I listen to the Today programme a lot – I’m awake at those hours and I’m interested in politics and current affairs. I sometimes wince at the tone and content of their environmental coverage. If this programme had the same standards of challenge and enquiry on environmental matters as it does on sometimes trvial events…
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Sunday book review – In Search of One Last Song by Patrick Galbraith
This book, out of 55 I reviewed in 2022, was the title I chose as my wildlife book of the year – I recommend it highly. You can buy this book from Bookshop.org and I have set up a booklist to make that easy through this link https://uk.bookshop.org/shop/MarkAvery Disclosure: I am an affiliate of Bookshop.org…
Guest blog – Burdens Not Gain – have we all missed a trick? by an anonymous planning ecologist
For the last 10 years I’ve been the planning ecologist for a local authority. The role of planning ecologist is little-understood by the wider public but that’s not the subject of this article. Instead, my point is about Biodiversity Net Gain and whether we have confidence the private market will deliver this public good. I…
Three years in the garden – on this date
Three years, the first of which was the glorious spring of lockdown (best), then last year’s cold drear spring (worst) and now this year (middling).
Sunday book review – Saving Eden by Kevin Corcoran
I hadn’t heard of The Gearagh until I received this book. I can be forgiven for that, perhaps, because it is in Ireland and essentially this superb site for wildlife was destroyed a few years before I was born, in the 1950s. This book describes what we lost and how we lost it. The Gearagh…
Published today – The Trespasser’s Companion by Nick Hayes
This is a follow-up to the same author’s Book of Trespass from 2020 – see review here – and just as I loved the first book I love this one too. Perhaps even more so. It’s a book with attitude, and I like that. I also agree with a great deal of it, although even…
Sunday book review – Thin Places by Kerri ni Dochartaigh
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This is another book published last year, which I missed even though I knew it was coming. If the name of the author rings a faint bell with readers of this blog then it is because she won a little writing competition held here in December 2016. This is an immensely powerful book. I couldn’t…
Sunday book review – When There Were Birds by Roy and Lesley Adkins
This book is described by its publisher, on the jacket flap, as a social history of Britain that charts the complex connections between birds and people, and in a way it is. But if it were that, I’m not sure I would have enjoyed it quite as much as I did. For me, this is…
White-tailed Eagle chicks hatch in Cairngorms, yesterday evening – RSPB press release
Visitors to RSPB Scotland’s Abernethy nature reserve have enjoyed the first ever live footage of a wild white-tailed eagle hatching in the UK. The young eaglet is the offspring of Shona and Finn, a pair who are nesting in the vast landscape of the Cairngorms Connect partnership, of which RSPB Scotland is part. Since eggs…
Mountain Hares
Mountain Hares are native to Britain and Ireland, unlike Brown Hares, so we should look after them. This very recent paper; … which is public access has an arresting title and the text looks pretty convincing to me. Grouse moors not great for Mountain Hares in the Peak District. Read the paper, look at the…