Yesterday was a busy day in a busy week. A consequence of giving a talk to the Hampshire Ornithological Society on 29 March is that, if you are me, over 300 people sing Happy Birthday! to you – which was highly embarrassing and very sweet of them. I had stayed with friends and I took…
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Winged Wonders
Intro – Animals are a very important part of our ecosystem, and many of them are undevalues due to lack of education and understanding. This can certainly be said for our vast populations of bats, and the folks at Thomson Ecology have come up with a new and intriguing infographic all about these fascinating creatures. It…
Ukraine, Russia, Crimea, Gazprom and Champions League football
The annexation of the Crimea by Russia, or its secession, raises a whole bunch of questions in my mind: the West may have been too friendly to Russia over the last few years – I expect Russia was saying ‘we’re all on the same side really‘ when it might not be true. It’s important to…
Three rare birds on my local patch
On Saturday I saw three rare birds on my local patch of Stanwick Lakes. Well, to be fair, they were all much rarer once. And, to be even fairer, one of them is only rare at Stanwick Lakes – you can see loads of them less than a mile away in Stanwick itself. But then…
Bits and pieces with quite a raptorish, and a quite Scottish, flavour
Bad news: six dead raptors found in Ross-shire (BBC, RaptorPersecutionScotland). big moorland fire near Todmorden – probably hordes of Merlin not putting their fags out properly (see last item) Good news: Ospreys back at Loch Garten – veteran female EJ (such a lovely name) arrived back on Monday for the 12th year. Scottish Minister takes…
Rams rampant now
Derby County FC had a variable March. The month started (1st March) with a disappointing but perhaps not wholly unexpected away loss to Burnley but the home defeat (8th March) by lowly Millwall was definitely a grave disappointment. The home draw with Bolton on the 11th wasn’t such a great result but an away draw…
Last day of…
If today is the first day of spring, then yesterday must have been the last day of winter. I spent the evening of the last day of winter giving a talk to my local mid-Nene RSPB group – as a stand-in for a much better speaker, Ian Newton, who had lost his voice. There were…
Labour – hopeless on the natural environment
I received an email from Angela Eagle over 10 days ago, as a Labour Party member, excitedly telling me that the party had published eight policy papers ‘that will provide the foundation of our One Nation manifesto’. I have until 13 June to respond and ‘make sure Labour’s election manifesto reflects your views, beliefs and…
More bits and pieces
I wrote in June about a day I spent being shown butterflies in San Francisco by Liam O’Brien. Liam showed me the last site of the now-extinct Xerces Blue butterfly and now sends me this image of a memorial which has suddenly appeared. The Moorland Association, having met Lord de Mauley to bend his ear,…
Vultures and diclofenac
The story about diclofenac and vulture declines is an amazing one. And it is developing a nasty new twist. Asian vultures crashed in numbers very rapidly. In the 1980s the Indian White-rumped Vulture was probably the commonest bird of prey in the world but its numbers (and those of other species) fell by around 99.9%…