Stuart Housden (above, 9th from the left and sixth from the right) retires from the RSPB and I was glad to attend his farewell do in Edinburgh last week. I thought I was at the RSPB for quite a long time, 25 years, but Stuart was there for 10 years before I breezed in and…
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
Dr Coffey – do the right thing
Dr Therese Coffey is the junior minister in Defra and some time fairly soon will be asked to sign off a government response to Gavin Gamble’s e-petition to ban driven grouse shooting assuming that it passes 10,000 signatures (which it will). Dr Coffey closed the debate on grouse shooting almost a year ago in a…
How are we doing?
It’s less than two full weeks since Gavin Gamble launched his e-petition to ban driven grouse shooting. It’s doing pretty well and I’ve slipped back into checking the progress of an e-petition every few hours (or even more frequently!). 123,077 signatures, our last total, seems a very, very long way away – but then it…
Paul Leyland – Hairy-footed Flower Bee
Paul writes: One of my favourite signs of spring is the appearance of Anthophora plumipes, or the Hairy-footed Flower Bee to give it its friendlier English name. This is a solitary bee which nests in walls or chimney stacks, In Hunmanby, on the north east edge of the Yorkshire Wolds, they usually appear at…
Wild food (7) – Blackberries by Ian Carter
No series on wild food would be complete without the humble blackberry and there can’t be many people who haven’t picked and eaten them at one time or another. Parents who are wary (or unaware) of almost all other forms of wild food will happily send their kids out blackberrying – at least that used…