It looks like there will only be one Hen Harrier Day event in the UK in 2019 – but everyone who cares about this bird and wants to see an end to its persecution is invited. Hen Harrier Day events started in 2014 and have been held at locations from Northern Ireland to inside the…
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RSPB press release
Solar deal powers up RSPB nature reserves The RSPB, the country’s largest nature conservation charity, has used a new finance deal with Triodos Bank to help install renewable energy projects across its nature reserves. A loan of £710,000 has supported the installation of over 700 solar panels at seven nature reserves, including Minsmere, The Lodge…
June Birdwatch
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June’s Birdwatch is full of good stuff. This article about the World Land Trust‘s 30th anniversary is well worth a read, for example. There’s an identification guide to pratincoles which took me back to August 1973, I think it was 1973, when two friends and I found a Black-winged Pratincole in Norfolk. It must be…
Garden birds in May 2019
This year I am keeping a list of birds seen in or from my garden. I didn’t add any species for the year in May – which is a bit surprising. Although, I was in eastern Europe for a couple of weeks so this was really a half-month! However, it is a sad sign of…
Man with stick and figleaf
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I met this man in the Wilanow Palace Park in Warsaw a few days ago. I think he is Hercules but he reminded me that Michael Gove is supposed to be coming up with a licensing system for lethal control of corvids (and doesn’t seem to be making much progress). I have no personal knowledge…
Guest blog – I must tell you something of the Beaver by Derek Gow
“I must tell you something of the Beaver”. When William Harrison the Canon of Windsor wrote those words in 1577 he presented his description of the beaver he knew in the following fashion “Certes the tail of this beast is like unto a thin whetstone, as the bodie unto a monstrous rat: the beast also…
CIEEM press release
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Scottish Ecologist Awarded Profession’s Highest Accolade Professor Desmond B.A. Thompson FCIEEM FRSE has been awarded the 2019 CIEEM Medal Des Thompson is a highly influential ecologist who has made an outstanding and life-long contribution to nature conservation and upland ecology at both national and international levels. An excellent communicator, a brilliant scientific administrator and an…
Paul Leyland – Hairy Shieldbug
The Hairy Shieldbug (Dolycoris baccarum) is a large and distinctive bug, 10-12mm overall. It can be seen as a adult in any month but in winter is a dull brown. This is a bright summer specimen which I found in my wildlife patch a couple of days ago [Mark writes; plus a delay of a…
Why I wrote The Blue Hare – by Hugh Webster
After his site was hit with technical problems on the same day my book was reviewed there, Mark kindly offered me the option to post a guest blog on how I came to write the book. The idea to write The Blue Hare came to me in October 2016 while I was working at a…
Tim Melling – Cobb’s Wren
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Tim writes: Cobb’s Wren (Troglodytes cobbi) is endemic to the Falkland Islands, which means it occurs nowhere else on the planet. And even within the Falkland Islands it only occurs on smaller offshore islands where rats have not been introduced. On the larger islands introduced rats have driven them to extinction. I photographed this…