Last week I attended the World Land Trust summer do and was elected as a council member. I try to avoid getting roped in to too many wildlife NGOs just because I don’t really have the time to devote to them and it is invidious to choose one over any others. But I made an…
Tag: passenger pigeon
Hen Harriers in The Times
Our e-petition to ban driven grouse shooting in England is going really well – yesterday (we are still in Week Four) it passed 4500 signatures. Thank you to all who signed it and to Chris Packham, Tony Juniper, Brigit Strawbridge, The League Against Cruel Sports, Birdwatch magazine, Birders Against Wildlife Crime and Rare Bird Alert…
Talking Point from British Birds
The following article appeared in the May issue of British Birds and I am grateful to them for permission to reproduce it here. We are outnumbered – but we shouldn’t give up! In response to Iain Robertson’s editorial in the March issue of BB, I contend that bird conservationists in the UK actually have a…
A month today…
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…A Message from Martha is published. Here is a sneak preview… Here is the list of chapters… Chris Packham says: ‘This hugely thought provoking and important book is the kick up the arse that every complacent conservationist needs right now‘ and ‘This heart-wrenching saga of extinctions, old and new, is as much about us…
Guest Blog – 1000 miles for Martha by Tristan Reid
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1000 miles in memory of Martha Update – 500 Miles and Five Marathons! Back in January I wrote a post here detailing my challenge to run 1000 miles including 14 marathons to raise funds for and awareness of Operation Turtle Dove. My project names ‘1000 miles in memory of Martha’ not only intends to raise…
Martha
The current month’s Birdwatch has extracts from my forthcoming book A Message from Martha: the extinction of the Passenger Pigeon and its relevance today. I’ve been touched by how many people have emailed me, after reading Birdwatch, to say that they are definitely going to buy it. The book looks at the story of the…
A good year for Cuckoos?
I’ve heard lots of Cuckoos this year. It seems like a good year for them – what do you think? Last year, around now, I headed off to the USA to research my book on Passenger Pigeons and I had had two records of Cuckoo up until this date (I know, because Birdtrack lets me…
A Message from Martha
In two months’ time, A Message from Martha: the extinction of the Passenger Pigeon and its relevance today will be published in the UK. Chris Packham is one of only about half a dozen people who has read it so far and he says: ‘This hugely thought provoking and important book is the kick up…
The call of the BBS
I survey two squares for the BTO/JNCC/RSPB Breeding Bird Survey, and for my own interest, and for you. I made the first visit to each of them for 2014 over the weekend. The first of ‘my’ squares is one that I have surveyed for the past nine years. It’s a one-kilometre square of farmland near…
This day in 1900
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In his book, Hope is the Thing with Feathers, Chris Cokinos describes the death of what may have been the last wild Passenger Pigeon at the hands of the young Press Clay Southworth in rural Ohio. That was on 24 March 1900 – after that, the only Passenger Pigeons known to man (and woman) were…