Puffins, red-faced with embarrassment

It’s been a bad few weeks for the Puffin – only tenth in the vote for our national bird and listed in the European Red List of birds. It’s not having a good 2015. The first was just a bit of fun, the latter is a matter of life and extinction.  The Puffin is one…

What has stayed the same?

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,…

Don’t bank on it, 2

And we pick up yesterday’s blog on a boat to the Isle of May with gannets fishing around us… The sun had gone and I was glad that I had opted for a combination of short-sleeved shirt and jacket as an each-way bet on the weather.  You can’t bank on the weather over a five-hour…