This only applies if you are on Twitter. I did a bit of a clear out on Twitter a little while ago. I stopped following hundreds of accounts and blocked some others too. I have had three people come to me and ask to unblocked – and I have unblocked them all. I’ll do the…
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
Saturday cartoon by Ralph Underhill
You’ll have to be quite quick
Signed copies of the hardback of A Message from Martha are disappearing fast from my house as you snap them up at just £10 incl P&P. I ordered 50 copies last week and you have bought 38 of them (and I want to keep some to sell at talks etc) so there really aren’t many…
Likely lads
Rowan the Hen Harrier ‘was likely to have been shot’ – likely? That’s an odd phrase and it’s been bothering me (and others, I see). I tend to start from the supposition that all Hen Harriers are likely to be shot and have to keep telling myself that there are other perfectly natural causes of…
Two Christmas adverts #BusterTheBoxer
It’s only early November but hoh! hoh! hoh! it’s time for Christmas adverts. The first one (#BusterTheBoxer), from multi-million pound business John Lewis (@JohnLewisRetail, not the poor chap @JohnLewis) has upset some ‘real country people’ but is putting a smile on the faces of many more people across the country. Have you seen it? Deliberately…
A letter from America
Sometimes really nice things happen, and sometimes they happen at just the right time. Here is an email from America which I received yesterday morning, completely out of the blue: I greatly enjoyed reading A Message from Martha. Living on the beach in Florida, I saw swarms of birds wheel and swoop, and I thought…
RSPB getting tough?
There are two recent RSPB blogs which are well worth a read – aren’t they all, always? Martin Harper’s blog is pretty outspoken as these quotes will make clear (but please read it all): it was a deeply frustrating debate – especially to the 123,000 that called for a ban and of course those seeking…
Golden Eagles on a weak thermal
There ought to be a lot more Golden Eagles in the UK and the results of the most recent survey (2015) show that there are more than in 2003 so that’s good news. There are 508 pairs of Golden Eagles in Scotland which represents an increase of 15% which isn’t bad at all and is…
Debate rules
I have heard from both the Chair of the Petitions Committee, Helen Jones MP, and Steve Double MP who both confirm that the MP leading a Westminster Hall debate on an e-petition is under no obligation to say anything positive about the e-petition at all, nor even to be neutral. I am grateful to them…
Good morning America, how are you?
Those Americans who went to bed at a normal time may well be waking up around now to discover who is their new President-elect – the Trump. I woke at 05:30 UK time, about 00:30 East Coast time, to discover that my hopes for the USA had been dashed by Americans. I wasn’t pleased, but…