In the June issue of British Birds – which has a lovely, vicious sparrowhawk on its cover, I was struck by the juxtaposition of two papers. One was about lesser-spotted woodpeckers and the other about Dartford warblers in the Thames Basin heathlands of Surrey. Each was an interesting and valuable record of what we know,…
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Having a website
If you are a regular reader of this blog, you probably never give much thought to what it takes to keep a website like this one up and running. This blog tells you a bit about the details of running a website. Hosting: you need a web address (this one is www.markavery.info) and that’s something…
It must be August because it’s July
Comments Off on 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…
Joining up the verges
I’ve been paying more attention to the road verges since Sarah Pettegree wrote her excellent Guest Blog here and since Plantlife launched its verges campaign. And so I was more susceptible to making the link between this press release from CPRE about lowering the speed limit in rural areas and the state of our verges. …
The rather diminished Big Butterfly Count?
It’s time for the Big Butterfly Count– good luck! Have you ever thought how beautiful are butterflies? Me too! Then imagine this butterfly without its wings – not so pretty then is it? And I just wonder – will the Bird Fair survive the weather given that the Game Fair has not? And…
40 days of…?
Today is St Swithin’s (or Swithun’s day) and by tradition the weather today will stick with us for the next 40 days. At the moment the sun is shining here in east Northants – I wonder! Whatever the weather, in 40 days the swifts will be largely departed and wader passage will be well underway. …
It’s raining, raining, raining
It’s raining. It’s still raining. And when it rains on your parade, look up rather than down. Without the rain, there would be no rainbow. G K Chesterton A crown is merely a hat that lets the rain…
Worth a look, and then another look
You can get a sneak preview of one chapter of my new book, and so much more, by walking into your local WH Smith or similar and buying this annual. My article is about bird reintroductions and covers some of the material of Chapter 8 in Fighting for Birds – 25 years in nature conservation….
Not great for butterflies
Last week I was lucky with a pine marten, and some whales, and lots of other wildlife, but this year I haven’t had much luck with butterflies. And butterflies haven’t had much luck either with the cold wet weather. From memory, the only butterflies I have seen this year have been a very few peacocks,…
Where next with England’s forests?
The report of the Independent Panel on Forestry is a good one. I recommend that anyone interested in access, wildlife, trees, public policy, land use and politics should read it. The question for us all, particularly the coalition government, is ‘what next?’. Let’s go back to those distant-seeming days of early 2011 when David Cameron…