I spend a lot of my time these days trying to persuade those who love nature to become more politically active. I’m often told that all politicians are the same: they are not. They never were, and they never will be. …
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Adverts
Have a look at these two advertisements – they are very different in what they say about nature. Toys ‘R’ Us advertisment. Chipotle advert. Which did you like best? You may have noticed that adverts have appeared in the right hand sidebar of this webpage. I’ve not been terribly keen on the idea of having…
Bird Atlas – Conservation successes, writ large
If you want an example of landscape-scale nature conservation then look at the maps for Red Kite – or in many cases, just look out of the window and see a Red Kite! From the first breeding Atlas to this one the Red Kite has ceased to be a solely Welsh bird in Britain and…
Bird Atlas – Farmland birds
Pictures can get messages across better than words sometimes. As one flicks through the pages of this Atlas one keeps seeing farmland species with shrinking distributions. But the key to truly appreciating the scale of what is happening to these familiar birds is to look at the maps of change of relative abundance. Time after…
New Networks for Nature
I attended the fifth New Networks for Nature meeting in Stamford on Friday and Saturday. It’s a different type of meeting – refreshingly different. Where else would you get organic food for lunch, haikus, a panel debate with leading thinkers on environmental matters, the President of the SWLA, three talks about non-native/introduced/alien species, some young…
Bird Atlas – Winter
Winter really isn’t as interesting as the breeding season – but it’s quite interesting. Most resident passerine species have very similar distributions in the winter to those in the summer. That may sound obvious, but it needn’t necessarily be so, need it? Our Jackdaws and Chaffinches could all move to different areas of the country…
Nature Check
Today, 41 organisations, under the banner of Wildlife and Countryside Link, publish their assessment of Government’s progress over the last 12 months, on its own stated commitments (a report called Nature Check). In four areas Government gets the green light indicating good progress, in nine areas a red light for failure, and in 12 areas…
Bird Atlas – Ireland
Although we all will slip into talking about this fine book as the BTO Atlas it is the Atlas of the BTO, Scottish Ornithologists’ Club and Birdwatch Ireland. And it is the People’s Atlas too! Ireland, north and south of the border, is an interesting place – as revealed many times over in this Atlas….
The Minox challenge results
In the end it was close, but the winner was: the rspb. The total 1352 votes cast were as follows: rspb 311 The Wildlife Trusts 274 Buglife 264 Butterfly Conservation 231 BTO 128 Plantlife 75 MARINElife 69 Well done to the rspb – but well done to all. I hope that being able to…
Sunday Book Review – Bird Atlas 2007-11 by Dawn Balmer et al.
I’ve seen Andy Clements quoted as saying that this is the ‘most important British and Irish bird book for two decades‘ and once or twice thought – well, we’ll be the judge of that! And you must judge for yourself, but I would find it difficult to argue. And not only is this book important,…