My late-flowering buddleia bush is still attracting a few butterflies – mostly Red Admirals. We’ve reached the time of year when the Swifts have gone, the butterflies are going and if I wake and it’s still dark I cannot be sure whether it is time to get up or not (rather than in the summer…
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Shade-grown coffee
I’m enjoying the shade-grown, organic, Fairtrade coffee that I bought from the RSPB. As New World warblers, confusing fall warblers (as the plate in Peterson described them) head south to the forests of Central and South America, I’m glad that my choice of coffee might be helping to protect their wintering habitat. And the bird-friendly…
When a butterfly flaps its wings…
In a way, this post follows on from Pip Howard’s Guest Blog this morning about once-alive invertebrates encased in perspex, except this post concerns actually-alive butterflies sold as extras for celebrations such as weddings etc. A reader of this blog alerted me to this and wrote that ‘I was at a wedding recently and was…
Nice and old-fashioned?
Ten days ago or so, I joined the Hawk and Owl Trust at the Bird Fair, and a while later an envelope full of interesting information arrived as a consequence of my membership. It included a car sticker, a membership card and badge. These things made me quite nostalgic. I can remember my kestrel-shaped YOC…
A late Swift
Yesterday morning, a Swift flew over the garden and put a smile on my face. It’s so difficult to know when you see your last bird of a particular species for the year (at the time) as there is always the possibility of seeing another a little later. My first Swift of the year is…
An extra pair of binoculars
I have bought an extra pair of binoculars and I’ve been trying them out. They are Pentax Papilio 8.5×25 Close Focus binoculars. As a birder, they look very twee and naff to me – not something you’d want to be seen staring through on the East Bank at Cley, on Tresco or getting off the…
Keeping the wolf from the door
I’m lucky enough to get the chance to write for money sometimes and that helps to keep the wolf from the door – although I’d quite like to open the door here in east Northants and see a wolf trotting past. That would be quite a shock and a very nice surprise. Here are three…
Syngenta do a good thing, albeit belatedly.
Readers of Jeremy Greenwood’s guest blog (4 August) will be glad to hear that he has been granted access to the data obtained in the study that he criticized (see here and here). Watch this space for more on this subject later in the autumn.
A Swift visit to Malmesbury
A couple of weeks ago I popped down to Malmesbury for the official opening of the Waitrose store there (see previous blogs here and here). I’d been down a week earlier too and the changes since the spring, and in that last week, were quite amazing. ‘Just in time’ hardly covers it! Whereas…
Four Bee-eater chicks fledge on Isle of Wight
Good news from the Isle of Wight – the pair of Bee-eaters (the first to nest successfully in the UK since 2002) have fledged four young. That’s pretty good going out of the seven eggs they normally lay. Let’s hope the next few weeks are sunny and insect-filled and they fuel-up for their journey south…