Month: February 2025
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Guy Shrubsole. The Lie of the Land. Book review. Part I
The Lie of the Land. Who Really Cares for the Countryside? William Collins, 2024. This essential book follows on from the author’s superb Who Owns England?: how we lost our green and pleasant land, and how to take it back, William Collins, 2019, which forensically details who actually owns our countryside. Now he explodes the…
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Magpies in colour, Polar Bears, Komodo Dragons, Songbirds and Wood Pigeons, and Spring
Magpies I cannot quite believe I had never noticed before that Magpies are far from being black and white. It was only yesterday with the sunlight at just the right angle that I saw the marvellous iridescent blue on the wings and green and blue on the tail. The photo at the head of this…
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Long-tailed Tits
I have seen these adorable little birds a few times, in small groups (they are highly sociable), once at a distance in Norfolk and once, fleetingly, locally. They are not uncommon but they never sit still for long, generally not more than a second. Collins Bird Guide describes them as restless. I had never seen…
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George Monbiot on Question Time, Drax, badger latrines and three animals new to me from crossword clues
5 ≠ 10 George Monbiot is a great speaker of truth. His book Feral: rewilding the land, sea and human life, Penguin, 2014 in particular is simply superb. Focussing only on the discussion of the scandals besetting Rachel Reeves it was almost comical to witness the pathetic nature of the Labour spokesperson’s defence. The questioner…
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Boring brown birds
Of course I don’t think they’re boring, no bird is boring to me, but I have heard it said of these two, a female Blackbird and a Dunnock. I rest my case with these photos showing their striking and complex markings.
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Falcons and falconry
This image of the Peregrine Falcon (Falco pergerinus), famously the fastest animal on the planet, is taken from John Gould’s magnificent The Birds of Great Britain, published in twenty-five parts, usually sumptuously bound in five folio volumes, between 1862 and 1873. Copies on the market today are priced between £60,000 and over £200,000. The copy…
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A few more garden bird photos
I have been trying to take some pictures which are a bit different with, preferably, the birds away from the feeders in a more natural setting, which is of course much harder. The smaller birds especially do not hang around and pose nicely – they usually fly off the second you have established focus. These…
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New Scientist magazine, pointless animal experiments, tractor protest and through the microscope at HART Wildlife Rescue
Returning briefly to Bill Bailey’s book, My Animals and Other Animals, I was shocked to see what he said about Whale Sharks (and therefore all animals, or just fish?). Is our imagining that they live lonely existences just a projection, since they do not have “the faculty of self-awareness”? That is one hell of an…
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Vulpines, vicars and vets, Bill Bailey’s latest book, raptor decoys, zonkeys and Brocken spectres
Vulpines, vicars and vets Vulpes vulpes, the Red Fox, whose clownish-looking but sadistic persecutors continue to hunt them at will (although with a little less impunity than in the past) is getting no help from certain members of the clergy and the veterinary profession. Protect the Wild quite rightly wonders why clergymen continue to bless…
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A few more bird names
Information is mostly taken from the exciting new addition to my library, The Bird Name Book, Princeton University Press, 2022, by Susan Myers. These are birds who visited the garden yesterday or today. Two of the photos are from previous posts. The Robin (redbreast), Erithacus rubecula. Robin is a diminutive of Robert and in fifteenth…
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The Flow. Book review. Part IV
The Flow, Rivers, Water and Wilderness, by Amy-Jane Beer, Bloomsbury Wildlife 2023 This must be the longest review I have written, which goes to show how much I love the book – and all I am doing is sharing the sparkliest gems. Amy-Jane Beer writes about another fascination of mine in the chapter ‘Light and water’…
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Behind closed doors
Doesn’t this crude mock-up of the Downing Street door look sinister? I have already expressed my disgust at the words of Rachel Reeves here: The royal societies: RSPCA and RSPB – Animal Wild “I have no words to express my contempt for dangerous tax liar Rachel Reeves who has said that we need to learn…
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Books about Bird Names
I have often sung the praises of Stephen Moss’ Mrs Moreau’s Warbler; how birds got their names, Guardian Faber, 2018 especially in Animal Wild. In an update to this post Birdwatch, HART Wildlife Rescue and other wildlife notes and news – Animal Wild I reviewed The Vanishing Mew Gull; a guide to the bird names of…