Lockdown Nature-writing challenge

At the time of writing there have been 91 votes cast for your favourite of the dozen entries (probably more by now) in this challenge to write about nature and lockdown. One entry has 20 of the 91 votes and one has a single vote: and the rest are strung out pretty evenly across the…

Bird song (44) – Corncrake

Much more often heard, often at night, than seen, the Corncrake was once found in every county in Britain and Ireland – that’s about 150 years ago. But it made the mistakes of nesting in grasslands and needing to produce lots of young every year to survive. Corncrakes are short-lived – only 25-30% of adults…

And yet another week…

The UK is the country (out of 180+) with the third highest number of reported COVID-19 deaths … … but more importantly, it is the country with the fourth highest deaths per capita of population (ignoring Andorra and San Marino) . As predicted here last week, it didn’t take much predictive skill, we have overtaken…

Bird song (43) – Woodlark

Skylarks have wonderful songs but so do Woodlarks. Both have tuneful songs but they are very different so you won’t get them mixed up with each other, nor, really, with anything else. Woodlarks often, but not always, sing on the wing but instead of the Skylark’s normal hovering flight Woodlarks are always on the move,…

Primates 2

The gibbons were particularly funky. And it’s the birthday of the primate narrator of this series today. Happy Birthday Chris Packham!