Are you sitting down to eat a turkey later today? Benjamin Franklin wanted the turkey to be the national bird of the USA instead of the actual choice of the bald eagle. He wrote to his daughter thus: “For my own part I wish the Bald Eagle had not been chosen the Representative of our…
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A Happy Christmas to all our readers
Defra’s year: failure to designate marine protected areas badger cull on and off like dodgy lights on a Christmas tree buzzardgate minimal and inadequate adjustments to agri-environment schemes Walshaw Moor affair leads to RSPB complaint to EU hen harriers almost extinct on their watch new Ministerial team no progress on forestry
Some bits and pieces
Give as you live. This is a good idea: if you sign up to this scheme, and do a bit of easy ‘mouse clicking’ when you spend money on the internet then your chosen charity (mine is…. wait for it…..the RSPB) gets some money from the people to whom you are giving your money. So…
Swanwick
I spent yesterday at the BTO Conference at Swanwick and left feeling slightly foolish. Foolish, because although I have attended many BTO Conferences in my time, that is the first for a good many years, and I enjoyed it so much that I felt foolish for having missed out over recent years. The conference theme…
Butterflies in the landscape, and a Christmas present too
I’m sorry I can’t attend the launch today of a marvellous report by Butterfly Conservation. Landscape-scale conservation for butterflies and moths – lessons from the UK is a superb document about how to do nature conservation. Few of our UK conservation organisations could produce something so impressive in terms of demonstrating how to conserve threatened…
Biomass – dirtier than coal?
Last week I pointed out that every form of energy production has snags – and suggested that we should give a higher priority to reducing our energy needs. Here’s another example, and it’s rather similar to the situation regarding biofuels (described in Chapter 13 of Fighting for Birds). Using biomass to fuel power stations looks…
Turbulent turning turbines
Last week the coalition government came out with their energy policy proposals. It can be seen as a small victory for the Liberal Democrats in the government that the worst excesses of Conservative climate-scepticism were pushed aside. There will not be a new dash for climate-changing gas but a dash for renewables and nuclear. We…
Waging war
Today is Remembrance Sunday and this year it falls on the 11th day of the 11th month. The Second World War was the deadliest conflict in human history but I was surprised to learn that the First World War was ‘only’ the sixth deadliest. Are you wearing a poppy? It’s interesting that we use a…
Haiku
Do you know the story of the Wake Island rail? It lived, guess where?, Yes! on Wake Island and nowhere else. Wake Island is a small Pacific island and the Wake Island rail was a small flightless rail. When Japanese soldiers arrived on Wake Island there were rails, after they left there were no rails. …
How many is best?
What is the best number of people to go birdwatching together? I’ve been pondering this question and discussing it with my birding companions and I have made up my mind – but what do you think? Now I expect you’ll ask what ‘best’ means and what ‘go birdwatching’ means – because you are that…