A move away from meat eating. I’m nowhere near vegetarian, and even further away from being vegan, but my meat consumption is very low these days. Particularly these days because it’s summer – and I love salads – and because it tends to be when eating out that I am tempted into eating more meat…
BLOG POSTS
Paul Leyland – Large Narcissus Fly
Comments Off on Paul Leyland – Large Narcissus Fly
Social Distancing Week 10. Large Narcissus Fly. Paul writes: I’ve started seeing this distinctive fly around the village in the last week. It will be a regular visitor to a lot of gardens at this time of year. The Large Narcissus Fly (Meredon equestris) is a hoverfly which is so named because its larvae develop…
Sunday book review – Europe’s Dragonflies by Dave Smallshire and Andy Swash
This photographic guide to Europe’s dragonflies is amazing, although WILDGuides have built up such a reputation for producing high quality books of this sort that it doesn’t come as a surprise really. But it is still amazing. Now, I have to confess that my knowledge of odonata is miniscule so the book could be riddled…
Tim Melling – Jack Snipe
Tim writes: I don’t consider myself to be a photographer. I’m a wildlife enthusiast who takes photographs of the things I see. So serious photographers will look with scorn at this photograph as being dull and lacking detail. But keen birdwatchers will (hopefully) be impressed knowing what a lucky shot this is because in my…
Stephen Halton – Wood Warbler
Stephen sent me this image of his watercolour of a Wood Warbler after I enthused about the bird in my series of blogs on bird song. It’s a lovely image, don’t you think? And it gives me the excuse, if any were needed, to reproduce Stephen’s poem about the bird’s habitat too, which first appeared…
After…things I would like to be different (3)
Sitting in my garden I now see and hear far fewer planes crossing the east Northants skies. Aside from Icelandic volcanoes, nothing has jolted our addiction to flying as effectively as a global pandemic. A tiny virus has done more to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from aviation than all the good intentions of individuals and…
11 weeks to go… Hen Harrier Day 2020
Comments Off on 11 weeks to go… Hen Harrier Day 2020
Eleven weeks tomorrow there will be an online Hen Harrier Day broadcast live over t’internet. I read in the Hen Harrier Day newsletter this week that planning is going well, and from what I’ve heard more directly there are some big plans and lots of people working very hard already. Why not sign up to…
After…things I would like to be different (2)
My Twitter timeline seems to be full of pictures of mown verges where tidiness has been prioritised over nature. I totally accept that for reasons of road safety some grass cutting is needed at some time in some places, but there seems to be an awful lot of it going on – and it happens…
Gökotta
I’m writing this first blog of the day at 5am after having enjoyed 45 minutes of Gökotta. I didn’t set the alarm to wake up at 4am, I hardly ever set an alarm as waking up is not a problem, but going to bed soon after 9pm these days often results in me being wide…
After…things I would like to be different (1)
After coronavirus (which might be quite a long way away), or at least when the world settles down to a new normal, there are some things that I’d like to be different. So over the next days and weeks I’m going to write them down. They will mostly be to do with our relationship with…