Standing up for Nature
Let’s get my only gripe about this book out of the way – it’s a silly title which gives a slightly false impression of the contents. These are not ‘curious’ tales they are 101 quite finely honed essays about the interesting biology of species that you might well see if you were birding in East…
This book, out of 47 I reviewed in 2023, was one of two titles I chose as my wildlife book of the year – I recommend it highly. You can buy this book from Bookshop.org and I have set up a booklist to make that easy through this link https://uk.bookshop.org/shop/MarkAvery Disclosure: I am an affiliate…
I’m not a vegan and I am a pretty unambitious gardener but I got something from this book. It’s a good introduction to gardening and the vegan bit is rather incidental to most of the book so don’t let that put you off if you have eaten steak tartare recently. As with many gardening…
This book, out of 47 I reviewed in 2023, was one of two titles I chose as my wildlife book of the year – I recommend it highly. You can buy this book from Bookshop.org and I have set up a booklist to make that easy through this link https://uk.bookshop.org/shop/MarkAvery Disclosure: I am an affiliate…
I’m a big fan of the Breeding Bird Survey – I describe it and comment on it in Chapter 2 of Reflections. I’m also a participant but even if I weren’t then I’d be poring over the annual report as soon as I could each year. And so I had my first look at the…
This is the tale of an almost 1000-mile walk from the southern edge of the New Forest to Cape Wrath by a fit 62-year-old who encounters landscapes, people and wildlife on his journey of 51 walking days. It’s a good read and I enjoyed it very much. Quite honestly, the interactions with people, fellow walkers,…
This is a book of three parts: our broken relationship with nature; the benefits of connecting with nature; and how to fix things. Each is an interesting look at the issues and the author brings a lot of his own thoughts and experiences into the book, as well as the studies and evidence from academia….
This paper, published today, is a re-run of the previous publication of Natural England’s similar dataset back in 2019 – if you understood the previous paper then this new one won’t alter your understanding (click here for what is actually a much-praised explanation of the previous, excellent, but highly technical, paper). I don’t use ‘re-run’…
Illegal killing major cause of death in Hen Harriers New study shows yearly survival rates of Hen Harriers ‘unusually low,’ with birds typically living just four months after fledging. Illegal killing is the main cause of death for older birds, accounting for up 75% of deaths each year in birds between one and two years…
The Icelandic Food and Veterinary Authority (MAST) believes that the killing of many whales in Icelandic waters during last year’s whaling season did not comply with the objectives of Iceland’s Animal Welfare Act. The headline in the Icelandic newspaper, Morgunbladid, reads ‘Whaling is inconsistent with animal welfare objectives’, In summary: 148 whales were killed; 38…