I said that we bought a live Christmas tree in a pot last December and the idea is to keep it alive and use it again, slightly larger, next Christmas. Having passed the summer solstice it is now down hill all the way to the winter solstice, but the good news is that the tree…
Category: ME:
The marvellous BBS – marvellous for mammals
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It’s nearly time for me to carry out the ‘late’ bird survey on my other BBS square. I wonder what I’ll find. I’m one of the BBS recorders who notes mammals as well as birds on my transect walks. I don’t see much, but the occasional Brown Hare or Rabbit is added to the recording…
Raptor Aid interviewed me
I spent five hours on Microsoft Teams and Zoom yesterday, and was knackered at the end of it. Not sure why – all I was doing was chatting to nice people. Here is my 1-hour chat to Jimmi Hill of Raptor Aid about blogging, writing, campaigning and driven grouse shooting. Thanks Jimmi for the opportunity….
Just check your garden for one of these
Every few years there are numbers of this gaudy relative of the Starling seen in western Europe in late May/early June and now and again appreciable numbers of them get to the UK. This is one of those years! So check your fat balls and lawns for an exceptional looking starling – a Rose-coloured Starling….
Garden birds
The Blue Tits fledged from the nestbox in our garden last week – I miss watching the adults them rushing in and out. It was partly watching the adults take feathers into the nest that made me think about feathers (see here and here). For a few days I could occasionally see the face of…
BBS ‘late’ visit
I was back at one of my BBS squares this morning. It was a cold morning and the birds seemed to be sulking a bit. However, there are always birds to be seen, noted and their existence entered online so that’s what I have done. There weren’t many people about either. ‘Best’ birds? Bullfinch isn’t…
I’d love to see this…
Every 13 or 17 years there is an emergence of Periodical Cicadas in parts of the eastern USA. This is a year for the 17-year emergence. I wish I were able to be in North Carolina, west Virginia or West Virginia to check in with this phenomenon. What were you doing in 2003? What do…
A new nature writer blog – and an interview with me
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Amanda Tuke has jacked in her former day job and is attempting to make a small living out of freelance nature and travel writing – good luck Amanda! I’ve subscribed to her blog because I think this could be an interesting story unfolding over the months. And Amanda asked whether she could interview me on…
After…things I would like to be different (6)
Why don’t we just scrap HS2? And some aircraft carriers? If you were wondering back in February why the government was ploughing onward with such an unpopular and costly project as HS2 then you should be wondering that even more now. The future will involve more working from home, less rushing in to and out…
A trivial matter
When you have a blog and website, and I guess it might depend on whether your site is seen to be ‘successful’ or not, you get a lot of unsolicited emails about advertising and completely irrelevant guest posts. I reply to most of these with a polite ‘no thanks’, but I do reply. I had…