BTO Winter Thrush Survey

Last week I did my Big Society thing for the BTO winter thrush survey.  There was a spell of what we will have to call fine weather in the morning and I was out looking for blackbirds, song thrushes, mistle thrushes, redwings and fieldfares, and indeed waxwings and starlings, and indeed anything else that might…

Congratulations to Martin Spray

Martin Spray is one of the lower-profile Chief Executives in the wildlife conservation business so it was very good to see his name in the New Year honours list. Martin told me: ‘On a personal basis I’m both overwhelmed and proud. But I’m a part of an amazing team at WWT and it is wonderful…

Ralph Underhill cartoon

The end of the rhino? US military drones have been responsible for a large number of civilian deaths for every terrorist target.  This should be worrying the rhinos in the Kruger National Park.      

The Don Juan of the listing world

Tom Gullick passed the 9000 mark in 2012 – that’s quite a few conquests.  I speak of course of the number of birds that he has had. Gullick  has seen 9000 of the world’s approximately 10,500 bird species – the 9000th being Wallace’s fruit dove. That is quite an achievement but I hope 81-year-old Gullick…

Partridges up a tree

I’m pretty sure that most readers of this blog won’t be looking in pear trees for their partridges but even looking around the edges of arable fields you may struggle to see many of them. Despite all the excellent work that has been done to study the grey partridge (much of which is summarised in…