Chris Millward was born in Birmingham, grew up watching wildlife in South Staffordshire and, after reading the 2013 State of Nature report, founded Team4Nature which does exactly what it says on the tin! I was five years old and playing in my back garden. I must have had my fill of playing with “Humpty Dumpty”…
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 – Birds of the UK Overseas Territories edited by Roger Riddington
Comments Off on Sunday book review – Birds of the UK Overseas Territories edited by Roger Riddington
The UK Overseas Territories (UKOTs) are 14 remnants of the British Empire which have the British monarch as their Head of State, depend on the UK for their defence and which all have coastlines. All are closer, geographically, to other sovereign nations than they are to the UK but all have strong cultural ties to…
Sunday book review – A Vulture Landscape by Ian Parsons
Ian Parsons has written more than 20 guest blogs here and so is a fairly familiar name to this blog’s readers. But when not writing for this blog he is a nature tour leader in Extremadura and this blog is about that land, west of Madrid and stretching to the Portuguese border, its wildlife and…
Tim Melling – Swift
Tim writes: there does not seem to be a collective noun for Swifts other than the prosaic “flock”, and the implausible “scream”. It seems surprising that so many birds have special collective nouns yet the highly gregarious Swift has none. That’s probably because such terms were used by hunters (or collectors) and nobody in their…
Saturday cartoon by Ralph Underhill
New General Licences coming soon?
Last year DEFRA carried out a consultation on general licences in England – this was forced by the successful Wild Justice legal challenge of the Natural England general licences. Over 4,000 responses were received , which is quite a lot, but not so many as to justify such a long wait for any decisions from…
DEFRA begins to reply
In response to the e-action organised by Wild Justice, Hen Harrier Action and the RSPB, voters in England are beginning to receive, via their MPs, responses from DEFRA. Having given DEFRA the opportunity to impress us all with their grasp of the subject and their fast pace of policy action these responses are very similar…
A walk in Nidderdale
It’s difficult to imagine why this land in Nidderdale might be closed on these days during the grouse shooting season – but the closure does not affect the rights of way. A land owner can restrict public access for 28 days/year without having to give any reason – this seems perfectly fair to me. There…
Birdwatch magazine’s 2020 Birders’ Choice awards
Comments Off on Birdwatch magazine’s 2020 Birders’ Choice awards
It’s that time of year when Birdwatch magazine invites its readers and the world (almost the same, surely?) to vote for their Conservation Hero of the Year, Guano Award for Environmental Harm, Book of the Year and a host of other awards. I’ve had a quick look, and some categories I find easy and others…