Tag: conservation
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Bird matters, birds matter and other wildlife
My bird of the day is the Blackbird. As well as the two books mentioned in earlier posts, I am drawing on the charming book above, Bird Lore, the Myths, Magic and Folklore of Birds, Quadrille, 2025, by Sally Coulthard, which has delightful illustrations by Clover Robin. It turns out that the “calling birds” in…
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British Wildlife magazine part I; lawyers for animals and the environment
The latest British Wildlife magazine has come through the letterbox too, Volume 27, Number 4, February 2026. By coincidence in terms of the content of much of the rest of this post, it opens with Alexa Culver’s ‘A confluence of crises in English nature laws’. The Bio Diversity Net Gain legislation of 2024 was far…
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Seashells, Hippos, Cheetahs, the trouble with birdwatching, corrupt politicians and an amazing panorama
Seashells These shells were no longer wanted in my son’s room and so I have relocated them to the summerhouse which is getting rather cluttered with wildlife books, objects and art. I had forgotten we had them and cannot remember where they came from. They made me think of my good fortune in being involved…
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The British Trust for Ornithology Conference 2026. Part II
Sam Langlois gave an overview of seabird monitoring and tracking. In the past we simply have not known what goes on when the birds are out at sea but now with telemetry in the form of GPS tags, we have data to inform marine spatial planning, species ecology and in particular Marine Protected Areas. We…
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The British Trust for Ornithology Conference 2026. Part I
In most respects this was as rewarding as it was last year. It was tiring. The lovely lady I was next to said that she also felt exhausted having taken in so much information. The venue was the Mercure Hotel in Northampton. I understand the need for a fairly central location but this was not…
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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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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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More George Monbiot, Birdwatch
George Monbiot’s How Did We Get Into This Mess?: Politics, Equality, Nature, Verso, 2016, continues to shine. In ‘Civilisation is Boring’ his prose really takes flight, soars and sings. He quotes the pioneering conservationist Aldo Leopold: “One of the penalties of an ecological education is that one lives alone in a world of wounds ……
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Birdwatch, Thylacine extinction, Penguins in prison, HS2, Pheasants and Woodcock, Ticks
Above, a little celebration of snow in the garden. The other photos in this post are from a folder on my PC which I had forgotten and were taken in 2018. I used a trailcam a lot then and seem mostly to have recorded squirrels, but I had not remembered the visits of a Jay.…
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Empathy and gratitude; foxes, raptors, swans, cows, deer, legal matters and more
The Kennet & Avon Canal played a large role in my year and my enjoyment of the summer in particular. The photo above and two of those below were taken in the cold winter of 2010 when the canal partly froze over. Wildlife rescue in the face of wildlife persecution A World We No Longer…
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Thames Water, Open Cages, Foxhunting, Rachel Reeves, and more Wildlife
The image above and those that follow are from the beautiful setting for food and drink after a funeral we attended last week for the father of a friend, The Old Mill just outside Aldermaston. It was a powerfully moving Catholic service and although I am not religious I do rather like the High Church…
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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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R.I.P. Dr Jane Goodall
A ground breaking advocate for animals – and people. Gentle, compassionate, kind, wise. A great loss to the world. But her voice and her spirit live on. “The least I can do is speak out for those who cannot speak for themselves.”
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Birdwatch magazine October 2025, Choughs, the Isle of Wight, hard drugs and the latest from Starmer
Issue 400 Birdwatch magazine celebrates 400 issues. As ever much of it is too twitchy for me, but the photos alone of the rare Red-flanked Bluetail, as on the cover, are worth the price of admission. I confess to having wanted to see a Chough for a long time though (a black corvid with strikingly…
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British Wildlife Magazine August 2025
Volume 36 number 8 It seems quite brave to put a ‘humble’, unglamorous fern on the cover, but I love ferns so it works for me. Specifically it’s a Rustyback Fern, Asplenium ceterach. This issue opens with the last of the Wilding for Conservation series, 26 articles, a reflective piece by Rob Fuller and Guy…
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Oxford Museum of Natural History
I managed to park remarkably nearby at a whopping £15.40 for two hours. Paying for parking is like light bulbs: things are supposed to be better and easier but actually are just more complicated and frustrating. I went to the museum on a whim yesterday, wondering why it had been so long since my last…
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The Great Auk
The Great Auk, Its Extraordinary Life, Hideous Death and Mysterious Afterlife by Tim Birkenhead, Bloomsbury Sigma, 2025. I have already written about this book briefly when it was reviewed in British Wildlife magazine. Of at least two other books I have said that there’s a danger with those about a single species that they can…
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AI Reggae, Radioactive Rhinos, BTO News and the Art of Andy Goldsworthy
BTO News Autumn 2025, Issue 356 I am glad the gulls on the cover are identified inside or I wouldn’t have a clue – they are Herring Gulls. This is an exceptional issue of the magazine from the British Trust for Ornithology. Right away there’s a link to the Cuckoo tracking site, Cuckoo Tracking Project…
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A Robin in the Summerhouse; a Drunken Wasp; Birds, Beasts & Bedlam (book review) and a bit of Star Trek
