I counted birds in my garden for an hour last Sunday – as usual. Numbers were a bit lower than usual and Chaffinch and Greenfinch didn’t turn up at all. There have been very few Greenfinches around this year and my only garden records for 2022 are a few fly-overs. House Sparrow numbers were low…
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
Iceland to end whaling in 2024
This is good news in that it looks as though Iceland will be crossed off the very short list of whaling countries but it isn’t particularly good news for whales as it seems to be driven by Japan being able to meet its whalemeat demand from its own whaling fleet. Still, it will mean, I…
Freedom to downgrade environmental protection?
The Brexit Freedoms Bill is announced but not yet published so we don’t exactly know what will be in it but it is one to watch (with one’s fingers crossed). In her Telegraph article the Attorney General tries to persuade us that EU laws were undemocratic despite the fact that we voted to join the…
Interesting
This article in the 4 December Guardian, by highly respected wildlife journalist Patrick Barkham, raised a few eyebrows at the time and prompted an anonymous but clearly well-informed guest blog here, Natural England and the Hen Harriers 30 December, which raised a number of points including questioning how Natural England’s Stephen Murphy could possibly know…
Sunday book review – Ants by Richard Jones
I’ve praised this series of books before (see here), and I have to do so again. They are beautifully produced with lots of wonderful photographs and other images that are superbly reproduced and laid out on the pages. When you pick up one of this series you are struck by its weight and, as you…
Sunday book review – Wild Green Wonders by Patrick Barkham
These are collected writings from the pen and keyboard of Patrick Barkham, one of our best nature writers and foremost environmental journalists. They are taken from his Guardian pieces over the last 20 years, and they make a delightful book. Patrick writes so well and sees things that others would miss. I must have read…
Sunday book review – Fergus the Silent by Michael McCarthy
This is a novel about nature, nature conservation and nature conservationists. It is a cracking tale and I read the book’s 440 pages pretty quickly in order to find out what happened in the lives of the main protagonists and in the natural world around them. We move from behavioural ecologists in Oxford to seabird…
Were you listening?
This blog is slightly about last week’s ‘announcement’ on new farming schemes in England that was made at the Oxford Farming Conference, but actually it is rather more about what people said about it. It’s more a listeners’ guide to what was said, than about what’s actually happening. The reason for that is partly because…
Sunday book review – Wild Waters by Susanne Masters
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This is a book for those who like swimming in the sea, lakes and rivers and might be interested in the wildlife that they come across, rather than a guide to aquatic life for the naturalist. On that basis I think it does a good job and works well. For those who plunge literally headlong…
Guest blog – Natural England and Hen Harriers by ‘One who knows’
A lot is written about Hen Harriers and upland issues. It is nice to talk about the positives, but the article that Patrick Barkham wrote for the Guardian on the 4 December 2021 was a strange piece indeed. I would have been less surprised had the article been written by the cheerleaders for grouse shooting,…