Who could resist a butterfly? Butterflies are among nature’s most colourful and spectacular creatures, which are used across the world as symbols of beauty and spirituality. Sadly, they are also one our most seriously threatened groups of wildlife. This is the case for why Butterfly Conservation, the NGO that works to conserve butterflies and moths,…
BLOG POSTS
Minox Challenge – seven Guest Blogs
At 10-minute intervals after this blog appears so will the Guest Blogs of seven organisations that have taken up the Minox Challenge. They are published in the order in which they were received. I am grateful to all seven organisations, and their Chief Executives (or deputies in the cases of Plantlife and MARINElife which don’t…
Minox review (and challenge)
Regular readers will remember that Minox sent me a pair of binoculars to review and that they will be auctioned on this site in the next few weeks and the money will go to the wildlife conservation charity of your choice. So what do I make of the Minox 10x43HD binoculars? I have become quite…
Sunday Book Review – The Crossley ID Guide by Richard Crossley and Dominic Couzens
This review is part of a ‘blog tour‘ where yesterday, this book, The Crossley ID Guide, was reviewed by 10,000 Birds. This is a useful guide to bird identification aimed at beginners and intermediate birders. I guess I would put myself at the high end of intermediate as I know all the common birds…
Saturday cartoon – by Ralph Underhill
Pigeons and doves
I went out for a walk on Monday morning and as I parked the car at 0710 a large flock of pigeons flew past. Just Woodpigeons, nothing very special, but hundreds of them so quite interesting. And then another flew past, and another and I started counting. In 15 minutes c5000 birds flew past; and…
LEAF – turn over a new one
On Monday I went to the Linking Environment and Farming President’s conference in the headquarters of HSBC in Canary Wharf. I have a lot of time for LEAF, although there were a few moments on Monday when I thought I might have stumbled into an NFU conference instead of a LEAF one. How long should…
Fighting for Birds – French review
Review from Ornithos, the magazine of the French Birdlife partner (soon to be known as ‘donnant une maison a la nature‘ – peut-etre? ‘Vivant, concret, souvent instructif et parfois captivant‘. 21 5-star reviews on Amazon – still makes a great Christmas present for the committed birdwatcher, nature conservationist or environmentalist. Buy here. All comments on…
WOS
Last Saturday I drove into Wales, to Monmouth, to spend the day at the meeting of the Welsh Ornithological Society. I gave a talk and listened to lots of others. This year is the 50th anniversary of the Gwent Ornithological Society so it was fitting that we were in Monmouth. I enjoyed hearing from Al…
Golden Eagle – Scotland’s favourite animal (but not on grouse moors)
The Golden Eagle is Scotland’s favourite wild animal – by quite a long way according to the voting. It claimed the top spot ahead of four lovely mammals; Red Squirrel, Red Deer, Otter and Harbour Seal. What a shame then that so many places ideally suited to Golden Eagles lack their presence. Only three of…