Emma Websdale is a Conservation Biologist and Writer. Working as the Communications Support Officer for The Wildlife Trusts, she is particularly motivated in engaging younger audiences, helping them make sure that nature doesn’t drop off their agenda. I sit on a train that’s heading to London, September’s issue of BBC Wildlife in my hands….
Category: passenger pigeon
Disease implicated as a cause of Turtle Dove decline – a bit.
The Turtle Dove is a lovely bird but is declining dramatically in the UK but also in many other parts of Europe. Although one of the more dramatic problems it faces is being shot by hunters on migration, particularly unsportingly (and illegally) on spring migration, this has never seemed to me to be likely to…
A century and a week
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I am grateful to Seppo Leinonen (@sepponet on Twitter; [email protected] by email; www.seppo.net/e/ website) for this beautiful cartoon. It’s a century and a week since Martha died in Cincinnati Zoo and the most numerous bird on the planet was driven to extinction.
A couple of recent reviews
I’m sorry – I just haven’t had time to review a book this week. It’s been a busy week in which I have given four talks and attended three ‘events’. But the reviews of A Message from Martha keep arriving. Here are two that pleased me a lot: The Independent (Michael McCarthy): ‘This book will…
Passenger Pigeon day
Yesterday was a really nice day. I did a radio interview early in the morning on the fact that it was the exact centenary of the death of Martha, the last Passenger Pigeon on Earth, and then had breakfast in the garden before taking my ‘new’ son-in-law and daughter to the airport to set off…