Month: February 2026
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Dirty water; the Chagos Islands
Dirty Business I have now finished George Monbiot’s How Did We Get Into This Mess?: Politics, Equality, Nature, Verso, 2016, and have run out of superlatives. We are now seeing evidence of grossly exaggerated forms of the kinds of corruption, especially corporate corruption, which he exposed a decade ago. In ‘Highland Spring’ he discusses land…
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Badger sett survey February 2026
I would go so far as to say that our survey yesterday was joyful. Signs of spring abounded: snowdrops, daffodils, crocuses and birdlife (although not so much birdlife as one would wish). Best of all was to feel the sun on our skins after so long in grey, dreary wetness. Surpisingly the ground was mostly…
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British Wildlife Magazine December 2025
Volume 37 number 3 Tim King writes an update to a piece from almost twenty years ago about Yellow Meadow Ants, who are featured on the cover. They are fascinating biodiversity boosters. I have a quibble. Tim describes them as “ecosystem engineers”, going on to say that the term has been debased by some to…
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The Last Elephants, part III
The Last Elephants, compiled by Don Pinnock and Colin Bell, Hardie Grant Books, 2019. The photographs are again from Tanzania. Before returning to the book, some more about the extraordinary, diminutive Lek Chailert and her Elephant Nature Park in Northern Thailand as can be seen in the video below. 🐘 Sanctuary – Elephant Nature Park (2022)…
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The Last Elephants, part II
The Last Elephants, compiled by Don Pinnock and Colin Bell, Hardie Grant Books, 2019. The photographs are again from Tanzania. ‘A tale of two elephants, working out elephant management in a private reserve’ constitutes chapter 6 and it’s another which brought tears to my eyes although I don’t much like the word ‘management’ in the context.…
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The Last Elephants, part I
The Last Elephants, compiled by Don Pinnock and Colin Bell, Hardie Grant Books, 2019. I have had this book for a long time and don’t know why I haven’t got to it before – possibly I worried that it would be depressing and heart-breaking (the title is less than optimistic) but that turns out to…
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Snowdrops, Squirrels, Beavers, Tice’s Meadow and McDonald’s, a monkey lab is to close, and Tony Blair seems to be up to no good again
Lunch at the nearby Elcot Retreat yesterday which was a bit of a curate’s egg but it gave me time and space to read two of my daughter’s excellent degree essays, ‘The Experiences of Women of Colour in Midwifery Services’ and ‘Political economies of unfree labour through a gendered global capitalist lens: Sex work in…
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Chris Packham and the North Dorset Hunt Sabs, Protect the Wild on the right to protest, Las Vegas, Mandelson and Starmer
The image above is from: Thorburn (Archibald). British Mammals. Two volumes. Longmans, Green & Co., 1920-1921. Chris Packham and his step-daughter Megan McCubbin spent five hours out with the North Dorset Hunt Sabs on a rather grey and wet day following and monitoring the notorious Blackmore and Sparkvale Hunt (BSV). They and the sabs refused…
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Crosswords, Rupert Brooke and Jeffrey Archer, AI, zoos in trouble, the Environmental Investigation on Whaling, news from the Hare Preservation Trust and Mark Kermode on ‘Melania’ the movie
Images in this post are from: Thorburn (Archibald). British Mammals. Two volumes. Longmans, Green & Co., 1920-1921. I have now finished Pretty girl in crimson rose (8), a memoir of love, exile and crosswords by Sandy Balfour and it has been a delight throughout. The last few chapters include examples of what might be called…
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HS2, Starmer, bird flu
HS2 There is an incident in the episode of Landman (with the ever excellent Billy Bob Thornton) which I watched yesterday in which people and the feral pigs they were hunting with assault rifles are killed by a gas leak. The gas is identified as HS2. I didn’t know what that was so looked it…
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Elephant rescues, fox hunting, trees, Peter Mandelson, and Kuala Lumpur house keys
Elephants Two more Thai elephant rescues to bring tears to your eyes. We first see all three elephants in chains, two of them repeatedly swaying their heads in stereotypical behaviour indicating depression and despair caused by their confinement and cruel mistreatment. That behaviour continues but dwindles during the long journeys to the wonderful Lek Chailert’s…
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Pheasant shooting – the insanity
The image above is from Gould (John). The Birds of Great Britain, 1862-1873. A lively debate in the pub last night on a subject I often try to avoid or change because I tend to get overheated to say the least. Of the four people involved two were completely against me, one didn’t say much,…