Heading home from our Edinburgh family in late July we took the A68 south and gave a little cheer as we breasted Carter Bar and passed into England again – it’s nothing anti-Scottish, we give a little cheer when we are heading north and pass into Scotland too. Seconds later I noticed a young Golden…
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Something nice in the attic
My home is not just a study area for a year-long bioblitz and the site of numerous repairs and improvements to the outside of the house it also houses an ongoing decluttering project. We have the clutter collected over a combined nearly 14 decades of life; books, music cassettes, videos, trinkets, things to hang on…
Sunday book review – The Game of Species by Julian Simon Lopez-villalta
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This slim volume of little more than 100 pages addresses the big questions of life on Earth. Not, ‘Shall we go to the pub?’ but ‘Why are there so many species and why are there more in some places than others?’. The author is a proper biologist and he writes this book to explain how…
Sunday book review – A Brush with Fungi by David Mitchell
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This is a big book full of beauty. It has over 400 A4 pages of paintings of over 250 UK fungi. And every one of those pages holds the eye because of the amazing complexity of the fungi and the artist’s skill. From Scarlet Waxcap to Warlock’s Butter, and from Giant Puffball to Lemon Disco,…
Sunday book review – The Merlin by Frank Rennie
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While breakfasting on 14 January, I glanced out the window and saw a Merlin flash past over my Northamptonshire garden at fence-top height. The sighting might have been an eighth of a second or perhaps less but our smallest falcon was unmistakable and put a smile on my face for the rest of the…
Guest blog – Walshaw Turbine 14 by Kate Haslegrave
Kate is a photographer and has lived in Haworth for twenty years. Walking on the moors she has come to learn that no two days are ever the same. Her blog about Haworth & Stanbury moors is at www.katietuppence.com. This is her fourth blog in this series about Walshaw Turbines – see here for the…
Guest blog – Open Pen Salmon Farming in the Falkland Islands by David Higgins
David Higgins works in conservation. He has lived and worked in the Falkland Islands, St Helena Island, India, The Skerries, the Yorkshire Dales, the North Pennines and now the Wiltshire Wildlife Trust. He loves islands especially seabird colonies, where he enjoys his main passion of wildlife photography. I spent nearly four years in…
Sunday book review – Lone Wolf by Adam Weymouth
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This is a terrific book – highly recommended! I could stop there but maybe you’d like to know a bit more. The author writes beautifully and I knew he had me after the first two pages of the Prologue. I’d bet that the author makes a good first impression in person too, but he certainly…
Canvey Wick: the Essex oasis home to more than 3,200 species
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. Canvey Wick on the Thames Estuary has recorded more than 3,200 species of invertebrates, birds and plants. It was the first brownfield site to be protected specifically for invertebrates and given SSSI status in 2005. Originally the site of a proposed oil refinery before being left abandoned for 30 years, habitat efforts have helped…
Sunday book review – No Island too Far by Michael Brooke
Forty years ago I shared an office in Oxford with the author of this book and he had, even then, clocked up an impressive range of island visits. He has kept going ever since and this book chronicles visits to islands in all five of Earth’s oceans. Mike Brooke’s visits to islands ranged from very…