This is a brilliant book and I recommend that you buy it and read it – or at least, since it isn’t actually published yet, pre-order it. Despite the fact that it won’t be published until February it will be one of this blog’s books of this year, without doubt. Before telling you why I…
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
My lowish-carbon birding – flights
In the previous blog post I looked at my Birdtrack records – clearly birding records – to explore in more detail my carbon footprint from birding. But that was all about my UK birding. Here I’m looking at another aspect of my carbon emissions – my air travel. And I can examine my air travel…
My lowish-carbon birding – the UK
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Reading and reviewing (click here) the new book, Low -carbon birding, and particularly the contribution from Nick Moran, made me review my Birdtrack records to reflect on my travel as a birder in the UK. Birdtrack (click here) is a way of keeping your bird sightings in one place where they can be reviewed and…
All change at DEFRA
What a difference a month makes – see here for a blog about who does what in DEFRA. Out: George Eustice (the real Cincinnatus of the regime change, returning to his farm), Zac Goldsmith (keeps his Foreign Office half-job but loses his environment role, despite the DEFRA website not having caught up with this change…
Book review: Low-carbon Birding by Javier Caletrio
This is a welcome book, dealing, as it does, with an important issue for those of us who are birders. The structure of the book is that the editor produces two introductory chapters on the issue of climate change and the contribution of travel as it applies to birdwatching in its widest sense, and…
Sunday book review – The Horizontal Oak by Polly Pullar
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This book isn’t really a nature book though there is nature in it. It is a moving and funny autobiography of someone who is interested in wildlife and wild places as well as domestic animals and a whole range of other things. But none of that matters as it is a very good read. The…
Sunday book review – From Little Acorns…. by John D. James
This is an account of the history of the Woodland Trust – an organisation which reaches its 50th birthday on 10 October 2022. I used to be quite sniffy about the Woodland Trust, and I think I was right because in the past it neglected the importance of management of woodland and seemed to prioritise…
Short-eared Owl by Brian Leecy
Isn’t this a beautiful bird?
Bird flu strategy for England and Wales
In response to this document published yesterday I said this (in a series of tweets, reproduced here below with typos corrected) and the RSPB said this (lower still): UK context: this is by and for England and Wales. It rather ignores the fact that birds fly around between England and Wales and Scotland. For example,…
Passenger Pigeon Day
The pigeon was known as Martha, and the species was the Passenger Pigeon. Amongst all extinctions, this example remains unusual in two respects: the precision with which the timing is known and the overwhelming abundance of the species just a few decades earlier – for, just a few decades before Martha died, the Passenger Pigeon…