My thanks to Ralph for this cartoon – his idea, not mine. Monday is the day when I send in the manuscript of ‘A message from Martha‘ to Bloombury and everything is on track. I hope they like it. I’ve been liaising with the artist who is producing the cover – looking good to me…
BLOG POSTS
Whales, spiders and viruses
931 people took part in this 4-question poll (and lots of you emailed me about it too). It was all about choices – if you could save a species, which species would you save? You were put in a position where ‘all of them’ wasn’t a possible answer and so, perhaps, our choices (because mine…
Feather
I was standing in the garden one day last week when I saw a feather falling to the ground. It fell slowly as you would expect – it floated to the ground in next door’s garden. It took around four seconds to cover the distance from the the height of the top of a nearby…
Just crumbs
I was pleased to see that there is some evidence, from the BTO, that the decline of urban House Sparrows has stopped, paused or slowed. Let’s hope that the House Sparrow is on the up again. This is what I wrote about it for The Independent.
Blackberry makes $1bn loss!
Blackberries are quite late in ripening this year. But with a little effort, you can still pick an ice-cream container full in half an hour. And they still taste yummy in blackberry and apple pie. What’s all the fuss about? …
Four questions on extinction
Blue Whale: “Mike” Michael L. Baird CC-BY-2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0) via Wikimedia Commons Smallpox Virus: PhD Dre at en.wikipedia [GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html) (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)] via Wikimedia Commons Parachute Spider: Zoological Survey of India CC-BY- SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses /by-sa/3.0) via Wikimedia Commons This is just for…
Sunday Book Review – The World’s Rarest Birds by Erik Hirschfeld, Andy Swash and Robert Still
This book is actually about threatened birds rather than rare birds – it deals with those 197 species which are regarded as Critically Endangered and those 389 which are Endangered. Having said that, many of these species are very rare. For example, there are (or were) 27 Sulu Hornbills in the world (on three islands…
Saturday cartoon by Ralph Underhill
National Trust – looking good!
The National Trust has just issued a press release on its plans for the High Peak Moors. This has been a subject of concern and hope on this blog for quite some time (see here, here, here, here, and here). The text of the press release is reproduced below (with some good bits highlighted by…
NGO Watch
Have you noticed a breeze of change blowing through the NGO world? At Plantlife, their much-loved Chief Executive, Victoria Chester, is moving on to a higher vocation and so they are looking for a new leader. The Freshwater Habitats Trust has emerged, like a dragonfly, from the waters of Pond Conservation –…