raised concerns about the potential for unlawful felling of ancient woodlands by HS2 Ltd. This was because there are a number of ancient woodlands on the Phase Route 1 of HS2 (between London and Birmingham)…
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
Half-price Christmas tree
Last year, we bought a live Christmas tree in a pot and it has lived in our garden for the last 50 weeks or so and now it is in our conservatory ready for some lights to be draped over it. This is the first year for over 30 years when we haven’t had ‘kids’…
BPOTY 2021 is open for entries
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Boundaries
I’m in Tier 2 – how about you? The small rural town where I live, Raunds, is actually, I’m told, named because it is close to the boundaries of Northants, Cambs and Beds. It was first recorded as Randan in an Anglo-Saxon chronicle in the late 900s AD. Randan is the plural of the Old…
Bird/poultry flu update
Records of avian/poultry flu in new counties: Bedfordshire, Tyne and Wear, Highland, Greater Manchester and County Durham. All of the cases are in waterfowl, and in fact in swans (Mute, Whooper, unspecified and unsecified) and Canada and Greylag Geese. This must indicate the ease with which dead swans and geeese can be noticed rather than…
THE UNDEAD (Siberia, 2020) by Peter Howard
THE UNDEAD (Siberia, 2020) Pete Howard has worked in Nature Conservation for the past 20 years, mainly in species monitoring and protection for the RSPB. He lives in north Cumbria, where he is regional Bird Recorder and Vice Chair of the Cumbria Bird Club. He is also an irredeemable butterfly fanatic. Pete is a published…
From the Unusual Christmas Gifts Company
Dear Sir Thank you for your enquiry regarding potential gift orders this Christmas. Your true love is certainly going to have a festive season to remember! Here at the Unusual Christmas Gifts Company we like to believe that we live up to our name and we go to enormous lengths to source special and dramatic…
In court, virtually
Friday found me watching a computer screen from 10:30am to 4:30pm to watch the Wild Justice challenge to the lawfulness of Natural Resources Wales’s general licences. In theory this was in court in Cardiff but I am not sure that anyone was in Cardiff. There were many attendees from ourselves (the Claimant), NRW (the Defendant)…
Bird/poultry flu update
A lot more cases in wild birds – mostly Mute Swans; … and one more in poultry – a backyard flock; …and a case in the far north of Scotland, in fact in Orkney; So now, it seems to me, that the counties with positive records for wild birds (shaded pink) and the locations of…
Tim Melling – Greenshank
Tim writes: Greenshank is a scarce breeding bird of northern Scotland, with about 1100 pairs breeding particularly in the wet, peaty bogs of the Flow Country in the far north. But the Scottish population is a tiny fraction of the European population that breeds in the taiga zone across Scandinavia and NW Russia which is…