Wild Justice is taking on the Badger cull – or at least the licensing of free shooting of Badgers by Natural England. A crowdfunder launched at 2pm has raised £9,000 by 6pm, which is pretty amazing and probably indicates the level of anger about this cull of one of our most charismatic native species. To…
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Just in passing…
This is just a very quick passing reference to capitalisation of species names. I’ve written about it before – see here for discussion of shy albatrosses and Shy Albatrosses. When people write guest blogs here I do not instruct them to capitalise species names (because I’m very tolerant – renowned for it) but I do…
Guest blog – Swift Awareness Week 2020 by Mike Priaulx
Mike Priaulx is a sustainable buildings consultant who founded the Islington Swifts Group in 2016. Working with the Council, residents and local organisations, there are now more than 200 new nesting spaces for swifts in the borough. His twitter handle: @islingt_swifts Why do we need Swift Awareness Week? There are many other similarly endangered species…
Press release – Wildlife App from Bumblebee Conservation Trust
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3D app brings UK bumblebees to life on your phone A wildlife app launched today by the Bumblebee Conservation Trust gives users a new view of bumblebees through an augmented reality 3D function. The free ‘What’s That Bumblebee’ app lets people engage with nature in a different and fun way by bringing a three-dimensional bumblebee…
WWT stirs itself on lead
This article by the Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust on lead ammunition is well worth a read. James Robinson, Director of Conservation, is quoted as saying: Health, surely, is at the forefront of all our minds right now, yet countries blocking this proposal are passing up a golden opportunity to protect the health of their citizens,…
Those Birdtrack House Sparrows revisited
You may think that I have a ‘thing’ about this, maybe an unhealthy obsession, but it’s just something that interests me. I noticed that the reporting rates of many birds on the excellent Birdtrack system had changed during lockdown, and in predictable ways. Birdtrack was telling us about our behaviour as birders as much as…
BASC spoke with forked tongue?
BASC is doing this a lot. One day they say something quite sensible and almost moderate, and the next they say something utterly ridiculous (and keep saying it for ages). One day they seem quite reasonable, and then they switch back to ranting and rudeness. If BASC were a person you’d be beginning to doubt…
Paul Leyland – Large Skipper
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Paul writes: I found my first Large Skipper (Ochlodes sylvanus) close to home on 23 June. They always appear along the field path which runs next to my house, this year a little later than normal. Even though I see them as close as two metres from the house boundary I have never seen one…
Sunday book review: Pudding-Pokes, Flittermice and Bishy-Barney-Bees by Susan Brewer
This is essentially an alphabetical list of species names and a few other rural terms. What’s in a name? If I told you that I get Apple Birds, Aizacks, Woofells and Wrannocks in my garden, as well as Spadgers and Jacobs would you still be with me? Well, I do. These old, largely unused, mostly…
Tim Melling – Crossbill
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Tim writes: Crossbills are one of the first birds to start breeding, sometimes as early as January, but March is more usual. They typically lay four eggs and the female does all the incubation while the male brings her food. Incubation lasts 12-16 days and the young fly about 25 days after hatching. When the…