This small book is great fun. All human life, I mean dipteran life, is here; birth, sex, death, shit and a buzzard. It’s quirky but also very informative. It will make you laugh but it will also make you think. It’s a fly’s life – all 23 days of it. The words by Jaap Robben…
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
Sunday book review – Mistletoe Winter by Roy Dennis
This is a companion book to Roy Dennis’s acclaimed Cottongrass Summer (reviewed here) which came out last year. It is another series of essays and they are wonderful. They certainly don’t feel, even remotely, like the ones that didn’t make it into the first volume. The standard is very high and I’ve read most of…
World Land Trust seeks two new trustees
Comments Off on World Land Trust seeks two new trustees
The World Land Trust is looking for two new trustees – might one of them be you?
Changes in the NGO world
Plantlife is one of my favourite small wildlife conservation charities and over many years I’ve worked with them and in the last decade done a few bits of work for them. And to be fair, in the past I’ve pinched a couple of their staff to come and work at the RSPB. There seems to…
Some small but significant bright spots in a landscape of gloom
The new BirdLife International red list of European birds is worth a long and detailed read – at first glance it seems to be a tale of woe with a few bright patches. So that seems quite accurate. But the fact that the bright patches are the result of conservation action gives us all hope….
Roy Dennis gets RSPB Medal
Roy Dennis is this year’s recipient of the RSPB Medal – an award which is given to those who make a very significant contribution to nature conservation. Previous recipients have included David Attenborough, John Gummer, Chris Mead, Michael McCarthy, Dick Potts, Ian Newton, Robert Gillmor and the BTO/SOC/BWI team who produced the last Breeding Bird…
BTO Awards at the Mall Galleries
As an example of life getting somewhat back to a new normal, the annual Society of Wildlife Artists’ exhibition opened at The Mall Galleries on Wednesday and closes on Sunday 24 October. It’s well worth a visit. On Wednesday evening, a slightly nervous group of guests arrived at the exhibition for the annual BTO Awards…
Eagles off – beyond our ken.
There have been rumours of this for quite a while but this news is very disappointing. The account on the website is very apologetic and rightly so, I think, as this will feel like a let down for many supporters of the project. I have heard that as well as some local birders’ being uneasy…
Sunday book review – A Spotter’s Guide to Countryside Mysteries by John Wright
This is a bit like an i-Spy book for grown-ups, or semi-grown-ups. It’s an anthology of interesting things to look out for in the countryside, grouped in three sections; field, wood and seashore. The seashore section is short and felt a bit like a refreshing dessert after a sizeable starter in the fields and a…
A normal couple of days for my friend, Chris?
Yesterday my mate Chris Packham was handing in a petition to Buckingham Palace asking the Royal Family to rewild their extensive land holdings as a tangible and visible token of their support for UK nature conservation. It’s the type of thing Chris does – he’s a campaigner, he’s an advocate and he puts himself about…