I started the year with a wildlife checklist for the first six months of the year and I can report alternating success. I failed to see Mandarin ducks in January, a bunch of migrants in March or Duke of Burgundy butterflies in May, but I succeeded with drake smew in February, nightingales in April and…
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
Should we be grateful?
Sometimes governments say they are going to do 20 daft things (they never put it quite like that) and then only do 10 daft things and they expect us all to be grateful. There ought to be a word for it – a Greek word – maybe there is – for a victory which you…
Wuthering Moors 31
Blogs entitled ‘Wuthering Moors’ form a series of articles about the Walshaw Moor Estate and its relationship with Natural England and Defra. Regular readers of this blog may remember that I submitted a request for information to Defra about their response to the RSPB complaint to Europe over the Walshaw Moor affair. I received no…
The amazing needless tale of a swift
You couldn’t make it up. A rare bird, not seen in the UK for 22 years is spotted by a string of experienced birders in the north of Scotland and the twitching community get on the move. And then the bird, a member of a group that one would put near the top of one’s…
State of Nature report
I’m sorry I missed the launch of the State of Nature report by a large group of NGOs as I think it would have been a very enjoyable event. A bit like a gathering of old friends at the deathbed of UK wildlife – determined to have a good time, mention what a great person…