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…
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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
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…
Sunday book review – The Joy of Birdwatching (various authors)
Not intended, I’m sure, as a sequel to the 1972 classic, The Joy of Sex, but potentially a book to get the pulse racing if you are keen to see lots of species of bird all over the world. I’ve seen c1400 or so, a great many of them whilst working, which means there are…
RSPB makes a statement
Yesterday, the RSPB made a statement about its ‘comprehensive review of operations’ – click here. I’ve pasted the full statement, in blue, below as it’s not that easy to find on the RSPB website. It’s certainly not front-page news. A few comments on these 1149 words: I was itching to edit it into something more closely…