British Wildlife is moving from 6 issues per year to 8 issues. There’s so much to say about our wildlife that the magazine needs to come out more often. Hooray! As well as February, April, June, August, October and December you will now get a treat in May and November too. In this issue, my…
Category: ME:
The milk of avian unkindness
When I was a kid our milk was frequently attacked by marauding gangs of Great Tits and Blue Tits. For younger, perhaps puzzled, readers this was a long time ago in the days when doorstep deliveries of milk were the norm and milk was full fat and the ‘cream’ was noticeable in floating to the…
After…things I’d like to be different (8)
After coronavirus (which might be quite a long way away), or at least when the world settles down to a new normal, there are some things that I’d like to be different. So over the next days and weeks I’m going to write them down. They will mostly be to do with our relationship with…
Swifts – counting the days
I’ve seen Swifts on an unbroken run of 84 days this year since 1 May (and on one early date of 19 April). All of those days, bar one last week when we were away in Scotland, were in the skies above our home. I am pretty sure that this has been a very good…
After…things I would like to be different (7)
A modern Royal Family When you look across the Pond at Trumpland then there is quite a lot to be said for having a hereditary Head of State compared with where they have ended up. And I have quite a lot of time for 90-something year-old women as my own mother and mother-in-law both have…
Fruits of the garden
This raspberry was delicious but I think the Blackbirds are getting more of them than I am from the few that appear in our garden. Still I don’t begrudge them – much! It looks like our garden will provide plenty of blackberry and apple tarts and crumbles though. Although there is quite a long way…
Flying ants spark usual hysteria
I’ve been watching thousands of ants take to the sky from my back garden. It’s Flying Ant Day – well, here in NN9 of east Northants it is anyway. I haven’t actually seen any birds taking much notice of the silver-winged additions to the air today – often there are Black-headed Gulls going crazy at…
Just in passing…
This is just a very quick passing reference to capitalisation of species names. I’ve written about it before – see here for discussion of shy albatrosses and Shy Albatrosses. When people write guest blogs here I do not instruct them to capitalise species names (because I’m very tolerant – renowned for it) but I do…
A rather dull BBS survey
I was out of the house at 05:40 this morning to do the Late visit to my other BBS square. There were a few drops of rain, hardly any, but the sky was dark enough to make me wonder whether this afternoon’s forecast thunder storms might arrive early – they didn’t, and they still haven’t…
Heading to autumn
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If Spring ends on 19 May, as I think it does for me, then Summer is about to morph into Autumn. I know there is the whole of July and August that many people would regard as Summer, but the birds are telling me that Autumn is fast approaching. Sitting in my garden the other…