Bird Fair – Day 1

It’s actually quite hard work enjoying yourself at the Bird Fair – I don’t mean that you can’t enjoy yourself, just that it is a bit knackering.  It doesn’t quite have the buzz of the Cheltenham Festival for me but today the period between 0930 and 1730 just whizzed by. I have this strategy of…

Captive audience at RSPB Arne

Today I’ll be at the Bird Fair (come up and say hello – and perhaps buy a copy of Blogging for Nature from me) but last Thursday I was still on holiday in Dorset having not seen white-beaked dolphin and not seen Adonis blue butterfly.  What would I not see next? Arne had already provided…

Beautiful butterflies were missing

Adonis was the subject of a tug of love between Aphrodite and Persephone because of his great beauty. The Adonis blue is pretty good-looking too and restricted to chalk grassland sites such as are to be found in Dorset, so Wednesday, after being stood up by white-beaked dolphins, was Adonis blue day.  Butterflies are pretty…

Quotas – has their time come?

Driven grouse shooting is not without its benefits to the economy and ecology of the uplands although we could argue for years (and have done!) over exactly what are those benefits.  The trouble with it is that it is based on the illegal killing of several protected raptor species (most notably, but not exclusively, golden…