No longer a passenger on our planet

Thursday was the 97th anniversary of the extinction of the passenger pigeon – once the commonest bird in the world and now a distant memory. The Independent newspaper published an article by me on the subject (click here) and regular readers will know I have a bit of a thing about passenger pigeons (click here,…

And finally?

So after 6 weeks (slightly more), 10,000 miles by car (slightly less), 270 bird species (slightly more) and 100 ‘lifers’ (more), what’s it all been for?? Well, this was a holiday so it was about relaxing and I relaxed, but it was a holiday only possible after I gave up the well-paid post of RSPB…

Still raining

I thought of detouring to Niagara Falls but that would have been silly – it would have added too many miles and I have seen torrents of rain all day anyway.  When it hasn’t been raining hard it has been raining very hard. So not a bird-rich day – even though the Allegheny Mountains, through which…

Homage to the Passenger Pigeon

I did a strange thing in a zoo today. My days are beginning to fall into a certain order.  Wake at 5am after a good night’s sleep and without an alarm, check emails (‘cos Europe is already up), shower, move stuff into the car and then hit the road. And so I headed North from…