Tim writes: if Lapwings are being watched by a predator (or a human) they sometimes pretend to have a nest in a different area to where their actual nest is. Because of this Lapwings were thought to be deceitful birds and the collective noun is a deceit of Lapwings. Chaucer said that the bird was…
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Saturday cartoon by Ralph Underhill
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Feathers 2
In the previous blog I estimated the number of feathers on living wild birds to be around 420 trillion. Now I’ve had the chance to check a few things I’d like to revise the estimate a little. The logic strikes me as pretty good. How many (wild) birds are there in the world and simply…
Feathers 1
I was sitting in the garden, looking up at the sky, waiting for an exciting bird to fly over, when, as you do, I started thinking about how many feathers there are in the world. Now I’m not thinking about the ones in duvets, pillows or jackets, I’m thinking about live feathers attached to live…
Voting will close on Sunday evening
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There have been over 190 votes cast for your favourite entry in this blog’s Lockdown Nature-writing challenge. Voting will close on Sunday evening after I have watched the last episode of Primates on TV. The voting is largely for fun but the more people who vote, the more the authors will feel that their work…
What will Boris say?
By now I would normally have done my first visit to each of my two Breeding Bird Survey squares. But under the current circumstances I thought I ought to let the time pass and check what the instructions were on the BTO website. Here they are: So, I was doing the right thing by not…
Guest blog – The Langholm Moor Community Buyout by Kevin Cumming
My name is Kevin Cumming. I work for a charity called the Langholm Initiative (LI) based in the town of Langholm in Dumfries and Galloway in Scotland. I hold a BA (hons) in Business Administration and an MSc in Conservation and Management of Protected Areas. Currently I manage the LI’s Wild Eskdale project which aims…
Press release – Langholm Community
Southern Scotland’s biggest community land buyout launches crowdfunding campaign to create vast new nature reserve An initiative to create a vast new nature reserve in Dumfries and Galloway through southern Scotland’s largest community land buyout is being launched today, with a £3 million crowdfunding campaign to help purchase 10,500 acres of Langholm Moor. The ambitious…
News: Natural England and the Peregrine chicks – not quite true…
You’ll probably remember the furore over Natural England licensing the taking of 6 Peregrine chicks from the wild in England. Well, when I say remember, it has hardly died down. See my original blog, Gary Wall’s guest blog, a further blog by me and a guest blog by OneKind’s Bob Elliot. We all thought, probably…
Roseate Terns on Coquet Island – RSPB press release
Chance of a rosy future with record year for roseate terns 2019 saw a record-breaking 122 pairs of roseate terns, Europe’s rarest breeding seabird, on Coquet Island. Three webcams now installed on Coquet Island provide a window into the life of roseate terns and puffins. In 2019 there was a record-breaking 122 breeding pairs of…