Standing up for Nature
Continued from yesterday… The decision to move down to the south-west offered the prospect of living in a less heavily-developed part of the country with a more varied countryside – a prospect enhanced by the free time I would have following redundancy. We rented Blagrove Farm, a house on a dairy farm in sparsely-populated mid-Devon,…
This Pheasant-meat meal was on sale with an inaccurate health warning in my local Waitrose on Christmas Eve – I went and did most of the little necessary pre-Christmas shopping in Lidl and noticed how much cheaper it was for some of the brands I wanted… I’m not sure why it takes a large retailer…
Chris Packham outside the BBC standing under George Orwell’s very apt quote. Photo credit: somebody who was walking past at the time. Chris Packham has been awarded a CBE in the New Year’s Honours List. Congratulations Chris! It is highly significant that this award is for services to nature conservation, not for broadcasting. Of course…
In 2018 there have been about 1000 posts on this blog. Some are photographs, some cartoons, some Guest Blogs and a whole lot of content is penned by me. Here is a very short collection of blogs, one a month, from 2018 that illustrate they types of posts you will find here in the coming…
Continued from click here We tried hard to make the best of what the fens had to offer. We lived close to the vast Ouse Washes nature reserve for several years and delighted in the fact that the reserve’s wild Whooper and Bewick’s Swans would overfly the garden most days in winter, on route between…
I welcome guest blogs here – they provide a change of pace, a change of perspective and the possibility that different issues will emerge. Thank you to all who have taken up the offer and written a guest blog. In 2018 there have been 54 of them. This blog is one that decision-formers and conservation…
Mark writes: Ian Carter is a frequent contributor to this blog as a writer of book reviews, a series of Guest Blogs on Wild Food (but some others on other subjects) and as a commenter. I’m pleased to share this series of Guest Blogs from one of Ian’s writing projects with you. The first five…
I always feel guilty when it happens and relieved when it doesn’t. To fetch firewood from the shed I need take only a few paces out of the back door. As I pass through an ivy-covered stone arch, leaves brush my head and sometimes I hear the sound of scrabbling feet and wings and the…
Ruth Tingay looking for a bacon sandwich Congratulations to Ruth Tingay – the highly deserving Birdwatch Birders’ Choice Conservation Hero of 2018. Ruth won by a mile – and that was richly deserved. The Raptor Persecution UK blog is a great example of how a niche interest (no offence – but it is a niche…
To dip: verb, slang: to miss a sighting of an interesting, often rare example of wildlife (usually bird) which is known to be or recently has been in an area. Being in the right place at the wrong time. I still haven’t seen the Hen Harrier that is hanging around on my local patch of…