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

Two tales from the Sussex woods

Mark 8 Comments

Ahead of speaking at the Sussex Ornithological Society conference on Saturday I stayed in a B&B nearby on Friday night. It was quite a posh B&B , and very nice, but hard to find. Well, it wasn’t the B&B’s fault that it was hard to find, I think that was partly my fault and partly…

Red Kites in January

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Just for fun I am making a note of which days I see Red Kites this year because I often write that I see Red Kites most days and I just wanted to check whether it is true (or whether I am fooling myself) and if so, how true. I’m not going out of my…

Last week

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I enjoyed last week – here are some highlights: Monday – Ring-necked Parakeet in London – year tick Tuesday – woke in London at 0530 to the beautiful sound of a singing Blackbird Tuesday – planned the downfall of driven grouse shooting over lunch with friends (can’t fail!) Wednesday – windy, rainy, but went for…

True, very true.

Mark Comments Off on True, very true.

    The North York Moors National Park has a blog – hooray!  It’s an official blog – hooray! Put ‘hen harrier’ into the search engine and you get the very honest return of… No – nothing to see here. Nada! Zilch! Bugger all! Please sign Gavin Gamble’s e-petition to ban driven grouse shooting and…

Big Garden Birdwatch 2018

Mark 25 Comments

I did the RSPB  Big Garden Birdwatch on Sunday morning while listening to Broadcasting House on Radio 4 and eating toast and Marmite. As I heard my former colleague Derek Niemann talking about his Nazi grandfather (see his moving and interesting book) I reached 5 species: Goldfinch, House Sparrow, Dunnock, Blackbird and Blue Tit. The…

Guest blog – Independent greens by Marina Pacheco

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Marina Pacheco has always been keen on wildlife especially of an urban kind and graduated with a zoology degree in South Africa. She then spent four years on a squirrel introduction project in Lisbon’s first urban ecology park before relocating to London. Over the last twenty years she was the London Area Manager for BTCV, the…

We are 11,650 ahead

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Here is an update on three e-petitions about grouse shooting: Gavin Gamble’s e-petition in favour of banning driven grouse shooting – c26,550 signatures Jane Griggs’s e-petition supporting grouse shooting – c14,900 signatures Ed Hutchings’s e-petition in favour of licensing grouse shooting – c6,100 signatures Last week saw the ‘Gamble-ban’ e-petition adding another 450+ signatures and…

PM’s environment speech

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Having spoken to several people who were present at Theresa May’s environment speech (when will we hear Jeremy Corbyn on the subject?) they all say that a striking feature of the speech was that it gained an enthusiastic reception from the environmentalists in the room and the Prime Minister visibly looked happier, more confident and…