Did you see Chris Packham’s programme on Asperger’s last night? Wow! I spoke to Chris yesterday on the phone – for the first time for a couple of months – and I might see him briefly this evening. I hope the Countryside Alliance, Simon Hart MP, Nicholas Soames MP and others watched the programme too….
BLOG POSTS
Last Friday
Friday was a good day. After a couple of days in Edinburgh seeing people including my son, I got the train down to London in sunshine. There were skeins of Pinkfeet flying over as we passed Dunbar, and the autumn colours in this part of Scotland are ahead of the trees back home. In London,…
Dr Coffey’s reading list (1)
Dr Therese Coffey is the junior minister at Defra. When Gavin Gamble’s e-petition in favour of banning driven grouse shooting passes 10,000 signatures then Dr Coffey will need to sign off a government response. In order that she does not make Defra look even more foolish than they do already I am providing a reading…
Guest blog – At the Gates of the Supreme Court by Chris Murphy
Chris Murphy has lived in Northern Ireland since arriving on the ferry from Liverpool in 1984 as the RSPB’s first, and last, Assistant Regional Officer. Together with his German wife, Doris, he’s known to shout HALT! when special places are threatened like the Belfast Harbour Pools and the Bog Meadows – once zoned for development,…
A phenomenon – Stuart Housden
Stuart Housden (above, 9th from the left and sixth from the right) retires from the RSPB and I was glad to attend his farewell do in Edinburgh last week. I thought I was at the RSPB for quite a long time, 25 years, but Stuart was there for 10 years before I breezed in and…
Dr Coffey – do the right thing
Dr Therese Coffey is the junior minister in Defra and some time fairly soon will be asked to sign off a government response to Gavin Gamble’s e-petition to ban driven grouse shooting assuming that it passes 10,000 signatures (which it will). Dr Coffey closed the debate on grouse shooting almost a year ago in a…
How are we doing?
It’s less than two full weeks since Gavin Gamble launched his e-petition to ban driven grouse shooting. It’s doing pretty well and I’ve slipped back into checking the progress of an e-petition every few hours (or even more frequently!). 123,077 signatures, our last total, seems a very, very long way away – but then it…
Paul Leyland – Hairy-footed Flower Bee
Paul writes: One of my favourite signs of spring is the appearance of Anthophora plumipes, or the Hairy-footed Flower Bee to give it its friendlier English name. This is a solitary bee which nests in walls or chimney stacks, In Hunmanby, on the north east edge of the Yorkshire Wolds, they usually appear at…
Wild food (7) – Blackberries by Ian Carter
No series on wild food would be complete without the humble blackberry and there can’t be many people who haven’t picked and eaten them at one time or another. Parents who are wary (or unaware) of almost all other forms of wild food will happily send their kids out blackberrying – at least that used…
Sunday book review – Winter Birds by Lars Jonsson
Reviewed by Ian Carter When I was first getting interested in wildlife in the 1980s, Lars Jonsson was seen almost as a cult figure by young birders. He had published a series of slimline fieldguides based on different habitats (mountains, sea coast etc) and these were later updated and amalgamated into one book covering all…