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Guest blog – Re-connecting with Rock Pools by Heather Buttivant

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Heather Buttivant is a writer, educator and marine conservationist based in Looe, Cornwall. She specialises in introducing people to the magic of the rock pools. Her first book, Rock Pool: extraordinary encounters between the tides, is available from bookshops and online (and is reviewed here) and her website was named BBC Wildlife Magazine’s Blog of…

Sad news: Colin Wilkinson RIP

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I learned today of the passing on Saturday of Colin Wilkinson, a former colleague at the RSPB. Colin worked first in the RSPB Central England Region (the cinderella of RSPB regions – lots of people, not so many birds) which morphed into the Midlands Region. He was based in the Banbury office and more recently…

RSPB and gamebird shooting

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The RSPB is taking its time over this consultation on gamebird shooting but it is going to be worth it. The infographic that the RSPB has released is clearly not the whole picture, and is an interesting selection of information. There is quite a lot of food for thought here alone. RSPB members are 62%…

BASC fighting fund

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BASC say they are launching a 7-figure Fighting Fund for ‘proactive legal initiatives to secure the future of shooting’ whatever that means. Quite what this will do for BASC’s membership is difficult to see – they will have to decide whether their membership subscriptions are being well spent. At the moment BASC isn’t asking for…

RSPB update on its gamebird shooting consultation

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Interesting update on RSPB gamebird shooting consultation from Martin Harper: RSPB members, staff and volunteers are broadly aligned in their views, specifically: the majority are knowledgeable about the issues associated with intensive gamebird shooting, the majority support the conservation principles; any opposition to the approach proposed is more likely to come from the shooting (1%)…

Tim Melling – That Lammergeier

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Tim writes: I gave up chasing rare birds some years ago but when a juvenile Lammergeier (aka Bearded Vulture) appeared in the Peak District, I decided it was too good to ignore.  It was just a 20 minute drive from my house, plus an hour’s walk to reach its favourite roosting crag.   Apparently this is…

Flying ants spark usual hysteria

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I’ve been watching thousands of ants take to the sky from my back garden. It’s Flying Ant Day – well, here in NN9 of east Northants it is anyway. I haven’t actually seen any birds taking much notice of the silver-winged additions to the air today – often there are Black-headed Gulls going crazy at…

Paul Leyland – Ichneumon sarcitorius.

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Social Distancing Week 17. Ichneumon sarcitorius Paul writes: I am always finding ichneumon wasps in and around my garden. Often they are running through the undergrowth, all the time twitching their long antennae. Then they’ll stop on a leaf or a flower to have a search round. They take a nice photograph but unfortunately most…

Guest blog – Where did our birds come from? by Alan Parfitt

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Alan has always been a birder. In the 1950s, his father used to take him bird watching on Graveney Marshes in North Kent (what a great shame they are now to be more or less completely covered in solar panels). During his earning days, amongst other assignments, he was the environmental manager for a large…

Sunday book review – Uplands and Birds by Ian Newton

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This is a monumental book of over 600 pages. It is everything one would expect from one of the UK’s greatest ornithologists; breadth, depth and clarity. This book, the author stresses, is about the uplands and about birds, but it isn’t just about upland birds. That’s true, but it is very birdy nonetheless. It acts…