Iris Murdoch once wrote ‘people from a planet without flowers would think we must be mad with joy the whole time to have such things about us.’ I couldn’t put it better myself but I have a feeling that Mark is looking for a few more words so I’ll soldier on. This is a discerning…
Category: THE WILDLIFE NGOs – RSPB, Wildlife Trusts Wild Justice, BSBI etc
Minox Challenge – the BTO by Andy Clements
Small is beautiful. I’ve now stopped introducing the BTO as a ‘small’ organisation. With 120 staff, an annual turnover of £5m, 17500 members and around 40,000 wonderful volunteers whose birdwatching creates our data, the numbers speak for themselves. Of course we are small when you compare us to the mighty RSPB, the ubiquitous Wildlife Trusts…
Minox Challenge – Butterfly Conservation by Martin Warren
Who could resist a butterfly? Butterflies are among nature’s most colourful and spectacular creatures, which are used across the world as symbols of beauty and spirituality. Sadly, they are also one our most seriously threatened groups of wildlife. This is the case for why Butterfly Conservation, the NGO that works to conserve butterflies and moths,…
Minox Challenge – seven Guest Blogs
At 10-minute intervals after this blog appears so will the Guest Blogs of seven organisations that have taken up the Minox Challenge. They are published in the order in which they were received. I am grateful to all seven organisations, and their Chief Executives (or deputies in the cases of Plantlife and MARINElife which don’t…
Minox review (and challenge)
Regular readers will remember that Minox sent me a pair of binoculars to review and that they will be auctioned on this site in the next few weeks and the money will go to the wildlife conservation charity of your choice. So what do I make of the Minox 10x43HD binoculars? I have become quite…
Animal Aid on grouse shooting
Today Animal Aid is calling for public subsidies to be withdrawn from millionaire grouse shooters. In its new report on grouse shooting, Calling the Shots, the UK’s largest animal rights group sets out its case. It contains extensive reference to the Walshaw Moor affair as well as to persecution of birds of prey and the…
Do you tweet? – revisited
Back in April I listed the Twitter followers of a range of individual organisations (and myself). In almost exactly six months, how have the rankings changed? The answer is – not much! Here are a range of organisations and their current followers, their rank in terms of followers back in April, and the % change…
Naff new name – great new(-ish) magazine
I’ve been told to expect good things from the first issue of Nature’s Home – the new name for the RSPB magazine. Mine arrived yesterday and I’ve enjoyed reading quite a lot of it already – more than I have for quite a few issues of the magazine. I don’t like the name Nature’s Home,…
The Minox Challenge(s)
When I wrote about my 37-year-old binoculars being repaired I didn’t expect this to happen. I didn’t expect an email from Zeiss thanking me for my loyalty – and I didn’t get one, so that’s OK. And I didn’t expect an email from Minox saying: At MINOX GB we keep an eye on the media…
RSPB AGM
The 122nd RSPB AGM was held in London on Saturday morning. I think I have attended about 25 of them. An AGM sounds dull, and it obviously isn’t a bundle of laughs, but it is more interesting than most AGMs. Now I don’t have to answer any of them, I like the difficult questions from…