Month: January 2025
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Schooldays
My blog seems to be becoming increasingly and more openly autobiographical. One of the advantages of getting older is that one cares rather less about what other people think. I don’t have many subscribers but nevertheless feel happily compelled to write and publish my photographs. This morning I wondered what happens if for whatever reason…
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The Flow. Book review. Part III
In the ‘Eddy’ entitled ‘Flow’ the author is writing mostly about finding her mojo, getting into the zone, when it comes to kayaking but here she is on writing, first citing the psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi who published his Flow Theory in 1975, “describing a state of mind exemplified by trained and motivated individuals performing complex,…
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BirdGuides weekly news
Possibly there is good news for bees in the form of a proper government ban on neonicinotinoids, which kill them. We have been here before though, with the previous government granting exemptions year on year, mostly to the lucrative benefit of sugar beet farmers, which they described as “emergency authorisations”, which seems very Orwellian. NFU…
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The royal societies: RSPCA and RSPB. Update
Another e-mail in from the RSPCA inviting people to join the “Big Conversation” about animals. By no means a terrible idea. I signed in to leave a comment and made my feelings about the Assured labelling scheme known in the appropriate section, “Farmed animals and food”. I do not envy the RSPCA Ambassador her job.…
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The royal societies: RSPCA and RSPB
Turning and turning in the widening gyre The falcon cannot hear the falconer;Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere The ceremony of innocence is drowned;The best lack all conviction, while the worst Are full of passionate intensity. From ‘The Second Coming’, W.B. Yeats. I am not sure I can continue to read…
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British Wildlife magazine December 2024; Birdwatch February 2025
British Wildlife, Volume 36, Number 3 The Common Lizard on the cover somehow looks relaxed and malevolent at the same time. The issue opens with a piece questioning whether Ireland’s Lusitanian heathers are in fact Spanish. I am sure it’s fascinating but to be honest I struggle to care terribly much. Brett Westwood in his…
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The Flow. Book review. Part II
The Flow, Rivers, Water and Wilderness, by Amy-Jane Beer, Bloomsbury Wildlife 2023 There is a very great deal to learn from this book as we join Amy-Jane on actual or imagined journeys along rivers and streams and springs. Here is the author on a phenomenon entirely unknown to me, beautifully written: “Those that are less choked…
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Grouse shooting: yet another Labour betrayal, and the strange story of the released lynx
It is enough to make me weep in anger, frustration and sorrow. Wild Justice, who did campaign for licensing as the RSPB still does, have seen that that will never be enough and petition for a complete ban. As did 47,000 other people. Having promised change, the government now seems happy to trot out all…
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The return of a Chaffinch
I worry about my garden birds. I quietly apologise to them if I am late filling the feeders in the mornings. Where have the Greenfinches and Chaffinches been since the Spring? There was a rare day recently when I saw not a single Great Tit but happily they are all now back. I had just…
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The Flow. Book review. Part I
The Flow, Rivers, Water and Wilderness, by Amy-Jane Beer, Bloomsbury Wildlife 2023 I have always enjoyed the author’s contributions to British Wildlife Magazine and first wrote, briefly, about this extraordinary book in October last year. “I don’t know what drew me to take this photograph but life is full of coincidences. Over lunch afterwards I…
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World Records
I first mentioned the Guinness Book of Records here: Wonders of wildlife in Norfolk part IV, Cley, Norfolk Wildlife Trust – Animal Wild “A much better chance to photograph Golden Plover (below). What a beauty. I had learnt a couple of weeks before that Lord Beaverbrook, out shooting these and other birds (who would even…
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Birdwatch, HART Wildlife Rescue and other wildlife notes and news
At HART yesterday morning I was once again in the Isolation Room (is someone trying to tell me something?) then washing up in utility – a process also governed by strict protocols. I have been watching Joanna Page’s series about her experiences volunteering at Wildlife Aid and finding it quite relaxing. Her reactions to various…
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Betrayal of badgers and voters by the Labour government yet again
A short and very angry post. I can scarcely find the words and had to make myself watch Rob Pownall of Protect the Wild’s video about this. Another member of our badger group has said that it made her feel physically sick. Disgusting, craven, spineless … As Rob says, politicians just can’t admit that they…
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Avian Architecture. Book review. Part II
Avian Architecture, How Birds Design, Engineer and Build, by Peter Goodfellow, Princeton University Press, 2024, revised and expanded edition. With a foreword by consultant editor Professor Tony D. Williams. See earlier post: Avian Architecture. Book review. Part I – Animal Wild I began Part I with this: “In a sense it is a bold title. Whilst no…
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Farmoor Reservoir
This was a recommendation from another volunteer at HART Wildlife Rescue. At HART a female Mallard has been taken in having been found impaled and immobilised by two fishing hooks (one with three prongs), the line wrapped around or somehow attached to a tree. Some anglers think nothing of abandoning their gear like this, used…
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A Kinkajou and mostly good news for wildlife
The illustration above is from Dictionnaire Universel d’Histoire Naturelle by Alcide d’Orbigny, first published in 1849 and which runs to sixteen volumes. D’Orbigny travelled extensively in South America and was a correspondent with Darwin. Not for the first time, messages from my friend volunteering at an animal rescue in Costa Rica have sparked my interest. He sent…