The image above is from Meyer (Henry Leonard). Illustrations of British Birds, c.1835-1844. It seems the name changed to just a single word relatively recently.
A male Sparrowhawk in the garden yesterday. I caught only a fleeting glimpse as usual but I am confident in my identification. It came from the direction of the bird feeders and flew at a steepish angle up and over the summerhouse. The only other birds of similar size who visit are Jackdaws, Magpies, Wood Pigeons and Collared Doves and this was definitely not one of any of those. The barred underside and the sheer speed were the giveaways. A female visited a few times last year. The males are much smaller. All very exciting – I felt a strong jolt of adrenalin.
The British Trust for Ornithology’s news magazine, Issue 360, Autumn 2026 has a beautiful Common Crane on the cover.
The Cuckoo Tracking Project is running again and one bird was followed taking a circuitous route to the Congo Basin from Scotland, crossing the North Sea to Denmark, then Sweden, across the Baltic Sea to Poland and then to Eastern Germany, rather than heading south and crossing the Channel. A ringed Avocet has broken records, being 36 years old.
The use of bird ID apps is banned for the purpose of sending data to the BTO but I tend to agree with the reader who writes in saying that whilst it may make mistakes, so do people. The Breeding Bird Survey Organiser replies that it needs further looking into.
Red-backed Shrikes are a scarce passage migrant but they can be seen here impaling insects on thorns or barbed wire “to be kept as a larder to fuel their migration.”
A piece on BTO Bird Camps is a reminder of just how good the organisation is at engaging young people. Much effort is also being made, in tandem with the RSPB, to record the effects of climate change on our bird populations. Some heathland birds are doing well – Woodlarks, Nightjars and Dartford Warblers.
I approached Mike Dilger’s 1,000 Shades of Green; a year in search of Britain’s wild plants, Bloomsbury Wildlife, 2024 with a little trepidation. Having been somewhat disappointed with Peter Marren’s book (he gets four index entries in this one), see The Devil’s Garden – Animal Wild, and having got to know and very much like Mike on the South Devon wildlife trip in July, I really wanted to like it. Only a few chapters in, I absolutely do. His style and tone are completely different from Marren’s and the book proceeds at a cracking pace, there’s self-deprecating humour – and it has colour photos and charming black-and-white illustrations by the author’s wife. My first book has illustrations by my children. In fact, we established in Devon, our sons share both first names and nicknames.
Wordsworth it seems held not so much Daffodils as Lesser Celandine in highest esteem, but they don’t rhyme with “hills”. It was decided that one should feature on his tombstone, but unfortunately and accidentally he got a Greater Celandine instead which is a member of a different species altogether.
I did not know that crucifers are the same as brassicas, such as cabbage. Mostly they have four petals arranged in a cross shape. A mention of Dandelions coincided with my being reminded of D.H. Lawrence’s bizarre painting, owned by my late friend and co-director George Lawson, of a naked man urinating on them.
There’s excellent ammunition for the next time I have an argument with someone about hedge flailing – “death by a thousand cuts”. Also Ivy which he defends robustly. I find it incredibly difficult to convince people that it does not harm trees other than as a competitor. It is, adds Dilger, “hard to think of a more wildlife-friendly plant.”
I love his righteous outrage at being forced off a brownfield site where he was trying only to photograph plants. He defended himself robustly but says he will be even bolder next time he is accused of trespass, which is not a crime in England.
The royal family and slavery again
I wrote about the Royal African Company in 2024 (Michael Palin in Nigeria – Animal Wild) and about the feeble royal apologies for slavery just the other day. I have now read a review of a new book, Brtiain’s Slave Traders; a forgotten history, by William Pettigrew. The excellent review is by Gerard DeGroot. The company was originally called The Company of Royal Adventurers. It reveals just how common and normal it was to engage or invest in the slave trade: a research group identified “approximately 13,000 individuals who were responsible for the violent transportation of 3.3million enslaved African men and women and children”, around half a million of whom died in transit. Guilty parties included Queen Elizabeth I, Robert Walpole, Samuel Pepys, George Frederic Handel, John Locke and even Voltaire who overtly opposed the trade. There was one investor, Elizabeth Ashby who owned coalmines the produce of which was used to forge restraints and torture devices in the steel mills.
The Company of Royal Investors “was granted the right to mint a gold coin. Made from African gold, it bore the mark of an elephant and castle [which made its way onto the Royal African Company’s coat of arms] and became known as ‘guinea’, a 17th-word for Africa.”
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