Plants

At the weekend I became a volunteer for Plantlife and took part in their Wildflowers Count survey I had to walk across an allocated 1km square and record which plants out of a list of 200 I saw.  Luckily, the list has such challenging species as Holly, Hawthorn, Common Nettle, Ivy and Daisy so I…

Hen Harrier Day

I was a bit nervous parking my car with its rear tyres overlapping the double yellow lines.  Most of the car was OK but those rear tyres were on the double yellows. And I was parking outside the police station. I went into the cop shop, I won’t say which one (it’s good to keep…

Upland balance

Last week I spent two enjoyable days at Newton Rigg at a conference on the future of the uplands. The two days were quite enjoyable and very interesting. I may write a blog or two about the conference because it was so interesting. Hen Harriers were mentioned a few times even before my talk, the…

Oscar Dewhurst – Mistle Thrush

Oscar writes: At the beginning of 2013 I spend a couple of days photographing an ear-full of Waxwings (yes that’s actually the collective noun for them!). One bird that wasn’t pleased to see them was this Mistle Thrush, which tried its best to shoo them away. It was to no avail though, as within four…

Crex! Crex! Crex! Crex!

The Corncrake was easy, the chips were difficult. I didn’t ‘need’ a bag of chips but I did want a bag of chips.  Yesterday was a lovely sunny day and I’d spent quite a lot of it out in the sun enjoying nature. I was listening, unsuccessfully, for Turtle Doves at a local farm before…