Two new confirmed cases of H5N8 bird flu in wild birds: a Buzzard in Somerset and a Canada Goose in Dorset. No new cases affecting domestic or commercial stock. In France, the country whose farmers have been hardest hit by bird flu, the mass cull of farmed ducks is beginning to come to an end…
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Saturday cartoon by Ralph Underhill
Guest blog – Wildlife crime in Nepal by Peter Cosgrove
Peter Cosgrove carried out the first national pearl mussel survey and in one of those wonderful moments of happenstance, submitted his final report which recommended full legal protection during a periodic review of the Wildlife and Countryside Act. It had the desired effect and the law was changed in 1998 and Peter always highlights this…
A message from Åsa; a message from Sweden
Dear Mark, First I would like to thank you for your beautiful and sad book about the passenger pigeon. I came across it by chance as I looked into a bookshop´s window in Amsterdam. There it was, a small, red book with the word passenger pigeon written across it. I went in and bought it….
Guest blogs 2
If you have been directed to this page then it’s probably because you have sent me an unsolicited email offering me a Guest Blog of the following general type: I have some great topics for your site Hello , I’m [insert name] and I just wanted to say that your blog, looks great…
Guest blogs 1
This post is primarily designed for people who want to write Guest Blogs about some aspect of the natural world for this site. The blog is called Standing up for Nature and that gives you a clue about its focus. I am very happy to consider Guest Blogs for this site from individuals or from…
A crisis for the NFU?
Brexit means Brexit, and we now can be sure that it means a pretty stiff Brexit if not a hard one. This isn’t what most British farmers wanted but it’s what they are going to get. And it is going to be tough for them. I remember talking to a local sheep farmer about a…
You don’t have to be an expert.
I am firmly of the opinion (which doesn’t mean that it is correct of course) that vast numbers of British people are really quite knowledgeable about birds, and that even more of them are thrilled by them. In Remarkable Birds I suggest that ‘almost every human who has ever lived has probably seen or heard…
Curlew stories
One of the winners of the writing competition on this blog, Kerri Ni Dochartaigh, is collecting memories, stories and fragments from folk of all walks of life about ‘the majestic and hauntingly beautiful curlew’. Please send anything you would like to share to Kerri at inchwhooperswan@gmail.com .
Who would you like to sit a GCSE in natural history?
Mary Colwell’s e-petition to develop a GCSE in natural history is doing well – over 4000 signatures already (see here and here). If it already existed then I wonder how many Defra ministers would pass it?