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…
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This blog’s books of 2024.
I have reviewed 52 books on this blog this year – a wide-ranging varied selection including many high quality works. If you are looking for a Christmas present for a nature-loving naturalist then this list might give you some ideas and I’ve whittled it down to a shortlist of 10 books that most impressed me…
Stephen Moss’s 2024 Round-up of Nature Books
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Stephen Moss is an author and naturalist based in Somerset. Having retired from running the MA Nature and Travel Writing at Bath Spa University he is now a Visiting Research Fellow there. Stephen’s latest books are the 2023 Wainwright-Prize-shortlisted Ten Birds that Changed the World (Guardian Faber) and The Starling: a Biography (Square Peg), the…
RSPB replies to my open letter (3)
This blog follows those of Tuesday and Wednesday in publishing the RSPB Chair’s response to 10 questions I posed. Here are the RSPB’s replies to questions 7-10. My questions are bold, followed by Sir Andrew Cahn’s responses in blue and my comments in green. How many foxes were killed on RSPB nature reserves in each…
RSPB replies to my open letter (2)
This blog follows yesterday’s in publishing the RSPB Chair’s response Yesterday Qs1-4, today Qs5-6) to my impertinent questions. This series will complete (Qs7-10) tomorrow. My questions are bold, followed by Sir Andrew Cahn’s responses in blue and my comments in green. 5. I find that almost every RSPB communication I receive is trying to get…
RSPB replies to my open letter (1)
I recently wrote to the RSPB’s new Chair of Council, Sir Andrew Cahn, with a list of 10 questions about what the RSPB is up to these days – click here. I received a response on Friday and here I post the RSPB’s answers to the first four of my questions with more to follow…
Sunday book review – Protected Species and Biodiversity by Tim Reed
This is a handbook and I think it will be a very useful handbook for local authority planners and ecologists who want to do a good job for nature. It is not a book to read for pleasure but that’s simply because it’s a book to read for information and knowledge. For example, Chapter 5’s…
Guest blog – Walshaw Turbine 31 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 the…
RSPB press release – Slender-billed Curlew considered extinct
Global extinction of a bird from mainland Europe and the Mediterranean confirmed by scientists This is the first known global bird extinction from mainland Europe, North Africa and West Asia. The last irrefutable sighting of the Slender-billed Curlew was in February 1995 in Morocco. This new study is a stark warning of the need to…
Sunday book review – The Tree Atlas by Matthew Collins with Thomas Rutter
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This is a lovely book – beautiful trees, photographed well (it helps that they don’t run around I guess) and in gorgeous surroundings. Fifty types of tree from across the world are selected and that simple idea works very well. We are given portraits of individual trees and landscapes clothed in their masses as well…