This is the second of John D. Burns’s books I have reviewed here, but whereas Sky Dance was fictional (although it read pretty true to life to me) this is a story of walks by the author, sometimes with friends, in the mountains of Scotland, in winter. I’m going to read his other two books…
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
BBS 2020 report published
And so this report is different, maybe refreshingly so (just because everyone likes a change now and again) and has fewer trends (because they can’t be calculated reliably) and more reflection. I like reflection. I was quite surprised that in England there were as many as 1757 BBS squares covered compared with 2934 in 2019,…
Richard Benyon returns to DEFRA
Richard Benyon, the toffish ex-MP returns to DEFRA as a Lords Minister. DEFRA now has two lords a-leaping and with Zac G being unpaid, it rather looks like a strange BOGOF deal. As a minister in the upper house Lord Benyon will have to answer difficult questions from the likes of Baroness Bennett and others…
Sunday book review – Women on Nature edited by Katharine Norbury
Anthologies are always worth a look because, at the very least, you can rely on the compiler to have done a lot of work in sifting and selecting and, yes, discarding, to arrive at their final selection. And this is quite a tome with 400+ pages of selections and another 50+ pages of notes and…
Skydancer Day – tomorrow 10:15
Hen Harrier Action have set up a Skydancer event – a spring event ahead of Hen Harrier Day in early August. Of course, it’s online. It starts tomorrow morning at 10:15 and will end around midday – for details, click here.
BBS 2021
Last weekend, the May Bank Holiday weekend, it was back to normal and I made my first visits to ‘my’ two BTO/JNCC/RSPB Breeding Bird Survey squares in the Northants countryside. Let’s call the two sites BBS1 and BBS2. Actually, when I say back to normal, there is no such thing as a normal Spring as…
And the votes are in…some of them
I now live in the North Northants unitary authority – don’t you love our logo of a massive pair of binoculars on a hill and a Red Kite too? I do! I used to live in the district council area of East Northants within the county council area of Northamptonshire but the district councils have…
Nine weeks and over 140,000 signatures
Comments Off on Nine weeks and over 140,000 signatures
This petition has now passed 140,000 signatures and may very soon pass 141,000 signatures. The wording of the introduction has changed and the way the counter works too – that may please some readers of this blog. Please sign #stateofnature petition https://bit.ly/3kjLIsX – thank you!
Sunday book review – Beak, Tooth and Claw by Mary Colwell
I have found this book a difficult one to review because I like and admire the author but I dislike and don’t admire the book. What follows is a review of the book, not of the author. It’s a book about predators in the UK – so raptors, Red Foxes, Badgers, seals get lots of…
In today’s Guardian magazine
Is that a fire beater or a white flag? Grouse moor management under fire in this long article in today’s Guardian. Simon the gamekeeper says; Without burning you wouldn’t have the grouse estates: you would have bogs, you’d have rushes and nothing else https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2021/may/01/its-become-them-and-us-battle-to-burn-englands-moorlands …in a way that almost makes it sound as though he…