This is an image of Raunds; the rural town where I have lived for half my life. In passing, you can see Stanwick Lakes, my local birdwatching patch, to the west of the A45, at the left hand side of the image. And the B663 is the road by which I left home to head…
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Trees for Life launch Missing Species project
Rewilding charity to launch Missing Species Programme for Scottish Highlands Returning four ‘architects of the wild’ – lynx, beavers, red squirrels and modern-day aurochs – will benefit landscapes, climate and communities, says Trees for Life Trees for Life is to launch a pioneering Missing Species Programme to bring back four of Scotland’s lost keystone animals…
RSPB press release – ‘Goblin’ and ‘Miniscule’ spider species found on UK Overseas Territory
Two new species of spider have been discovered on St Helena, a remote UK Overseas Territory in the South Atlantic Ocean. The discovery of these species, a Goblin Spider with armour-like plating on its abdomen, and a Miniscule Spider with no eyes that is one of the smallest spiders ever seen, brings the total number…
Famous glen managed by Scotland’s forestry agency joins UK’s largest rewilding landscape in ‘huge step forwards for nature’
The world-famous Glen Affric National Nature Reserve managed by Forestry and Land Scotland (FLS) has joined Affric Highlands, the UK’s largest rewilding landscape – becoming the 20th landholding to sign up to the ambitious community-focused initiative. Affric Highlands aims to restore nature across more than 200,000 hectares of the central Highlands, through a linked network of landholdings…
Bird Photographer of the Year 2025: Birds in Flight – Silver Award Disqualified
After a detailed review, the competition has made the decision to disqualify the Silver Award winner from the Birds in Flight category of the recently announced 2025 competition. Following further examination, it became clear that the submitted file did not meet the competition’s authenticity requirements and could not be verified as a genuine raw capture….
Press release – Calder Valley MP has lost his way on how to protect Walshaw Moor, say gutted constituents
Calder Valley MP has lost his way on how to protect Walshaw Moor, say gutted constituents Calder Valley environmental groups are asking their MP Josh Fenton-Glynn to explain his vote against two crucial House of Lords’ nature protection amendments to the contentious Planning and Infrastructure Bill on Thursday.Bede Mullen, a founder and former Chair of…
Sunday book review – Spiders and Harvestmen of Yorkshire by Richard I. Wilson.
The 429 spiders and 26 harvestmen species covered in this book form a significant proportion of the c700 spiders and 31 harvestmen in the UK which would have come as a surprise to Martin Lister who wrote the first book on English spiders which described 34 spiders and three harvestmen, opining that there was little…
Sunday book review – Conserving Nature in Greater Yellowstone by Robert B. Keitle
I’ve been to Yellowstone twice and I’m so glad I’ve had that experience. The World’s first National Park and the home of Old Faithful, the Great Prismatic Spring, beautiful views, Grey Wolves, Brown Bears and quite a lot of controversy. This book is, as the title fairly suggests, a book about nature conservation in the…
Guest blog – Walshaw Turbine 4 by Nick MacKinnon
Nick MacKinnon is a freelance teacher of Maths, English and Medieval History, and lives above Haworth, in the last inhabited house before Top Withens = Wuthering Heights. In 1992 he founded the successful Campaign to Save Radio 4 Long Wave while in plaster following a rock-climbing accident on Skye. His poem ‘The metric system’ won…
Sunday book review – The Birds of Bedfordshire by Tony Ploszajski
This new county avifauna is a lovely book considering that Bedfordshire, like my adopted home county of Northamptonshire, is land-locked and, in many ways, is an unspectacular county for birds. But there are birds everywhere and their numbers change for a wide variety of reasons so every county avifauna is full of information destined to…