In the June issue of British Birds – which has a lovely, vicious sparrowhawk on its cover, I was struck by the juxtaposition of two papers. One was about lesser-spotted woodpeckers and the other about Dartford warblers in the Thames Basin heathlands of Surrey. Each was an interesting and valuable record of what we know,…
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Back to skylarks and Hope
I wrote a little about skylarks here recently – and how numbers had quadrupled at the RSPB’s Hope Farm over the last 12 years, increasing from 10 pairs in 2000 to the low 40s in recent years). The story of how skylarks increased is quite well known – it’s done by leaving small bare patches…
Having a website
If you are a regular reader of this blog, you probably never give much thought to what it takes to keep a website like this one up and running. This blog tells you a bit about the details of running a website. Hosting: you need a web address (this one is www.markavery.info) and that’s something…
It must be August because it’s July
Comments Off on It must be August because it’s July
I hope you think it is reasonable that when Birdwatch arrives at my home I immediately turn to my column ‘the political birder’. It’s not that I need to see my name in print, but I do need to remind myself what I wrote about as there will be another column already in the pipeline…
Sunshine
On Monday the sun was shining and I suddenly thought – why not go and enjoy it? So I did. Summer sun means butterflies and I headed to Fermyn Woods to see if it might be third time lucky in looking for purple emperors. The long line of cars parked by the road on a…
BBS 2011
The latest Breeding Bird Survey report is now available – an everyday story of declining farmland birds? Of the 19 species in the Farmland Bird Index, nine increased (grey partridge, stock dove, jackdaw, whitethroat, tree sparrow, yellow wagtail, linnet, goldfinch, yellowhammer) and nine decreased (kestrel, lapwing, wood pigeon, turtle dove, rook, skylark, starling, greenfinch, reed…
Nice farmers – make your choice
It’s time to vote in the Nature of Farming award which is the UK’s biggest farm wildlife award. Last year 22,000 of us voted to choose the winner from four finalists chosen by experts. The award is sponsored by the Daily Telegraph and the EU Life+ Programme and is a partnership between the RSPB, Plantlife…
The milk of human kindness
There’s been a lot in the news about the price of milk recently because of the low prices that some farmers are receiving for their produce (see here, here and here for example). I still have a milkman who delivers (quite expensive) milk to the door several times a week but I am glad to…
What a lark
On Saturday morning I was listening to Saturday Live on Radio 4 and a piece about punting in Cambridge. Now I’ve done my share of punting, in the rather distant past, but the sound of the skylark was not a common accompaniment to those trips though it did feature in the radio programme’s soundtrack. It…
Saturday cutting the lawn
Yesterday may have been summer, so I cut the lawn. Well, I call it a lawn but it was looking more like a small scruffy meadow as the wet weather had been good for grass growth but bad for grass cutting. I noticed there were lots and lots of insects in the grass – and…