The Bird Fair is great; it’s always great, and it was great over the last three days too. But great doesn’t mean perfect. And great doesn’t mean invulnerable. I think, but I might well be wrong, that the Bird Fair was a little quieter this year than last year, and it was a little quieter…
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
Dear John
I missed seeing Sir John Lister-Kaye at the Bird Fair but I’m told he gave an excellent talk about raptor persecution. He’s a good speaker, I know, and I’m sure his talk will have motivated many of his audience on this important subject. I’m told, by upwards of a dozen people (so I’m pretty sure…
Bird Fair asks Iceland’s Prime Minister to end whaling
I spent some, by no means all, of my time at the Bird Fair getting signatures, on bits of paper, to ask the Icelandic Prime Minister to bring an end to whaling in her country. I’m amazed by the total: we got… 1,320 signatures. Thank you to all who signed (and see some more acknowledgements…
Bird Fair Day 3
Over a thousand good things about the Bird Fair: This petition, on bits of paper, at the Bird Fair over the three days, raised over 1,000 signatures asking the Prime Minister of Iceland to put an end to whaling in her country. Dear Katrín Jakobsdóttir, Prime Minister of Iceland Each year the British Birdwatching Fair…
Paul Leyland – Six-spot Burnet
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There are several species of Burnet moth and they are amongst the most noticeable day-flying moths in the UK. All are very similar, however the Six-spot Burnet (Zygaena filipendulae) is the only one with six distinct spots on each forewing. It is also the commonest and most widespread, being seen almost everywhere except in Scotland,…
I’m at the Bird Fair yet again
Day 3 of the Bird Fair and I have a lot of conversations to finish among all those which I haven’t even started! Here in east Northants it’s a bit of a cloudy blowy start to the day and it looks as though that’s what it will be like at Bird Fair too. It won’t…
Book review – Mind of the Raven by Bernd Heinrich
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This book was published quite a long time ago – 1999 in hardback – but it deals with a topical subject and I noticed it on sale in the bookstores of Yellowstone National Park a few weeks ago. I almost bought it then, particularly as there was a Raven running around on the roof…
Bird Fair Day 2
I’m back home again after Day 2 of the Bird Fair and we are all having a cup of tea before opening the wine – I knew you wanted to know that. Ten good things about today: The queue to get into the Bird Fair before the gates open at 9am is a great place…
Tim Melling – Long-tailed Skua
Tim writes: called Long-tailed Jaeger in America, but they are one and the same species. Long-tailed are the smallest and rarest of the skua family. They breed on tundra where they feed mainly on lemmings and voles. But they winter off the continental shelf in the southern hemisphere, mainly off South America and Africa where…
Guy Shorrock – Common Crane
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Cranes on the up Guy writes: I still vividly remember in the mid 1980s seeing my very first common crane during a birding trip with friends to Norfolk. Cranes had been lost as a UK breeding bird around 400 years ago as a result of hunting for food and the subsequent draining of their…