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From 9am I will publish the dozen shortlisted entries to this blog’s Lockdown Nature-writing Challenge. I hope you enjoy reading them – I certainly did. And from 10am you’ll be able to start voting for your favourite. A tip: by the time you read the last one you will have forgotten which was which earlier…

Tim writes: The name implies that this is a tropical species but it also occurs throughout the Southern Himalayas, so also goes by the name of Himalayan Porcupine (Histrix brachyura).  Its scientific name translates as short-tailed porcupine, even though its tail is quite long, but this distinguishes it from the Long-tailed Porcupine (Trichys fasciculata), which…

Tomorrow is International Dawn Chorus Day. Read Chris Baines’s guest blog about how this all started. Sunrise is about 5:20am but it gets light before then and birds start singing before it gets light. But the forecast is fine so I’ll set the alarm for 4:30am and step outside for half an hour or so….

Google Analytics tells me that this blog had over 111,000 pageviews in April – that’s slightly down on the 117,000 pageviews last April (but then NE didn’t withdraw the general licences this year). Any month on this blog, particularly one with 30 days rather than 31, with 100,000+ pageviews is noteworthy. There were four 100k+…