It’s hardly the first time I have fished a wasp out of a pint of lager. They do, apparently, become intoxicated by alcohol (not the case for all animals). I fetched a spoon, fished him out and tipped him onto the table as gently as possible. He seemed to stagger around for a bit, giving…
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British Wildlife Magazine June 2025
Volume 36 number 7 This is the first of two issues I have waiting for me. I love the magazine but it takes a fair while to read and digest. The Yellowhammer on the cover seems to be there purely for the joy of it. I have only seen two and those were distant glimpses.…
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The Starling: a Biography
The Starling: a Biography, by Stephen Moss, Square Peg, 2024. Stephen Moss is a prolific author and I have read and enjoyed many of his works. And I am extremely fond of Starlings. The stunning dust-wrapper image is from: Lilford (Lord, Thomas Littleton Powys). Coloured Figures of the Birds of the British Islands. Seven volumes. …
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Birdwatch, BBOWT, BTO and RSPB magazines, Camp Beagle and a little bit of wonderful news
Beginning with the good news, two Dorset hunts, following convictions for illegal activities, have been asked not to to attend an agricultural show. I have only ever been to one and absolutely hated it. This might seem a small victory but it seems significant to me. They parade their appallingly abused hounds at these events,…
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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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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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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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Wild Boar – Groundbreakers
Lyons (Chantal). Groundbreakers, the Return of Britain’s Wild Boar. Bloomsbury Wildlife, 2024. Book review. Truly wild boar were hunted to extinction in the UK in the thirteenth century, but now, through a long history of releases and escapes, they’re back. And Chantal Lyons really loves them. A lot of delightful new words for me in…
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Seven Red Admirals
The absence of butterflies is a huge concern again this year but I was delighted to see seven fresh and bright Red Admirals all at once in the garden the other day. The lovely illustration above is from: Humphreys (H.N.) and Westwood (J.O.) British Butterflies and their Transformations; British Moths and their Transformations. Three volumes.…
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British Wildlife magazine April 2025, Swift Bricks & the Planning and Infrastructure Bill
Volume 36, Number 5 Galloway National Park? The myth that our national parks are currently of any benefit in terms of wildlife and conservation have long been busted wide open. Ian Carter writes about the proposal for a new park in Galloway, Scotland. It’s a crucible. Will it be like the ones we already have,…
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Beastly
A review of Keggie Carew’s Beastly; a new history of animals and us, Canongate, 2023. There is something very haunting about the dust-wrapper image. The end-papers are an optimistic very bright green. The author is well-known for her other books, Dadland and Quicksand Tales. This book is moving, funny, sometimes disarming, and profound. With 40,000…
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May bug, PETA, Wild Justice, Protect the Wild, Icefish and more
May bug My son and his girlfriend thought that they had found, to their horror, a Cockroach in the bath and so did I at first, but it turns out to be a May bug or Cockchafer, the largest chafer beetle in the UK. I don’t recommend googling “cockchafer” without a filter. It seemed to…
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RSPB Magazine, Spring/Summer 2025 and a time-lapse Water Lily
Chief Executive Beccy Speight opens with a no-nonsense attack on the grouse and gamebird (what an awful word) shooting industries and the destruction they cause, especially of birds oḟ prey. Heather Mathieson, Investigations Liaison Officer, writes on the same subject in more detail in an article “Stop the Killing”. ‘Birdcrime’ is specifically used to refer…
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Nature Boy
Seán Ronayne, Nature Boy; a journey of birdsong and belonging, Hachette Books, 2024. Book review. I didn’t want to finish this book, in the sense that I didn’t want it to end. It had me in tears too many times to count and from the beginning I was sure that it was going to be…
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Badgers & Development; British Steel & Thames Water; Trump and his tariffs
Apologies for the uneven appearance of sub-headers in this and recent posts, a WordPress issue which they are currently trying to resolve. Development “Bats or great crested newts?” “Neither because I want growth.” This was Rachel Reeves in an interview not so long ago. She may as well have said “money” instead of “growth”. Starmer…
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Sparrow with attitude
I do think this female House Sparrow seems to have attitude, as in “What do you think you’re looking at?” BirdWatch magazine Bird Watch magazine is here again, issue 394, April 2025. I think I am coming to an end with it. It seems increasingly to be almost all about twitching rarities. That’s not really…
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Cleveland Lakes Nature Reserve
This is a roughly forty minute drive from me and is part of the Cotswold Lakes area, much of which is given over to water sports. It is also part of the Cotswold Water Park Site of Special Scientific Interest, is Cotswold Lakes Trust’s flagship site and consists of wetland lagoons, scrapes, reedbeds and ponds. I…
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Ambelopoulia, Jeremy Clarkson, Steve Backshall, Maria Vincent Robinson, Thames Water, Cheltenham and more
There is no particular reason for the Wood Pigeon photos, except that I was pleased with them when I took them yesterday: the light and shadow in the picture above, the blink and the textural detail. Ambelopoulia I wrote about the consumption of Ortolan Buntings in France here: Spurn Migration Festival 2024 – Animal Wild…
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Guy Shrubsole. The Lie of the Land. Book review. Part II
