Marble Canyon, Arizona is not much to look at – but it is great to look from. I arrived at the Chevron gas station and went inside to pay in advance – the permutations of paying for gas in the US are seemingly endless – and listened to John telling two young drivers that in this…
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
Hummers
Hummers are gas-guzzlers to most Americans – but they are hummingbirds to some. Hummingbirds seem exotic to the UK birder because we have nothing really like them – and because they really are exotic. My first hummingbird ever was about 30 years ago when I was sitting on a log in Ontario, looking at a…
Mom’s place
I didn’t know much about Utah before I started driving through it and I’m not an expert now. Brigham Young and Donny Osmond came to mind but I have tried to blank out both. Before I left the UK I met the Independent’s Travel Editor Simon Calder in a TV studio and his advice on my trip…
Yellowstone
Yellowstone National Park is an amazing place – it really is. People have written books about it and I can only scratch the surface in this blog. Here are just a few thoughts to be going on with; – visit yourself if you can – in the very early days two tourists were killed by…
Dancing with ducks
After yesterday’s Grizzlies – didn’t I mention the second distant one, also with two cubs, late in the evening? – I was reconciled to a more mundane day. But this was a warmer day and the sun shone and the scenery continued to be gorgeous and amazing. And who needs bears anyway? There are plenty…
Bear and Breakfast with Barbara
Breakfast today was a good meal – partly because it was preceded by a Black Bear, but also because of the conversation. I slipped into an empty booth between a man of retirement age thumbing though a Peterson Field Guide and a middle-aged couple. I asked the Peterson Man whether he was a birder and…
Just a quick one
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I was out into Yellowstone NP by 630am and had seen Black Bear, lots of Bison (and baby Bison), Elk (Red Deer to you and me) and some good birds (Hooded Merganser, Cinnamon Teal, Osprey) before breakfast. The bird list has passed 200 species – which is certainly not spectacular and illustrates the amount of…
Cute little critters
I doubt whether anyone gets on a plane to the USA because they want to see a small burrowing rodent. They might head for Yellowstone, as I am doing, hoping to see Grizzly Bears, Wolves and Moose – and, yes, I really hope I do see all of those. At the moment I really hope…
On the Montana prairie
I’m standing on the prairie in Montana and the sun is shining. Prairie is a wonderful thing – it’s a work of art and a work of technology. The technology bit is that prairie acts like a finely designed machine. The grasses and flowers that make it up, hundreds of different species, are well-adapted to…
Black Hills
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I’ve spent much of the last four days in the Black Hills of Dakota in Western South Dakota. Some of it in rain, some with a flat tyre, but even so I can see why Doris Day wanted to go back. Maybe she hadn’t quite seen all the region’s birds either. But the bird list…