Alick Simmons is a veterinarian, naturalist and photographer. He lives in Somerset. He has written six previous guest blogs here – click here. His Twitter handle: @alicksimmons I’m a conservation newbie, an ingenu trying to compensate for a terrifying lack of experience. Although I’ve been a wildlife nut since my early teens (and a proud…
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Tim Melling – Wryneck
Tim writes: Wrynecks used to breed in Britain and in Victorian times were found in every county in England and Wales south of the Humber. But they had dwindled to extinction by the 1970s while a small population temporarily colonised Scotland, which was way outside its original range. But I don’t think it has bred…
Brexit deal: ten words that spell environmental damage
As you flick through the 1246 pages of ‘our’ Brexit deal you will hardly have got your eye in when you reach p179, and ‘Title XI, Article 1.1 LEVEL PLAYING FIELD FOR OPEN AND FAIR COMPETITION AND SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT‘; So, already, we see that environmental protection is subsumed within the apparently bigger matters of trade….
The new Dom (not Cummings)?
Dominic Dyer stepped down from his part-time role as boss of the Badger Trust a few weeks ago and the Daily Fail may have the reason why – click here. An anonymous prominent farmer is reported as saying his only qualification is that he is a friend of Carrie Symonds. That was brave of the…
Floods, pestilence but a Brexit deal?
When I queued with my mask on, to pick up our turkey (that’s now our Easter turkey), at 09:30 it had rained overnight but was just a bit drizzly but by the time I get home it was tipping down. The sky darkened and by mid afternoon there were floods all around us very locally…
HS2 massive climbdown (or up?) and chance for NE to do its job properly.
Here is a press release from the Woodland Trust: In November, the Woodland Trust and a group of independent ecologists raised concerns about the potential for unlawful felling of ancient woodlands by HS2 Ltd. This was because there are a number of ancient woodlands on the Phase Route 1 of HS2 (between London and Birmingham)…
Half-price Christmas tree
Last year, we bought a live Christmas tree in a pot and it has lived in our garden for the last 50 weeks or so and now it is in our conservatory ready for some lights to be draped over it. This is the first year for over 30 years when we haven’t had ‘kids’…
BPOTY 2021 is open for entries
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Boundaries
I’m in Tier 2 – how about you? The small rural town where I live, Raunds, is actually, I’m told, named because it is close to the boundaries of Northants, Cambs and Beds. It was first recorded as Randan in an Anglo-Saxon chronicle in the late 900s AD. Randan is the plural of the Old…
Bird/poultry flu update
Records of avian/poultry flu in new counties: Bedfordshire, Tyne and Wear, Highland, Greater Manchester and County Durham. All of the cases are in waterfowl, and in fact in swans (Mute, Whooper, unspecified and unsecified) and Canada and Greylag Geese. This must indicate the ease with which dead swans and geeese can be noticed rather than…