The Lie of the Land. Who Really Cares for the Countryside? William Collins, 2024. I had thought to use these evening sky pictures purely as decoration for this post, then I thought they were inappropriate since land and sky are in a sense opposites of each other. But then I had the idea or even revelation…
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Bird Table – the BTO magazine for Garden Birdwatchers, BTO News & more
I picked up a year’s worth (2024) of the British Trust for Ornithology’s quarterly, generously illustrated magazine at the recent BTO conference in Manchester. As I said in my report on the conference, they will presumably be changing the name in short order since we are all now being discouraged from using bird tables at…
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British Wildlife magazine February 2025: the rest of the issue
Volume 36, Number 4 Tim Birkhead contributes “A portrait of the Great Auk”, only ever seen by just one or two scholars and ornithologists. It was driven to extinction in 1844 by dealers and museums and it is far from clear what it actually looked like. There seem to be just two images drawn from…
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Bird conference
British Trust for Ornithology, Annual Conference, Midland Hotel, Manchester, 1st March 2025 My first such conference (the only others I have attended have been about rare books and manuscripts), which tied in with visiting and staying with my younger daughter who is studying at Liverpool University, a long overdue but somewhat less than fruitful look…
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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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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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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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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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BirdGuides weekly news
Possibly there is good news for bees in the form of a proper government ban on neonicinotinoids, which kill them. We have been here before though, with the previous government granting exemptions year on year, mostly to the lucrative benefit of sugar beet farmers, which they described as “emergency authorisations”, which seems very Orwellian. NFU…
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British Wildlife magazine December 2024; Birdwatch February 2025
British Wildlife, Volume 36, Number 3 The Common Lizard on the cover somehow looks relaxed and malevolent at the same time. The issue opens with a piece questioning whether Ireland’s Lusitanian heathers are in fact Spanish. I am sure it’s fascinating but to be honest I struggle to care terribly much. Brett Westwood in his…
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Grouse shooting: yet another Labour betrayal, and the strange story of the released lynx
It is enough to make me weep in anger, frustration and sorrow. Wild Justice, who did campaign for licensing as the RSPB still does, have seen that that will never be enough and petition for a complete ban. As did 47,000 other people. Having promised change, the government now seems happy to trot out all…
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Farmoor Reservoir
This was a recommendation from another volunteer at HART Wildlife Rescue. At HART a female Mallard has been taken in having been found impaled and immobilised by two fishing hooks (one with three prongs), the line wrapped around or somehow attached to a tree. Some anglers think nothing of abandoning their gear like this, used…
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A Kinkajou and mostly good news for wildlife
The illustration above is from Dictionnaire Universel d’Histoire Naturelle by Alcide d’Orbigny, first published in 1849 and which runs to sixteen volumes. D’Orbigny travelled extensively in South America and was a correspondent with Darwin. Not for the first time, messages from my friend volunteering at an animal rescue in Costa Rica have sparked my interest. He sent…
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A Christmas wildlife miscellany
The picture above was taken in in January 2010 when the Kennet & Avon canal which runs through our village was partly iced over. No decent snow this year though. Newsletter 139 from the Binfield Badger Group is an excellent issue, not just because they have partly reproduced my account of our last survey, for…
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Slimbridge Wetland Centre
This is a rather gloomy post, so at the end is a short list of twelve reasons the RSPB has given to celebrate in the form of wildlife successes this year. I last went to Slimbridge ten years ago with my children. It was very sobering to visit again this week and to see it…
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BTO, RSPB, BBOWT, BirdGuides and Tamanend
I usually review and summarise the British Trust for Ornithology’s news magazine at some length, but I have to say that I found the winter 2024 edition rather lacklustre. It features a Harlequin Duck (I prefer the less gaudy Mandarins) on the cover to accompany a piece about the hoary and difficult subject of invasive…
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Good news for wildlife
In part at least. I thought I would follow Protect the Wild’s lead – they have just made a video recording some of the happier recent stories. It’s a reminder not to feel completely helpless and even desperate. I repeat the stories here. Snares are finally properly illegal in Scotland. I do wonder about enforcement…
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British Wildlife magazine October 2024, tigers, and foxes in Scotland
A necessary use of the Oxford comma in the title there – there are no tigers in Scotland as far as I know. British Wildlife, Volume 36, Number 1 I have been blessed by visits from a Great Spotted Woodpecker this year, on a daily basis for quite some time, two of them at one…
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A Swan, a Badger, a Gyrfalcon, a Fox, and Squirrel and Songbird theatre
A first for me at HART Wildlife Rescue this week. Whilst others worked inside with the hedgehogs, I was assigned the Collared and Stock Doves and Feral Pigeons outside, which I am used to, and a Mute Swan, which I am not. The columbines flapped about a fair bit in the aviary but soon calmed…