I’ve been rushing about and don’t quite have time to write a proper blog today – plenty more coming in the next few days though! – and you did get two blogs on Tuesday, so please indulge me when I just post most of an email that a reader of this blog sent to me:…
Category: Uncategorized
Spoonies
The spoon-billed sandpiper is one of the most gorgeous birds on the planet – and also one of the most threatened. With probably only a few hundred pairs surviving and their numbers thought to be decreasing each year it is a bird destined for extinction in the wild – perhaps. ‘Perhaps’ because the Wildfowl and…
Only a wasp
I went racing at Cheltenham on Friday, on what is called ‘Countryside Day’. My drive across the Cotswolds, often very beautiful at this time of year, was so misty that the autumn colours weren’t showing well at all. As I passed over the railway at Adlestrop I remembered Edward Thomas’s poem but this was no…
Movember
Comments Off on Movember
A valued colleague and friend at the RSPB, Gwyn Williams, is raising money by looking foolish. Please give him some dosh for charity. It’s so good to see Gwyn looking fit and well after his treatment for prostate cancer last year.
Church leaders
Have you read the report of the St Pauls’s Institute on Value and values? I bet you haven’t, even though it has been in the news quite a lot. Archbisop Rowan Williams’s foreword contains the following words; An ethical approach to economics requires us to move away from the illusion that economics can be considered…
Are you S or D?
Martin Harper wrote an interesting blog last week about S-type conservationists and D-type conservationists. Which are you? The gist (you should read the original to check the details – and read some interesting comments) is that there are conservationists (S for supply) who act for nature in its own right through direct nature conservation action…
Other reading
I’m going to point you in the direction of some other blogs – blogs that I like to read (although not necessarily agree with). But first I’d like to point you back towards a few of my previous blogs and the comments that have accumulated on them. Since I came back from the USA this…
Don’t fire-bomb the countryside tonight!
I like 5 November – although clearly the Catholic conspirators missed an opportunity to influence Parliament. The failed Catesby plot allows us to celebrate with fireworks – and that’s what I’ll be doing this evening (probably after Strictly Come Dancing). But a couple of years ago I was in Stratford upon Avon at this time…
Not very nice
If anyone out there is thinking of killing me, please choose something quick. Whilst at the RSPB I had very few death threats (far fewer than my boss – goes with the territory) but they were mostly because of our position on ruddy ducks. It is ironic, with the passage of time, that those who…
You are one in 7 billion
Today, apparently, will be born a child who will bring the standing crop of the human population to 7,000,000,000. Yes, that’s a lot! The human population reached 1 billion in 1804 and 6 billion just before the millennium – we’ve stuck an extra billion people on the planet since then and 8 billion is about…