Brrrr – that is cold!

This morning I went out for a walk.  I usually do on the Monday before the Cheltenham Festival to get some healthy exercise and to see whether I can see any spring migrants before I disappear to the far side of the Cotswolds for four days of escapism. But today was so cold. So very…

Voting day in the Falklands – but not for penguins or albatrosses.

The human population of the Falklands Islands is voting today (and tomorrow) on their future – whether to remain British or not.  It’s a foregone conclusion that the c1800 adult population of these islands in the south Atlantic will vote to remain British. The Falkland Islands government website has a few pretty photographs of penguins…

The Pope is a Catholic

The Catholic Church has over a billion members across the globe – that’s similar to the population of India and well over twice that of the EU. The next Pope will have considerable influence on the lives of those billion people and therefore the environmental infallibility of the Pope would be a matter of interest…

Signs of spring?

Which of these signs of spring have you seen or heard? Singing birds: song thrush, chaffinch,greenfinch,  great tit, robin, dunnock, blackbird – what else? Flowering plants: snowdrop, aconite, primrose – what else? Flying insects – brimstone, bumblebee – what else? At my local patch of Stanwick Lakes there are still plenty of signs of winter;…

Who runs your NGOs?

This blog follows on from yesterday’s. If there are too many wildlife NGOs (as I believe, and as some of you believe) then how will mergers or closer working come about? There are four major stakeholders involved: the senior staff in the NGOs, their trustees and their members – oh yes, and the Nature whose…

Winds of change?

I’m not the best person to write about organisational structures because this is a subject that sometimes makes my eyes glaze over.  Sometimes, but not always, and so this blog deals with just that subject and on three different levels. Martin Harper has been dealing with the 3-card trick in his blog recently (here and…

Four hours from home

When your kids leave home it’s a big relief – although I find that leaving home, that was an ‘event’ for me when I went to university, is just a gradual change of emphasis for my daughter and son.  But it still opens up the opportunity to re-live the joys of spending money on your…