Oscar writes: Last winter there was an invasion of Waxwings all over the UK. I had never seen them before, so when some were reported not far from me I was straight over to see them. When I arrived I was greeted by the sight of up to 80 birds perched on top of…
Tag: passenger pigeon
I blame the Environment Agency
It’s raining – I blame the Environment Agency. And while we are at it, I blame them for the extinction of the Passenger Pigeon, toothache, late buses, cancer, the Great Fire of London, Eric Pickles, Maradona’s ‘Hand of God’ goal, the Countryside Alliance, potholes, Judas Iscariot, the wreck of the Torrey Canyon, plagues of locusts,…
Guest Blog – 1000 miles in memory of Martha by Tristan Reid
If you are a regular reader of Mark Avery’s blog (and you really should be) then you will almost certainly be aware of the very frightening decline of the Turtle Dove. This is an iconic species that has been declining in the UK since the 1970’s. The problem is speeding up and between 1997 and…
What will 2014 bring for you?
HAPPY NEW YEAR! It’s fun to have some idea of what you plan to do in the year ahead. Here are some of my ideas. They’ll change through the year, no doubt, as they did last year. January – encourage as many people as possible to invite their MP to their houses to do the…
The Passenger Pigeon centenary – talk available
The last Passenger Pigeon on Earth died on 1 September 1914 in Cincinnati Zoo. 100 years earlier this was the commonest bird on Earth – with a population of billions. Why did this abundant species die out? Should we care? What are the lessons for today? Book Mark Avery to speak to your Bird…
Naughtily nutty – the rspb
The rspb is following other farmers into the rapeseed oil business. I visited Ian Dillon at Hope Farm last week and had a chat about it with him. Regular readers of this blog might recall that the rspb bought Hope Farm when I was Conservation Director and so I have a quasi-proprietorial interest in it….
Pigeons and doves
I went out for a walk on Monday morning and as I parked the car at 0710 a large flock of pigeons flew past. Just Woodpigeons, nothing very special, but hundreds of them so quite interesting. And then another flew past, and another and I started counting. In 15 minutes c5000 birds flew past; and…
Saturday cartoon by Ralph Underhill
My thanks to Ralph for this cartoon – his idea, not mine. Monday is the day when I send in the manuscript of ‘A message from Martha‘ to Bloombury and everything is on track. I hope they like it. I’ve been liaising with the artist who is producing the cover – looking good to me…
Whales, spiders and viruses
931 people took part in this 4-question poll (and lots of you emailed me about it too). It was all about choices – if you could save a species, which species would you save? You were put in a position where ‘all of them’ wasn’t a possible answer and so, perhaps, our choices (because mine…
Sunday Book Review – The World’s Rarest Birds by Erik Hirschfeld, Andy Swash and Robert Still
This book is actually about threatened birds rather than rare birds – it deals with those 197 species which are regarded as Critically Endangered and those 389 which are Endangered. Having said that, many of these species are very rare. For example, there are (or were) 27 Sulu Hornbills in the world (on three islands…