I’ve been writing about Walshaw Moor for years – this is my 64th blog on the subject! But now I am asking for your help to protect this site from further damage. In fact, I am asking for your help to protect this site from Natural England who have reached a management agreement…
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
Going into some kind of semi-torpor
From now until, the beginning of July, blog posts here will be far less frequent and rather unpredictable, as I am travelling a lot – coming and going. This might be a good time to sign up to getting new posts on this blog to be sent automatically to you. You can do that by…
Bank Holiday Monday book review: Whittled Away: Ireland’s vanishing nature, by Pádraic Fogarty
Reviewed by Ian Carter The title of this book is taken from an Irish Government report dating back to 1969 raising concerns that Ireland’s natural heritage is being gradually ‘whittled away’. The report suggests, in the understated way of the age, that this ‘could represent a serious loss to the nation’. You could imagine much…
Bank Holiday Monday book review – Beyond Spring by Matthew Oates
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Reviewed by Ian Carter Having read his previous book describing a lifetime of watching, studying and obsessing about butterflies I was looking forward to this one. Thankfully, it shares many similarities, not least the in-depth knowledge, warmth and humour in the writing – it’s not often you catch yourself laughing out loud at a natural…
Bank Holiday Monday book review – How to Build Houses and Save the Countryside by Shaun Spiers
This book is written by a former MEP, a former boss of the Campaign to Protect Rural England and the current Director of the think-tank Green Alliance. Shaun Spiers has been knocking around the policy and political world for a good few years and he’s no fool (no fool at all) and so his views,…
Paul Leyland – Large Red Damselfly
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Paul writes: The first emergence of damselflies is one of the indicators, in the insect calendar, which show that the days are getting warmer. The Large Red Damselfly (Pyrrhosoma nymphula) is usually the first to be seen and it has been gradually appearing over the last few weeks. This is my first for the year,…
Wild food (33) – Cuckoo Flower by Ian Carter
Otherwise known as Lady’s Smock this is one of our most attractive spring flowers, brightening up damp pastures and roadside verges across the country with its subtle pink flower-heads. It usually starts to appear around mid-April, about the same time as the first Cuckoos arrive back from Africa – hence the name. It also…
Sunday book review – The Lynx and Us by David Hetherington and Laurent Geslin
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I expected this book to be a great visual treat considering the imprint from which it comes, and it is, but it is also a very interesting read. You can’t go far wrong with photos of cats – the internet is full of them – but these images of wild European Lynx are superb. …
Tim Melling – Common Buzzard
Tim writes: I think this is the first time I have managed to capture the eye detail in a Buzzard, which is especially good as he’s looking right down at me. Their plumage is variable and this is quite a pale individual, and identifiable as an adult by the thick, dark trailing edge to the…
An Unreliable History of Birdwatching (56) by Paul Thomas
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