It was great fun talking to a packed lecture theatre in the Zoology Department in Aberdeen about Passenger Pigeons and Hen Harriers on Tuesday evening. We also all had the opportunity to look at a stuffed Passenger Pigeon in the adjacent museum – which I always find is a rather poignant experience. I was talking…
Tag: passenger pigeon
In flight
I’m getting on a plane today for the first time since June 2013. I’m heading up to Aberdeen to give a talk about Passenger Pigeons (and a little bit about Hen Harriers) to the Aberdeen RSPB Group on their 40th anniversary. I’m looking forward to seeing Aberdeen again. It must be almost exactly 34 years…
Guest blog – What Martha Means to Me by Emma Websdale
Emma Websdale is a Conservation Biologist and Writer. Working as the Communications Support Officer for The Wildlife Trusts, she is particularly motivated in engaging younger audiences, helping them make sure that nature doesn’t drop off their agenda. I sit on a train that’s heading to London, September’s issue of BBC Wildlife in my hands….
Disease implicated as a cause of Turtle Dove decline – a bit.
The Turtle Dove is a lovely bird but is declining dramatically in the UK but also in many other parts of Europe. Although one of the more dramatic problems it faces is being shot by hunters on migration, particularly unsportingly (and illegally) on spring migration, this has never seemed to me to be likely to…
Nothing earth-shattering
Today: I read quite a lot about grouse shooting and its history I watched a Red Admiral feeding on ivy in my garden I ‘phoned a friend I sat in the garden enjoying the sunshine I booked train tickets to go to London on the People’s Climate March on Sunday Tomorrow: I will reveal…
Thank you BNSS
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I’d just like to thank the Bournemouth Natural Science Society for being lovely to me. First, they were the first organisation who invited me to talk about Passenger Pigeons. Then they were understanding and allowed me to switch dates so that I could attend the Green Party Conference. Then they were understanding when I arrived…
Saturday cartoon by Ralph Underhill
Mark writes: Wildlife in movies is a rich source of comment (see here and here). In some of those western films there ought, by rights, to be enormous flocks of Passenger Pigeons darkening the sky and scaring the horses – but somehow they aren’t there! And the wildlife that does appear in films, often…
Talking, talking, talking
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I enjoyed speaking to the Oxford Ornithological Society on Wednesday evening – a good turn out and lots of good questions. Tomorrow it’s the Bournemouth Natural Science Society – 39 Christchurch Road, Bournemouth, BH1 3NS at 14:30 – on the subject of Passenger Pigeons. Next week I am in Edinburgh on Tuesday evening and in…
A century and a week
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I am grateful to Seppo Leinonen (@sepponet on Twitter; seppopost@seppo.net by email; www.seppo.net/e/ website) for this beautiful cartoon. It’s a century and a week since Martha died in Cincinnati Zoo and the most numerous bird on the planet was driven to extinction.
A couple of recent reviews
I’m sorry – I just haven’t had time to review a book this week. It’s been a busy week in which I have given four talks and attended three ‘events’. But the reviews of A Message from Martha keep arriving. Here are two that pleased me a lot: The Independent (Michael McCarthy): ‘This book will…