Month: November 2025
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Ben Elton; the ex-prince and the royal art collection; good and bad news for nature
I have recently finished Ben Elton’s autobiography and enjoyed it very much – he is at the very least always easy to read. He was at Manchester University not long before me and as students we adored The Young Ones. He has of course been extraordinarily prolific and I read several of his many novels…
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Egyptian Geese, Otters, British Wildlife and Keith Richards
Egyptian Geese The photo above was taken at Ranworth Broad in Norfolk in 2023, a lovely place with a floating visitor centre. They are strange looking birds and seem to be a classic example of a misnomer. I can’t remember where I saw this but they are not really geese, or as far as I…
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Sarcastic Fringehead
This crazy name came up in a short multiple choice quiz set by the £1m winner of Who Wants to be a Millionaire? It is, it turns out, a fish, so named for its highly aggressive, territorial behaviour. I suppose sarcasm can be a relatively gentle form of aggression but I still don’t really get…
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An oaken sett survey
Another adjectival word for oak trees is, delightfully, “quercine”. It’s an oak at the head of this post. For once I see no harm in revealing the location of our badger group’s planning and infrastructure related survey: Sandleford Park in Newbury. This has been hugely controversial since 2012. The original application was for 360 new…
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Bulls, foxes, auks
There is no particular reason for the bird pictures in this post other than as decoration but it was good to see the stunning Nuthatch and two Blue Tits on a feeder at the same time. The Sparrowhawk is still around – as usual I only saw her from the corner of my eye but…
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Birds, butterflies, fish, orcas and other mammals, deer, foxes, capitalism gone wrong, Merwin, Blake & Tolkien
Birdwatch magazine November 2025 Issue 401 A Crossbill on the cover this month, a kind of finch with bills specially adapted to enable them to extract seeds from pine cones. Which does leave them with restricted potential habitats. The various species “with so many subtle clines in both features and calls, the genus Loxa poses…