This must be one of the weirdest ever Wallcreeper photographs. They breed on remote cliffs, usually at low density, and that largely grey plumage makes them difficult to spot, unless they fly to reveal their red, black and white wings. In all my years of birdwatching I haven’t seen very many Wallcreepers, but each of…
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Belmont County, Ohio
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Two years ago today, near the bank of the Ohio River which forms the border between eastern Ohio and western West Virginia, there was a blow-out at a gas well owned by XTO Energy, a subsidiary of ExxonMobil, which took 20 days to get under control. The gas well was about to be put into…
Saturday cartoon by Ralph Underhill
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Farcical Villiers visit to flood-stricken Calder Valley
I like the Upper Calder Valley Plain Speaker – have a look at what they write about the DEFRA Secretary of State’s (now former Secretary of State’s) visit to flood-stricken Hebden Bridge – click here
Extensive use of lead
Extensive use of toxic lead paint on Big Ben contributes to £19m price-hike in renovation. I’m pretty sure that there isn’t 6000 tonnes of lead in Big Ben but that amount is added irretrievably to the countryside every year. And, of course, shooters all over the country, through choice not necessity, have been shooting toxic…
Shuffling
Well, well, well. Off goes the Chancellor saying that no self-respecting minister would allow the PM to dictate who his aids should be, which must make Rishi Sunak lacking in self respect. It is very broad-minded of Johnson to replace an alumnus of Downend Comprehensive with a Wykhamist though. Rishi Sunak, as MP for Richmond,…
Grouse moor owner paid for PM’s holiday on Mustique – or maybe he didn’t
Whether or not David Ross of Carphone Warehouse fame did or didn’t pay for the PM’s £15,000 Christmas break (see here, here, here) there’s no getting away from the closeness of the grouse shooters to the government. This blog has written before about David Ross, his shooting lodge in the North York Moors and the…
Banning driven grouse shooting – we are in the end game
While we wait for the Petitions Committee to be formed anew after the general election, and then have a meeting, and then decide on when to debate this matter, the world must look like a hostile place for the grouse shooting industry. The recent floods point again to land use in the uplands needing to…
RSPB reaction to HS2
Emma Marsh, RSPB Director England, said: The construction of this railway will destroy wildlife and HS2Ltd does not have a viable plan for how it is going to mitigate or compensate for these losses. Giving HS2 the go-ahead, without a plan that benefits nature, in the current ecological emergency, is the wrong decision. We must…
Announcement from Plantlife
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On behalf of the Board of Trustees, I am delighted to welcome Ian Dunn as Plantlife’s new Chief Executive starting on 17 February. Having trained originally as an environmental scientist, Ian is passionate about nature conservation. He is a board member of UK Antarctic Heritage Trust and the Scottish Association for Marine Science, and is a…