If you want an example of landscape-scale nature conservation then look at the maps for Red Kite – or in many cases, just look out of the window and see a Red Kite! From the first breeding Atlas to this one the Red Kite has ceased to be a solely Welsh bird in Britain and…
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Fighting for Birds – French review
Review from Ornithos, the magazine of the French Birdlife partner (soon to be known as ‘donnant une maison a la nature‘ – peut-etre? ‘Vivant, concret, souvent instructif et parfois captivant‘. 21 5-star reviews on Amazon – still makes a great Christmas present for the committed birdwatcher, nature conservationist or environmentalist. Buy here. All comments on…
Have you seen a Cuckoo lately?
The BTO Cuckoo-tracking project is just fascinating. ‘Our’ cuckoos are now in central Africa. Have you heard the one about the Scot, the Welshman and the Englishman? Chance is a Scot, a Scottish cuckoo tagged at Loch Katrine. He is in Nigeria at the moment and he followed a very similar route through Europe on…
RBBP – a treat
The report of the Rare Breeding Birds Panel is a treat, a delight, a pleasure. That’s partly because the Panel does a very good job in compiling the records and writing them up, and partly because British Birds does a good job in publishing them but largely because birds are brilliant! In each of these…
Controversial?
Last week I spent an enjoyable Monday evening at the Royal Society listening to four really good speakers at an event organised by the World Land Trust and entitled Controversial Conservation. Chris Packham was the star turn – and he is a star. Chris’s talk ranged widely over the state of wildlife and the environment….
Not a book review – just some homework
Findlay Wilde writes a blog too – it’s very good. This is Findlay’s Music homework – what a star! Click here.
Shuffling two packs
The Government changes In Defra, out go Richard Benyon and David Heath and in come George Eustice (Con, Camborne and Redruth) and Dan Rogerson (LibDem, North Cornwall). I always feel sorry for those who are required to move on because their Prime Minister needs to adjust the left/right balance, the male/female balance, the north/south balance…
Why we should care about Pandas…and all that jazz.
Why should we care about Pandas? This is a big question to which there are lots of answers, all of which raise more questions. I’ve never seen a Panda in the wild (and I’m not, honestly, that bothered about seeing one) and I can’t recall ever seeing one in a zoo either. If…
A plague around all our houses?
You have to smile a little at the enthusiasm with which the Daily Mail and Daily Telegraph (not online) trumpet the problems caused by ‘alien’ species. The ‘battle to stop foreign invaders killing off native British wildlife’ is costing £1.7bn a year apparently, including £70m to get rid of Japanese Knotweed ahead of the Olympics….
Whales, spiders and viruses
931 people took part in this 4-question poll (and lots of you emailed me about it too). It was all about choices – if you could save a species, which species would you save? You were put in a position where ‘all of them’ wasn’t a possible answer and so, perhaps, our choices (because mine…