Standing up for Nature
This guy was sitting on the cold pavement outside a London station the other day playing Christmas carols and tunes on this traffic cone! He was very good! And as people came out of the station they looked around for the source of the music, which sounded as if it was coming from a horn…
It was a cold Saturday morning and there weren’t many other people setting off from my street at 0650. Heading up the M1 I noticed that the trees, leafless, were pin sharp against the lightening blue sky. They looked as if they were drawn with a very fine pen. It’s difficult to get all dreamy…
I’ve seen 154 species at my local patch of Stanwick Lakes since I started using Birdtrack in 2004. Here are 149 of them. Which are the missing five? Mute Swan Whooper Swan Pink-footed Goose White-fronted Goose Greylag Goose Canada Goose Shelduck Wigeon Gadwall Teal Mallard Pintail Garganey Shoveler Red-crested Pochard Pochard Tufted Duck…
Yesterday I made a quick visit to the poppies filling the moat of the Tower of London. Apparently yesterday the last of the 888,246 was added, to commemorate the lives of British and Colonial forces lost in the First World War. It seemed appropriate to be there on 11 November. About 200 years ago, a…
I got my electricity bill today and it was a bit less than I was expecting so that was nice! I also got an email from my electricity supplier, Ecotricity, the other day. They’d like me to persuade you to switch to them and then they’ll give you £50 worth of vouchers and me £50…
On Saturday afternoon I watched a Cormorant with a fish off Dawlish Warren. The Cormorant had the fish in its beak and was trying to swallow it. It looked as though it had bitten off more than it could chew, or at least caught more than it could swallow. Have you ever done that? I’m…
My local patch of Stanwick Lakes is nothing special in birdwatching terms – except it is my local patch. My Birdtrack records tell me that since September 2004 I have visited this site, and kept a species list of birds for the visit, on 368 occasions, recording in the process 152 species of bird. Some…
No book review this week – I’ve had rather little time for reading, I’m afraid. As I travelled down to London last week I kept an eye open for Red Kites on the stretch of line south of Luton station. The man of the couple opposite me may have been doing the same as he…
I enjoyed talking at Wootton last week. They were a lovely audience and look at that fantastic backdrop! The Wootton Village hall talks have attracted a large number of famous speakers over the years – I wish there was a series of talks where I live of the same calibre. Tomorrow I am off to…
I’m heading up to Scotland tomorrow to give a talk in Edinburgh, and I’ll be scurrying home on Wednesday before the independence vote on Thursday. I’m an Englishman born of an English father and Welsh mother but I had my first job in nature conservation in Scotland (before university), met my wife in Scotland, changed…