A grain of truth

The dry spring weather in England (while I was driving through the rain in the USA) prompted fears about the grain harvest which, it is good to record here, have proved to be largely unfounded.  As in any year there have been winners and losers across the country but the UK wheat yield is estimated…

Blogging for Nature review in Birds magazine

The latest RSPB BIRDS magazine, the one with two long-tailed tits on the cover, has a review of my book Blogging for Nature. If you aren’t an RSPB member (why not?) then I can tell you that the review tells you to go out and buy 20 copies now for all your relatives’ Christmas presents…

Raptor haters (?) nominated for Fields Medal

In their most recent outburst of anti-raptor letters the Daily Telegraph publishes a mathematical breakthrough deserving recognition. A letter states ‘ There are an estimated 80,000 sparrowhawks in Britain. They require at least one kill per day. The arithmetic is simple and compelling: 80,000 multiplied by 365 equals more than 29 million dead birds a year.‘….

Another membership

Last week I went to a trustees’ meeting of Pond Conservation and felt guilty that I hadn’t yet got around actually to joining.  So now I have.  I am a fully paid up member of an excellent but small conservation organisation. It’s interesting that we use (actually, I don’t) pond life as a term of…

Importing diseases

The government is about to spend a pittance on a very serious problem – but it should be celebrated as a start. Our trees are under threat from imported diseases – perhaps from some diseases that stand a better chance of becoming established under new climate scenarios. So Defra and the (unreconstructed) Forestry Commission have…