Month: July 2025
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They steal baby Gannets and eat them, don’t they?
I photographed this Gannet, collecting seaweed for the nest, off the coast of Alderney earlier this year. The headline above is shameless in two ways. It’s a steal from the novel and film They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? and I usually try to be less emotive, but this has got me really angry. We harvest…
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Protect the Wild
This post is just a brief message of congratulations to this wonderful organisation which has now existed for a decade. Founder Rob Pownall has written a book giving a short history: Protect the Wild, a Decade Fighting for Wildlife, available from the website and benefitting the charity. I have supported them since their early tentative…
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British Wildlife magazine May 2025, BirdGuides and other wildlife news
Volume 36, Number 6 This issue opens with “Next steps for the GCSE in Natural History” by Mary Colwell. A fantastic idea , first made public in 2021. Progress has been painfully slow and there have been many hoops to go through but it does look as though it could yet become a reality. It…
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Wolf
‘Wolf’ is such a wonderful word. Backwards it’s ‘flow’, much used by crossword compilers. Sure enough it came up just the other day: “Metal flux around hammer”: wolfram. It has an irregular plural of course, ‘wolves’, like leaf, knife, loaf, calf, dwarf, roof, life, wife, sheaf and many more. And this is a wonderful book,…
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Graduation
A perfect few days in Edinburgh with the family for my elder daughter’s graduation. She got a first in History and because it’s Scotland her degree, which took four years, is an M.A. It should have been a six-hour drive to get there but a horrendous crash on the other side of the M6 meant…
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The Kennet & Avon Canal part XI
Caen to Seend Cleeve I did not get nearly as far as I had hoped yesterday, having been aiming for Trowbridge. I’d been delayed leaving by a flat tire on the bike – only my second puncture so I haven’t fared too badly. But the bike came with very few instructions and it took me,…
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Runfold Ridge
This made for a lovely morning, low-key and laid-back and all the more charming for it. The only blight was the arrival of three extremely noisy dogs who barked at everyone and everything and, incredibly, were not kept on leads in such a sensitive area – and it is still nesting season. The attitude of…
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Fledgling
The young birds in the garden are doing really well. Yesterday there were as many as six little Blue Tits on the feeders or at the bird bath at once. There’s just one Great Tit now, there are not so many sparrows, even the Jackdaws are fewer in number, as is to be expected at…
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Infiltrada. Undercover. Inside the bunker.
This is Camp Beagle which I have written about before. Wonders of wildlife in Norfolk part I – Animal Wild “There was somewhere I wanted to visit on my way up to King’s Lynn, Camp Beagle, on the outskirts of Huntingdon, which I wrote about here: Your Neighbour Kills Puppies; Inside the Animal Liberation Movement…
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Manchester – an archive, live music at my favourite venue and a canal and river cruise
I had to drive to Wilmslow to collect the very last tranche of an archive which firstly my father and then I had been dealing with for decades. I was glad I had decided to stay in Manchester, where I was once a student, overnight. The drives were not easy, taking over four hours instead…
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Badger sett survey June 2025
A blisteringly hot Sunday, which I don’t mind at all – I love the heat – or, if you are a fan of The Fast Show, it was scorchio! For much of the day though the woods offered cooler shade. We had covered this area near Reading before, in 2021, but the setts are especially…