Rare ‘rainbow birds’ set up summer home in Norfolk Seven bee-eaters were first spotted over the Jubilee Weekend and are now being closely monitored by the RSPB and the North East Norfolk Bird Club. Ensuring the protection of these rare birds, the only ones breeding in the UK, is crucial if they are to raise…
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Sunday book review – The Corncrake by Frank Rennie
This book is about a bird which seems to be trying quite hard to go extinct but which was, about a century ago, a very familiar part of the countryside throughout the UK. The Corncrake is a bird that once lived in long grass and other dense vegetation right across Europe and into Asia…
RSPB press release
Huge concern for UK’s seabirds as number dying from Avian Influenza continues to increase Impacts of Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza (HPAI) on wild birds are intensifying fast in Scotland with reports of thousands of dead or dying seabirds and presumed cases now appearing in England. Shetland appears to be most heavily affected, but increasing reports…
Sunday book review – After They’re Gone by Peter Marren
Peter Marren is friend of mine (although I haven’t clapped eyes on him for ages) and I have favourably reviewed several of his books here in the past (The Consolation of Nature, with Jeremy Mynott and Michael McCarthy, Chasing the Ghost, Where the Wild Thyme Blew, Rainbow Dust) and so it might not come as…
John Burton 1944 – 2022
John Burton passed away at his home in Suffolk on Sunday morning. I’ve known John mostly through the World Land Trust with which I’ve been connected for over a decade as a council member, a trustee and latterly as chair of trustees. John’s association with WLT is far longer and far more personal as he…
Sunday book review – Field Guide to Whales, Dolphins and Porpoises by Mark Carwardine
I went to a talk at the 2018 Bird Fair by the author when he talked about the preparation of this book – and now here it is. It’s a fine field guide. And it really is a field guide – a slim volume that can easily be pocketed in a coat and brought out…
Sunday book review – Peak District by Penny Anderson
This is a standard New Naturalist – a series of books that doesn’t feel very new, or at all ground-breaking these days. Penny Anderson gives a workpersonlike account of the wildlife and ecology of this area, mostly a National Park, and the habitats it includes. There is mention of raptor persecution. Hen Harrier appears in…
That exemption from covid regulations for grouse shooting – remember?
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BBS1
It was a bit of a dull day when I did my first visit to one of my two Breeding Bird Survey squares – the sun came out a bit later. But an early morning stroll recording birds cannot ever be dull, can it? I was hopeful that I might add Cattle gret to the…
Today at 10:30 – Skydancer Day ’22
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