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
Can you help?
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Here’s a big pile of boxes; What is in the boxes? Photographic plates – lots of them. Photographs of what, you might ask? Photographs of birds, by John T Fisher. These glass plates, about 200 of them, are looking for a home, a good home. I’m merely an intermediary here. The slides were given to…
Lockdown Nature-Writing challenge entries
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I’ve started being a 9-5 person. I’m now often heading to bed at 9pm and waking at around 5am. This morning, after standing outside for a few minutes, to listen to the end of the dawn chorus, I turned on my computer to see that, as I expected, there was a flood of entries for…
What people are reading…
I’ve been asked by a few people about a good bird book – lockdown is making people look at what’s around them, and in many ways, the most obvious, alluring and beautiful things to watch are birds. And that’s why they are buying these titles on Amazon… The RSPB Pocket Guide is the 138th best-selling…
Guest blog – Peregrines and licences by Bob Elliot
Bob was the head of the investigations and species protection team for the RSPB for 14 years, fighting wildlife crime both in the UK and internationally. He is now the Director for OneKind, an animal welfare charity based in Edinburgh, that exposes cruelty and persecution to Scotland’s animals via investigations, research and campaigning. @onekindtweet OneKind…
Midnight deadline for entries to the Lockdown Nature-writing challenge
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Entries continue to come in for this – I have only read two of them so far! I am expecting quite a lot of entries this afternoon because most people leave things to the last minute or so. You have until midnight and all entries are very welcome. For details see below. Across the world,…
Bird song (42) – Bittern
The booming song of the Bittern is not going to be heard in every garden in the land but probably this year in more than for a long time. The combination of less noise from road and air vehicles with a booming population (that’s a pun that few can resist) means that the extraordinary song…
BASC writes to George Eustice
BASC is asking DEFRA to take notice of them – that’s usually what BASC press releases are about. This one has an inherent flaw in it though, although I expect that they will get away with it. What is that flaw? BASC asks DEFRA to take account of shooting’s conservation benefits when considering what to…
Alok Sharma MP on COP26
Press release from UK Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Department and Rt Hon Alok Sharma MP, President of COP26. COP26 President Alok Sharma gave his closing remarks to the Petersberg Climate Dialogue by video on Tuesday 28 April 2020. The UK, as incoming Presidency for the UN Climate Change Conference (COP26), co-hosted the two day…
Midnight tomorrow – entries for this blog’s Nature-writing Challenge
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There are more than 20 entries already in for this blog’s Nature-writing Challenge. There’s plenty of time for you to compose your entry today, and come back to it tomorrow to polish it and send it in. Across the world, people are experiencing a shared concern for themselves and their loved ones and many are…