I did it – did you? I saw some birds: House Sparrow (5), Long-tailed Tit (4), Blackbird (3), Blue Tit (3), Dunnock (2), Coal Tit (2), Great Tit (2), Collared Dove (1), Robin (1) and Goldfinch (1). Several species I expected were missing: Starling, Jackdaw, Woodpigeon… I have entered the data – have you?
BLOG POSTS
Sunday book review – Lost Animals, Disappearing Worlds by Barbara Allen
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This book brings together a selection of extinct species, many that have been pushed to global extinction in living memory or at least recently enough to have touched human culture, and tells their stories. In some cases they are given a voice to tell their own stories. It’s a compilation of 30 species (or…
Sunday book review – Seascape by Matthew Yeomans
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The author walks from the Gwent Levels in the south to Prestatyn in the north of Wales, not by the shorter route of skirting England but by the longer one of keeping salty water to one side. This isn’t the only book of a coastal walk that I am reading right now – there is…
BSBI press release – New Year Plant Hunt 2025 results
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Thousands of citizen scientists find hundreds of wildflowers blooming in midwinter Thousands of citizen scientists took part in the Botanical Society of Britain & Ireland’s fourteenth New Year Plant Hunt to find wild or naturalised plants flowering in midwinter. Their observations are providing us with robust evidence of how our wild plants are responding to a…
Guest blog – Walshaw Turbine 53 by John Page.
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John Page was born in the West Riding, a proud Yorkshireman and was taught to play cricket left-handed “ ’cos it flummoxes t’ bowler, and buggers up t’ field.” He went to university in London and Leeds, and enjoyed (most of the time) attempting to teach young people that there’s a big wide world beyond…
46,000 signatures to ban driven grouse shooting and an appalling government response
Our petition to ban driven grouse shooting has passed 46,000 and, fingers crossed, is making good progress towards the 100,000 signatures target that will secure a debate in the Westminster parliament on the future of intensive, unsustainable grouse shooting. Thank you to all who have signed so far – 50,000 signatures is not far away…
Guest blog – Walshaw Turbine 37 by Nick MacKinnon
Nick MacKinnon is a freelance teacher of Maths, English and Medieval History, and lives above Haworth, in the last inhabited house before Top Withens = Wuthering Heights. In 1992 he founded the successful Campaign to Save Radio 4 Long Wave while in plaster following a rock-climbing accident on Skye. His poem ‘The metric system’ won…
Guest blog – Walshaw Turbine 16 by John Page
John Page was born in the West Riding, a proud Yorkshireman and was taught to play cricket left-handed “’cos it flummoxes t’ bowler, and buggers up t’ field.” He went to university in London and Leeds, and enjoyed (most of the time) attempting to teach young people that there’s a big wide world beyond the…
RSPB press release: Record numbers of one of UK’s rarest moths reported at RSPB nature reserve
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The Dark Bordered Beauty moth is one of the UK’s rarest moth species and can only be found at a few sites in Scotland and a single location in England RSPB Insh Marshes nature reserve has had the best year ever for recording the moths with a population of 176, a significant increase from 81…
RSPB reaction (and mine) to Keir Starmer’s speech
In response to the Prime Minister’s ‘Plan for Change’ speech, the RSPB Chief Executive, Beccy Speight, said: ‘Deeply worrying rhetoric in the PM’s speech today, singling out regulators as naysayers when they can often be an under-resourced and desperately-needed defence, holding the line on protecting our natural world. The UK needs homes, renewable energy and…