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Wings Across the Atlantic
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This is my latest book: Wings Across the Atlantic: a year in the life of two old birders. About Wings Across the Atlantic It is essentially a re-run of the book, Birds of a Feather by Colin Rees and Derek Thomas (see my review – click here) 11 years later with Colin based in Maryland,…
The Red Fox – a species of conservation concern?
It’s easy to find lots of views and images of Red Foxes on the internet: some people love them and others loathe them. But I’m surprised that there isn’t more discussion about their status. I posted this graph (from the recent excellent BBS report) a while ago wondering whether this population trend was real or…
Not much change then…
I recently came across a copy of J. Lewis Bonhote’s British Birds, published 1907. The Hen Harrier is not illustrated but since the text includes the following … In England, thanks to the game-preserver, this species is now extremely scarce, and very few pairs, if any, are allowed to nest. … I thought these two…
Langholm community buy-out
There have been two guest blogs here by Kevin Cumming who is leading the buy-out attempt for Langholm Moor see here 2 December 2019, and 7 May 2020. There’s a well-produced and interesting podcast available here where you can hear more about things from Kevin and it ends with a chat with me. The fundraiser…
Primates 3
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This was the last episode in an excellent 3-part series and was entitled Protecting Primates although, really, it wasn’t mostly about protecting primates and it was about quite a lot of things. If one wanted to be critical of the programme one would say that it was a bit bitty – and lacked a narrative…
Survey on views on genetic engineering as a tool for supporting conservation efforts
I got the following by email recently from ‘A Bigger Conversation’. For me it definitely fell into the ‘Sounds important, a bit complex and dull, and not very urgent’ so I didn’t do anything with it until now (isn’t that how we end up being unprepared for things like global pandemics). I responded in a…
Feathers 2
In the previous blog I estimated the number of feathers on living wild birds to be around 420 trillion. Now I’ve had the chance to check a few things I’d like to revise the estimate a little. The logic strikes me as pretty good. How many (wild) birds are there in the world and simply…
If Starlings had…
If Starlings had contrails, like planes, then the sky above my garden would be painted with the paths of Starlings taking food to their recently hatched young. Starlings are single-prey loaders when their chicks are young (they fly out from the nest to collect one item of food and fly back to the nest with…
Primates 2
The gibbons were particularly funky. And it’s the birthday of the primate narrator of this series today. Happy Birthday Chris Packham!