New study shows role of bird flu in widespread declines of UK seabirds A new report by the RSPB has for the first time, quantified the effects of recent Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza (HPAI) outbreaks on the populations of the UK’s seabirds. Of the 13 species included in the study, nine showed declines, three of…
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
I’m coming out… as a…
… moth-er. In other words I have a moth trap and I am now gradually becoming addicted to moth trapping. How can one resist when there is the possibility of catching moths like the one above – what a corker! Well, that is the type of thing that birders say about the drabbest of Phylloscopus…
Sunday book review – Purposeful Birdwatching by Rob Hume
This is a lovely book, filled with an appealing mixture of wisdom, humour, nostalgia, stories, facts, speculation and common sense. It’s about birdwatching, very much birdwatching, and not just birding, for Rob Hume has watched many birds and thought about what he was seeing and, it seems, enjoyed most of it immensely. In a mixture…
Guest blog – Walshaw Turbine 43 by Nick MacKinnon
Guest blog – Walshaw Turbine 43 by Nick MacKinnon Nick MacKinnon is a freelance teacher of Maths, English and Medieval History, and lives above Haworth, in the last inhabited house before Top Withens = Wuthering Heights. In 1992 he founded the successful Campaign to Save Radio 4 Long Wave while in plaster following a rock-climbing…
BSBI press release: Thousands of citizen scientists find hundreds of wildflowers blooming at New Year
The results are in for BSBI’s thirteenth New Year Plant Hunt, when plant-lovers across Britain and Ireland head out to see what is flowering in their local patch. More than 3,000 people – a record number! – took part in the Hunt, after the hottest summer on record was followed by an unusually wet December….