Forty years ago, in early April 1980 I helped my boss Dr John Krebs (now Prof The Lord Krebs of Wytham Woods, FRS) to finish off a field experiment looking at the function of bird song. Bird song is thought (I would say known, actually) to play important roles in both territorial defence (in birds…
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Thanks for your advice…
… on who I should vote for as Labour leader. I have voted for Keir Starmer.
Guest blog – Pheasants and Adders by Nigel Hand
Nigel Hand, a professional herpetologist, has been at the forefront of UK reptile and adder conservation and research for over twenty years, developing a methodology of external radio transmitter attachment to track this relatively small snake. His monitoring reptiles and radio tracking adders has provided valuable insights into their secret habits and the issues they…
Ban driven grouse shooting to be debated again in Westminster parliament
We do not have a date yet but this petition will be debated in the next few weeks, we hope. See Wild Justice blog for a few more details. Sign up to Wild Justice newsletter for updates.
Bird song (6) – Blackbird
I walked to the postbox down our street the other evening. The post is collected at 9am but so often when I think ‘I’ll pop along in the morning’ I later end up thinking ‘Missed the post again’. So in the evening gloom I strolled along the road past Victorian red-brick houses on the right….
Sunday book review – An Indifference of Birds by Richard Smyth
Comments Off on Sunday book review – An Indifference of Birds by Richard Smyth
This short book is a good read, and is a very different, but not indifferent, book. It only amounts to just over 100 pages but there are more novel perspectives in here than you’ll find in many books three times the length. And the author writes in an engaging manner. There are five chapters (Messy…
Tim Melling – Chinese Mountain Cat
Tim writes: Chinese Mountain Cat (also known as Chinese Desert or Steppe Cat) is a rare and little-known species that is endemic to a small area of western central China on the north-east edge of the Tibetan Plateau. They occur at high altitude (2800-4100 m asl) in grasslands and are mainly nocturnal and wary. I…
Confidence?
A good chunk of biological reality puts government in its place. As a biologist, though far from an epidemiologist, I listen to government ministers, radio presenters, a rag bag of political pundits, talking about coronavirus and I just keep thinking ‘You don’t have a clue what you are talking about, do you? You said that…
Saturday cartoon by Ralph Underhill
Lost in the post…?
I’m gutted of course not to have received my invitation to this important event organised by the GWCT. Let’s hope the report is more accurate than the invitation. You’d think that the GWCT would know, somehow, that their chair, the often-amiable Sir James Paice, was never the Secretary of State for DEFRA but was the…