Today will be your last chance to respond to this short poll on what you think about the RSPB’s new TV advert. The results will appear on Thursday and some thoughts from me on Friday. There are over 100 comments from readers of this blog so far – and about 400 responses to the poll. …
BLOG POSTS
Ralph Underhill cartoon and CAP nonsense from farmers (just pretend it’s Saturday)
The CAP coalition, led by the NFU, the CLA and the TFA, met at the Great Yorkshire Show on 9 July to reinforce their simple message to Government: Keep sending the cheques! The CAP coalition claims to represent the interest of the rural economy but is actually largely a bunch of recipients of taxpayers’…
Sunday Book Review – Feral by George Monbiot
This is a book that many people ought to read. I read most of it before I went to the USA and then read all of it, some of it several times, on my return. I was reading it again at 6am yesterday morning in the back garden of the Old Mill Hotel in Salisbury…
If this post appears…
…then it means that I am off looking for purple emperors. Meanwhile, have you voted in my poll and commented on what you think of the RSPB’s new TV advert? The poll will close fairly soon as the results are pretty clear (to me) already so do have your say.
It’s a year of two halves
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…
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…