Late last week, I heard that our appeal on the unlawfulness of Natural England’s brood-meddling scheme had failed. That judgment has now been handed down and is public. The RSPB’s similar but independent challenge has also failed. It’s difficult to say much about this result without sounding like a bad loser – tell me whether…
BLOG POSTS
DIM Wallace, 1933-2021
Donald Ian Mackenzie Wallace, (dim wallace as his artist’s signature was), known most usually as Ian Wallace, passed away in his sleep last Thursday night at the age of 88, not far short of his 89th birthday on 14 December. He was a writer, very definitely an artist, and a leading ornithological figure for a…
Sunday book review – The Colour of Silence by Clare Newton.
Comments Off on Sunday book review – The Colour of Silence by Clare Newton.
This approaches a coffee table book. Open the book at almost any page and you will find pleasant and arresting images, often close-ups of plants. And on many pages there are some thoughtful words, often quotes from the dead and famous. It’s a good book with which to spend some time. I enjoyed looking through…
I have a cold and a cough
They are just a cold and a cough because I’ve been sticking things up my nose and trying to find my tonsils to do lateral flow tests, all of which have been negative. I don’t think I’ve ever had hypochondiacal tendencies, I’m more likely to think and say ‘I expect it’s nothing’ but in these…
Latest Wild Justice legal challenge and crowdfunder
The Northern Ireland authorities license the unrestricted killing of Wood Pigeons and Rooks for conservtion purposes, unlike authorities elsewhere in the UK. They don’t explain why they do this or what the conservation benefits might be. In well ovr 30 years working in nature conservation I’ve never come across an instance where conservation has been…
Guest blog – Halloween: A Time to Celebrate Spiders by Debbie Rolls
Debbie is a freelance writer and lecturer in Teacher Education. She has contributed creative fiction and non-fiction to anthologies, has written for BBC Countryfile and is a regular contributor to Leeds Living website (https://leedsliving.co.uk/author/debbie-rolls/). She is in process of writing a children’s book presenting world history through the eyes of a spider. She can be…
Sunday book review – Biography of a Fly by Jaap Robben and Paul Faassen
This small book is great fun. All human life, I mean dipteran life, is here; birth, sex, death, shit and a buzzard. It’s quirky but also very informative. It will make you laugh but it will also make you think. It’s a fly’s life – all 23 days of it. The words by Jaap Robben…
Sunday book review – Mistletoe Winter by Roy Dennis
This is a companion book to Roy Dennis’s acclaimed Cottongrass Summer (reviewed here) which came out last year. It is another series of essays and they are wonderful. They certainly don’t feel, even remotely, like the ones that didn’t make it into the first volume. The standard is very high and I’ve read most of…
World Land Trust seeks two new trustees
Comments Off on World Land Trust seeks two new trustees
The World Land Trust is looking for two new trustees – might one of them be you?
Changes in the NGO world
Plantlife is one of my favourite small wildlife conservation charities and over many years I’ve worked with them and in the last decade done a few bits of work for them. And to be fair, in the past I’ve pinched a couple of their staff to come and work at the RSPB. There seems to…