I started the year with a wildlife checklist for the first six months of the year and I can report alternating success. I failed to see Mandarin ducks in January, a bunch of migrants in March or Duke of Burgundy butterflies in May, but I succeeded with drake smew in February, nightingales in April and…
BLOG POSTS
Should we be grateful?
Sometimes governments say they are going to do 20 daft things (they never put it quite like that) and then only do 10 daft things and they expect us all to be grateful. There ought to be a word for it – a Greek word – maybe there is – for a victory which you…
Wuthering Moors 31
Blogs entitled ‘Wuthering Moors’ form a series of articles about the Walshaw Moor Estate and its relationship with Natural England and Defra. Regular readers of this blog may remember that I submitted a request for information to Defra about their response to the RSPB complaint to Europe over the Walshaw Moor affair. I received no…
The amazing needless tale of a swift
You couldn’t make it up. A rare bird, not seen in the UK for 22 years is spotted by a string of experienced birders in the north of Scotland and the twitching community get on the move. And then the bird, a member of a group that one would put near the top of one’s…
State of Nature report
I’m sorry I missed the launch of the State of Nature report by a large group of NGOs as I think it would have been a very enjoyable event. A bit like a gathering of old friends at the deathbed of UK wildlife – determined to have a good time, mention what a great person…
Sunday Book Review – A World in One Cubic Foot: Portraits of Biodiversity by David Liittschwager
This book is quite different and very interesting. It was put together by recording, in six different habitats, for a 24-hour period in each, the species that passed through a metal frame of 1-foot dimension. Then Liittschwager photographed a whole range of species that had occurred within that metal frame in that time-frame. It’s a…
Ralph Underhill cartoon – Sacred?
You do have to wonder where on Earth, or even in the EU, the CAP gets a good press. Here is a round-up of UK views: IEEP – Environment undermined in CAP deal CAPreform.eu – a damp squib for CAP reform which does nothing to shift towards ‘public money for public goods’ The Wildlife…
well done rspb
the rspb has a new logo – have you noticed it on the rspb website? it’s been long-heralded and it has finally arrived and it’s…well it’s…almost exactly the same as the old one. the main change is that the letters, r, s, p and b, are now in lower case. that’s very trendy. i like…
It made me smile anyway…
I don’t know much about art but I know what I like – and I like giant hen harriers crushing rangerovers. Did you see this – it happened over a month ago while I was in upper New York state. Well, it made me smile anyway. Other coverage: more Guardian, BBC, dazeddigital, London Evening Standard….
BBS
I got up early on Sunday morning in order to do the last visits to my two BBS squares. The Rolling Stones had kept me up the night before which was a bit mean of them – at their age they should know better. It’s a whitethroat year for sure – there weren’t many warblers…