Farming always plays the victim

Always beware of headlines with the word ‘could’ in them, and look for evidence of the dire event weakly predicted – often there is little evidence to back it up. Which food is going to be short and what is the evidence? This isn’t a great piece in the Guardian but, I’m afraid to say,…

Rod Liddle

I met Rod Liddle several times, going back to the time when he was editor of the Radio 4 Today programme and visited the RSPB at The Lodge. I’ve been interviewed by him several times for radio and Times TV. He was a proper journalist and tended to ask the right questions with enough vigour…

Chris – Evolution

The fourth of the five episodes was about dolphins and intelligence. Chris is still wearing the same T-shirt(s) – I wonder how many of that model-T he has. The shape of the programme was the same as the others; start with a well-loved vertebrate (elephant, ostrich, bat (OK – partly loved in this case), dolphin…

Sunday book review – Bitter Honey by Jennie Durant

I’m offered quite a few American books to review and sometimes I do and sometimes I don’t. I’m so glad I did say yes to this one as it is a very well-written and interesting book about a general subject which is highly relevant to UK readers but a specific case study that is unfamiliar…

Scotland’s rarest mountain woodlands get £108k lifeline in Lochaber

One of Scotland’s rarest habitats is set for recovery thanks to a funding award granted this month to landscape-scale nature restoration partnership, Loch Abar Mòr. The £108,000 award from the Scottish Government’s Nature Restoration Fund, managed by NatureScot, will go towards ‘Wee Trees Lochaber’, a project that will protect, enhance and expand mountain woodland across…

No-fly zone over Minsmere

The RSPB issued the following stiff reminder of the law to media contacts earlier today: Urgent Media Alert: Drone and Helicopter activity over RSPB Minsmere wildfire For immediate attention of News Desks, Picture Desks and Aviation Teams We are aware of increased media interest in the fire at and around the Minsmere area in Suffolk….

Bill Oddie, 7 July 1941 – 25 July 2026.

Bill Oddie was many things but he really was a birdwatcher, from the age of around five years (when he was taking birds’ eggs like many other small boys) and seven years when he asked for a pair of binoculars (see his interview with Keith Betton in Behind More Binoculars). He did some desultory birding…