I don’t know what impression you get of me through reading this blog, but it isn’t all work you know. I am quite good at chilling. Over the weekend I spent an evening with friends and family enjoying a barbecue on one of the cooler evenings of recent days – timing is everything. I was…
Category: ME:
Minsmere
I went to Minsmere last week with my friend and former colleague Alistair Gammell. Alistair is a great guy and Minsmere is a great nature reserve. We chatted to several other visitors – and we helped a few of them see some birds. It was good to hear others’ stories of the birds in their…
BBS second visits
I completed the second visits to my two BBS squares the weekend before last. Each passed without huge incident. On my first square it was a rather low species total over the two visits, but last year was the highest ever so not much of a trend there. I was glad that there were still…
The present was our future then
On the Sunday of our reunion of old Old Bristolians we visited the RSPB Ham Wall nature reserve and the Shapwick Heath NNR on the Somerset Levels. We had all been to this area before, 40 years before, looking and listening for Nightjars, Nightingales, Barn Owls and other species on summer evenings. This time we…
Ex spinis uvas
The school motto of Bristol Grammar School is a Victorian, Latin, pun. Ex spinis uvas, ‘from thorns to grapes’, is presumably supposed to describe the educational impact of years spent at the Grammar School but it also refers to the brothers Thorne, Robert and Nicholas, who were its founders in 1532. Geddit? I spent a…
Timing is everything
Yesterday I did the first visit to my first BBS square. I might have done it on Bank Holiday Monday but my plan, based on a favourable forecast, was to see lots of butterflies in the Chilterns on Monday. However, the forecast was an accurate weather forecast rather than a butterfly forecast and the Dukes…
Home thoughts from Mark Avery abroad
HOME THOUGHTS FROM ABROAD Oh, to be in England Now that April ‘s there, And whoever wakes in England Sees, some morning, unaware, That the lowest boughs and the brushwood sheaf Round the elm-tree bole are in tiny leaf, While the chaffinch sings on the orchard bough In England—now! Robert Browning, of course. …
Blackbirds
Do you remember this ivy in my garden? I never did get around to cutting any of it. Now it has a pair of Blackbirds nesting in it. That’s nice! And there is a pair of Blue Tits taking moss and feathers into the RSPB nestbox which is a new feature of the garden too…
Boxing Day
It’s still Christmas, so although the GWCT deserve a cuff round the ears (wearing boxing (day) gloves to limit any lasting pain) for their recent blog on Langholm events, that can wait. Boxing Day is absolutely associated, in my mind, with National Hunt racing. The ‘alternative Cheltenham Gold Cup’, otherwise known as the ‘King George…
Shifting baselines
I was in the library at The Lodge the other day, reading for writing. It’s inevitable that I bump into quite a few people I know, and have a few conversations about life, the universe and everything. They are mostly conversations about birds and nature conservation. Two of them illustrate the scale of change in…