I know I won’t get any sympathy for this, but I feel I am missing out on the true spring experience this year. I’ve just spent two weeks in Spain and got back to the UK on Tuesday evening. Before I left I had seen or heard Chiffchaff, Blackcap, Willow Warbler and Sand Martin at…
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I like these daffodils
I was driving through the Picos de Europa on Monday morning, as one does, and there were loads of wild daffodils (I assume!) in the woods and fields. Lovely. So different from those feral things that litter our roadsides in too many places.
Guest blog by Scotland: the Big Picture
The Red Squirrel: A Future in the Forest SCOTLAND: The Big Picture is a team of media professionals – photographers, filmmakers, writers and designers – fusing ecological science with visual storytelling to amplify the case for a wilder Scotland. Though undoubtedly spectacular, Scotland is an ecological shadow of its former self. Its turbulent past has…
Tilting at windmills
Two images of distant windfarms taken in Spain last week (both rather poor images I’m afraid – partly the heat haze but largely the photographer). These would keep Don Quixote busy for quite a while – both included more than a hundred individual turbines. Now I know nothing about the environmental impact assessments that may…
Guest blog – Badger culling: time to work together? by Prof Rosie Woodroffe
Rosie Woodroffe is an ecologist and former member of the Independent Scientific Group on Cattle TB, which advised government on TB control for 10 years. She is a Senior Research Fellow at the Zoological Society of London and a Visiting Professor at Imperial College London. She is on Twitter at @rosiewoodroffe. Badger culling: time to…
The streets of Granada
There is is a call made by House Sparrows that, in the books, would normally be rendered as ‘cheep!’. After the Semana Santa processions, the streets of Granada are spattered with candle wax. People skid over the cobbbled streets on the wax and their shoes make the same noise as a House Sparrow going…
Sunday book review – The Shark and the Albatross by John Aitchison
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Reviewed by Ian Carter John Aitchison is, justifiably, one of our most acclaimed wildlife filmmakers, having worked on well-known series such as Frozen Planet, Yellowstone, Hebrides and Springwatch. This book tells the background story to some of his most memorable trips. If you watch these programmes regularly then some of the scenes he describes will…
Saturday cartoon by Ralph Underhill
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An Unreliable History of Birdwatching (3) – by Paul Thomas
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Harsh but true
Do you recall what Boabdil’s mother said to him? Boabdil, or Muhammed XII of Granada, was the last Moorish ruler of Granada and as other parts of the Moorish empire in Spain fell to the Castilleans only Granada was left in 1491. Boabdil had to cede the city to Ferdinand and Isobella but was allowed…