Standing up for Nature
This book is set a few miles from where I live – down the River Nene a few miles – around Oundle. The author makes regular walks, through the calendar year, and covers quite a lot of ground beside the river near his home. He sees much of the local Kingfishers, but much more besides….
This book takes the Japanese view of many mini-seasons of a few days and fits it to the natural rhythms of UK wildlife. It’s close to an approach tried before by Lev Parikian (Light Rains Sometimes Fall – reviewed here) but in my view, it’s done even more successfully here. The four authors took the…
This is the book of the series – and I loved the 5-episode TV series. But the TV series moved around the world and moved us back in time through hundreds of millions of years and explored our home through a liberal use of moving computer generated images. All that moving – it’s what television…
This is a wonderful book and it will undoubtedly be one of my top-10 books of the year for 2023. It is a self-published account of studies of this species, many of them led or enabled by the book’s author. And he did all this alongside his actual work being a research scientist in various…
I would rarely differ from George Monbiot but I will here because I think he is probably wrong, and I am probably right. In his piece in The Guardian yesterday George essentially writes what people were saying a week ago – that the RSPB caved in to political pressure and one of their trustees, with…
There has been a certain amount of interest in the government’s proposals to opt out of protections for water bodies this week. Quite a lot of the interest has been because of a tweet (see above) put out by the RSPB, or part of the RSPB, or at least someone in the RSPB, but we’ll…
Mélusine Velde is a franco-american ecologist and flower enthusiast from Chicago, Illinois. During her studies at the University of Chicago and Imperial College London, she supplemented her classroom studies with extensive exploration of the parks and trails around her campuses, and most importantly, the plants and animals that inhabit them. Her interests and passions in…
Born and bred in Inverness, with a zoology degree from Aberdeen, I managed the reintroduction of Sea Eagles from Norway to Rum 1975 to 1985, for NCC, and remain on the UK Project Team as an independent. Moved to South Uist as Area Officer for SNH/NatureScot covering Uist, Barra and St Kilda 1992-2006. Retired to…
If you read British Wildlife, the subscription-only magazine that was launched back in 1989, and which has now reached its 35th volume, you may know my column Twitcher in the Swamp. It began halfway through Volume 1, and finally ended at the end of Volume 34. I have grown old with Twitcher. A single page…
The news that Amanda Anderson is leaving the Moorland Association after 10 years as Director doesn’t come as a great surprise. Ten years of batting on a very sticky wicket would be enough for most people. Also, Amanda has not been very high profile for a few years and the Moorland Association’s Twitter feed is…