I’ll be speaking at this seminar in Manchester (rainy Manchester?) on Wednesday. Looks scary doesn’t it? See you there?
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
Manifesto week
By the end of this week it will be manifest how poor is the grasp of environmental issues by our leading political parties. I am not expecting that any of them will reach the standards of the Green Party’s environmental manifesto. The Liberal Democrats: usually have some good things on the environment in their manifesto…
Tim Melling – White-headed Vulture
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This is the White-headed Vulture (Trigonoceps occipitalis) which is rare and declining throughout its range. It has been classified as critically endangered by IUCN, which is the highest category before extinction in the wild. Although it is widespread in sub-Saharan Africa it is always scarce and at low density. Being a vulture it feeds on…
Sunday book review – Client Earth by James Thornton and Martin Goodman
Some of my best friends over the years have been lawyers – although, come to think of it, not that many – but I have always had a mistrust of the role of the courts in conservation and environmental matters. But over the last few years, in a time when government has no intention of…
Tim Melling – Yellowhammer
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The song of the Yellowhammer is supposed to sound like “a little bit of bread and no cheese”. It was Enid Blyton who popularised this rendition of the song in several of her books and poems (eg The Yellowhammer Bird in Enid Blyton’s Nature Lover’s Handbook 1944). This is another seriously depleted farmland bird that…
An Unreliable History of Birdwatching (7) – by Paul Thomas
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Saturday cartoon by Ralph Underhill
Three videos
It was just over a year ago that the video (above) was filmed of poletraps being set on a Yorkshire grouse moor. This evidence led to a man receiving a police caution for this offence. One wonders what would have happened if the case had proceeded to an English court. We might still be unaware…
Another Friday, another video, another dropped case
RSPB Press release: RSPB Scotland has expressed its frustration and disappointment after another prosecution of an individual charged with alleged wildlife crime offences was discontinued by the Crown Office in Scotland. The latest case began on 9th July 2015 when RSPB Scotland staff, walking on the Brewlands Estate in Glen Isla, Angus, discovered an…
BBS 2 – ET you’re home
I don’t remember ever having to scrape frost off the car windscreen when heading off to survey a BBS square in May or June but I did on Wednesday when I found the time to carry out the first visit to my second square. Things weren’t looking very good as I drove down the Nene…