Standing up for Nature
I’m not keen on the cover of this book and I’m not that keen on its title, but I really enjoyed the story. A middle-aged lapsed birdwatcher takes up the hobby again and tries hard to see 200 species in a calendar year while also being a freelance conductor (of music). Does he succeed? I…
Photo: Luke Dray/Woodland Trust. A couple of folk dodging the cars in Piccadilly? Well the Guardian says that ‘hundreds’ of us marched to Downing Street, which I guess is true, since every thousand is made up of hundreds (and scores and dozens)[Guardian later ‘updated’ its headline to thousands]. The police at Downing St told Chris…
Tim writes: Long-eared Owls are not especially easy to see in Britain as they are patchily distributed and are generally elusive, usually only emerging to hunt after sunset. Fortunately I live near one of its patches in the South Pennines so I see them fairly regularly, but getting a photograph is never easy. This one…
My favourite local farmer, Duncan Farrington, has been developing new delicious products with his prize-winning cold-pressed rapeseed oil. This Chilli and Cumin dressing is delicious – and I know it comes from a local farm with high environmental standards too. Duncan tells me that he didn’t see a Turtle Dove on his farm this year…
Somerset’s farmers make hay when the birds fly The picturesque hay-meadows of the Somerset Moors and Levels are the largest wetlands in England home to many waders and some of the rarest birds on Earth A quarter of the global population of curlews can be found in the UK, but breeding numbers have dropped dramatically…
Forget how we got to this place, the consensus is that it’s not the best place possible and so Brexit gives the UK a better opportunity to come up with a better way of spending taxpayers’ money on land management. Michael Gove has latched on to the mantra of ‘Public money for public goods’ as…
I see that I started being a Blackwell’s affiliate in March 2017 – about 18 months ago. If you buy books from Blackwell’s using the links in my posts (mostly in book reviews) then I’ll get a small cut of what you spend. That’ll obviously be nice for me and it may allow you to…
the Countryside Alliance don’t like it – although there is no indication of what they think is wrong with the document except that Chris Packham had a lot to do with it! Both Tim Bonner and Liam Stokes took to Twitter to be snide about Chris (and I guess the rest of the contributors, but…