The Blue Tits in the nestbox in my garden have hatched, judging by the behaviour of the adults over the last few days. There are millions of pairs of Blue Tits in the UK, but these are ‘my’ Blue Tits and are special (to me at any rate). One parent was flying down the road…
Category: ME:
Feathers 1
I was sitting in the garden, looking up at the sky, waiting for an exciting bird to fly over, when, as you do, I started thinking about how many feathers there are in the world. Now I’m not thinking about the ones in duvets, pillows or jackets, I’m thinking about live feathers attached to live…
Nine years ago…
Nine years ago I was in Washington DC with jet lag but with 7 weeks to cross the USA in a hire car and chat to waitresses in diners. And The Guardian published this piece from me – which is interesting for me to re-read and perhaps for you too. It was a Janus moment…
131 years of Little Owls
Today is the anniversary of the first Little Owl nest nest to be found in the UK. Little Owls were successfully introduced into the UK at Lilford Hall, just down the road from me here in east Northants, by the 4th Baron Lilford: in 1889, on St George’s Day, his gamekeeper found a Little Owl…
Helena Horton – maybe you thought I didn’t mean it?
I received an email from Helena Horton of the Daily Telegraph yesterday afternoon asking for a quote and a chat about NE’s licensing of taking Peregrines from the wild. I, and Wild Justice, have recent experience with the Telegraph and Ms Horton (see here, here) and so back in February, after another lapse on the…
The riches of authorship
I know how some in the shooting industry like to make out that I am coining it in from writing Inglorious and that I’m just in it for the money. So wrong! Here is my latest royalty statement from Bloomsbury as far as it applies to Inglorious. Lots of numbers but if you were to…
It’s the birthday of my binoculars
My binoculars are 44 years old today. I got them on my 18th birthday. I feel I may have to take the rest of the day off to celebrate my binoculars’ birthday.
Videoconferencing
I spent a large chunk of Wednesday in two meetings held by videoconferencing. I’ve done a bit of this before but this is the first time I have had to chair such a meeting with around a dozen people present – it’s quite hard work. But, we’ll all have to get used to it and…
A local star – Ada Salter
I live in a small market town in east Northamptonshire – it’s called Raunds. A slightly unusual name which one often has to spell out to people on telephone calls; R-A-U-N-D-S. It is said to mean something akin to ‘boundaries’, perhaps because we are near where the counties of Northants, Beds and Cambs join up,…
Betting
The week before last, I wrote a couple of blogs about my visit to Cheltenham racecourse for the first three days of the Cheltenham Festival (of racing). Those blogs were about birds and about people and this blog is about betting; next weekend I will post a blog about horse welfare. Horse racing is about…