My free lance

I’m pretty much committed for the first half of this year but after that I’m not sure what I’ll be doing. This is normal for freelancers like myself. If you can see some work that I could do for you in the second half of 2015 then feel free to get in touch and we…

Kepler 438b

Kepler 438b is one of the most Earth-like planets yet discovered. It circulates its sun every 35 days, the sky is red, and its likely to be rocky and hot – but there might be life there.  And it’s only 470 light-years away! We keep wondering whether there is life on other planets but pay…

Defra – what are you for? 1

Defra – what are you for these days? You seem to lack energy (and direction and even any ideas). The performance of Defra has been woeful under the coalition government. Apart from the introduction of a small amount of money for Nature Improvement Areas (of which we have heard very little since) what has Defra…

QI

Thank you to everyone who has told me that my name was mentioned on QI at the weekend – and so it was! I quite like QI, and find myself watching it on Dave when there really doesn’t seem to be anything else on TV. Here is the link to the programme and I recommend…

Very grey…

I went twitching yesterday…sort of. In fact, I went twitching on Sunday too, but only yesterday was successful. There is a Great Grey Shrike in Northants, and that doesn’t happen that often, and not often in the first days of January, so I thought I’d go and have a look for it. Sunday was a…

Hen Harrier Day 2015 – thoughts?

It’s time to start thinking about what to do on Hen Harrier Day 2015 – which will be Sunday 9 August (the Sunday before the Inglorious 12th). Birders Against Wildlife Crime are organising a conference in Buxton in March and I’m sure that the subject will come up there.   Here are some questions to…

How Labour could get some green votes

It’s a matter of continuing disappointment that the Labour Party appears not to have anything much to say on wildlife and rural issues. Maybe there will be a mesmerising  list of positive policy announcements over the weeks and months running up to the general election (four calendar months distant on Wednesday (and actually 17 weeks…

If you liked Fighting for Birds then…

       … you’ve got an 86% chance of liking A Message from Martha.   That’s what the readers’ poll said, anyway. Of the 222 of you who read Fighting for Birds and rated it either ‘Excellent’ or ‘Good’ then 86% of you rated A Message from Martha as ‘Excellent’ or ‘Good’ too.

Sunday book review – Claxton by Mark Cocker

This is a lovely book. It has appeared in lots of lists of nature books of the year over the last few weeks as it was published in 2014, but I’ve only just been reading it over Christmas and the New Year and so, for me, it is a book of 2015. Day by day…