It must be August because it’s July

I hope you think it is reasonable that when Birdwatch arrives at my home I immediately turn to my column ‘the political birder’.  It’s not that I need to see my name in print, but I do need to remind myself what I wrote about as there will be another column already in the pipeline…

Sunshine

On Monday the sun was shining and I suddenly thought – why not go and enjoy it? So I did. Summer sun means butterflies and I headed to Fermyn Woods to see if it might be third time lucky in looking for purple emperors. The long line of cars parked by the road on a…

Saturday cutting the lawn

Yesterday may have been summer, so I cut the lawn.  Well, I call it a lawn but it was looking more like a small scruffy meadow as the wet weather had been good for grass growth but bad for grass cutting. I noticed there were lots and lots of insects in the grass – and…

Time to buy

My new book, Fighting for Birds – 25 years in nature conservation, is now available to buy from Pelagic Publishing. The paperback is £12.99 and the hardback is £19.99 – an ebook will follow in a few weeks. Chris Packham wrote the Foreword and describes Fighting for Birds as ‘a triumph and if you have…

Your least favourite bird?

All birds are brilliant! It goes without saying, but I’ve said it.  But it could just be that some birds are more brilliant than others. A while back, in a blog about cormorants, I said that cormorants were quite pretty really, which might be stretching things a bit, but they wouldn’t come bottom of my…