Social Distancing Week 16. Syritta pipiens. Paul writes: Syritta pipiens is one of the commonest garden hoverflies. It isn’t as obvious as lots of its bigger or more brightly coloured cousins but once you know what to look for spotting it is quite simple. They’re about 7mm long, very narrow bodied with a rounded head…
BLOG POSTS
Sunday book review – Cottongrass Summer by Roy Dennis
This book, out of 40+ I reviewed in 2020, was one of two titles I chose as my wildlife book of the year – I recommend it highly. You can buy this book from Bookshop.org and I have set up a booklist to make that easy through this link https://uk.bookshop.org/shop/MarkAvery Disclosure: I am an…
Guest blog – Rebirth by Danilo Selvaggi
Danilo Selvaggi is Director General of Lipu, Italy’s BirdLife partner, having been in charge of institutional relations. He has a long involvement with environmental politics, communications and cultural ecology, and been an adviser to the Environment Ministry. A graduate in philosophy, he has focused especially on the social and cultural implications of philosophy, especially in…
Independence Day lessons
This video is doing the rounds of social media and brought a smile to my face. An American friend sent it to me. It’s clever and funny, and I suspect it is sufficiently well produced that it will be seen by Republican voters as well as Democrats, and therefore might influence the Presidential election. Using…
Tim Melling – Goshawk
Tim writes: I was out on the Peak District Moors in early March and had a great stroke of luck when this female Goshawk cruised over me. I identified her as a female by her large size, but also by the rather indistinct face pattern and yellow eye. Males are smaller with a noticeably dark…
We’re all ageing…
We’re all ageing but in birders’ parlance this word often means working out the age of a bird (often from details of its plumage). And sexing means telling the sex of a bird likewise (whatever else you may have thought). When British Birds arrived at my swanky house this week, as well as an excellent…
Guest blog – Tracking Robins in the Soundscape by Murray Marr
I’ve been measuring the seasonal vocal outputs of various songbirds on Midhurst Common’s woodlands in West Sussex, since 2003. This was when, on a whim, part of a regular dog walk started to include ten minutes of counting of singing individuals of each species within a series of short time frames. I do this simple,…
Saturday cartoon by Ralph Underhill
Press release – Trees for Life
Planning application submitted for world’s first rewilding centre Trees for Life has submitted a planning application for the world’s first rewilding centre at its 10,000-acre Dundreggan estate in Glenmoriston, between Loch Ness and the Isle of Skye. The planning application submitted to Highland Council on 22 June features an innovatively designed visitor centre inspired by…
A good way to end the week
Wild Justice launched a crowdfunder at 2pm on Tuesday afternoon and have closed it this afternoon. £38,525 has been donated to the crowdfunding page on Crowdjustice and this morning an organisation offered £10,000 out of the blue. By 4pm Wild Justice had filled in some forms, signed a contract, sent an invoice and closed the…