I’m pleased to tell you that I have seen Turtle Dove in Northamptonshire this year. It was only just in Northants but it was a Turtle Dove. When I did a bird survey for my favourite local farmer, many years ago, I was delighted to find that there was a Turtle Dove purrrrrring on his…
BLOG POSTS
Let’s be reasonable.
I don’t know how often readers of this blog go back a few days and read the comments that continue to accrue on earlier posts. And I don’t know whether I would recommend it either – sometimes a late post is the best of the lot, but not always. So, I have little idea how…
Four butterfly moments
Number 1: I spent five minutes in the garden, looking at my ‘meadow’ and ended up looking at a Meadow Brown (so it must be a meadow, mustn’t it?). Aren’t butterflies lovely? But wouldn’t they look quite ugly if they didn’t have such amazing wings? Have you ever looked at a butterfly’s face and body? …
BB
As a boy, I loved the books of Denys Watkins-Pitchford (who signed off his writing as ‘BB’ after the size of shot used for shooting geese) so when I saw that there was a small exhibition of his ‘Life and Works’ at Lamport Hall, across the road from where he had lived as a boy…
Talking to the deaf
Last week the RSPB wrote to the Moorland Association thus; Amanda Anderson Director The Moorland Association 16 Castle Park Lancaster LA1 1YG Dear Ms Anderson The RSPB has always sought to work with the sport shooting community to create grouse moors that are environmentally sustainable and provide a safe home for birds of prey and…
Quite funny really
I don’t quite know what to make of the report concerning the BBC’s impartiality in reporting on rural affairs. Maybe you should read it for yourself and see how many times it makes you laugh. It made me chuckle quite a lot. Apparently the RSPB get a lot of air time because they are good…
Hen Harrier day update
Hen Harrier Day – 10 August 2014 – is an opportunity for the public to express their concern over the widespread, illegal killing of Hen Harriers. Action is being planned for five localities in the north of England for that day: the Forest of Bowland, Cumbria, Northumberland, Yorkshire and the Peak District. This is the…
Guest blog – The UK’s youth conservation movement is happening, and we’re already beginning to howl by Peter Cooper
Peter Cooper is a 20 year old amateur naturalist, writer, zoology student at the University of Exeter Cornwall Campus and avid badger watcher. He has written both whimsical nature writing and ‘proper’ environmental journalism on his personal blog and for The Independent, and is also the editor in chief of his university’s nature magazine ‘Life’….
Oscar Dewhurst – Ringed Plover
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Oscar writes: I came across this adult on the beach at Minsmere. It was running along the top of a ridge so I got ahead of it and took this as it came past me. Nikon D800, Nikon 600mm f4 AFS-II, Nikon 1.4x TC
Sunday book review – Meadowland by John Lewis-Stempel
There is grass, and there are meadows. They aren’t the same. As you travel around the countryside, particularly in the west of Britain (although, as in other respects, the country used to be less polarised than it now is), you will see a lot of grass. It looks pretty, or, at least, quite pretty, but…