Tag: nature
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Chimpanzees and Sparrowhawks and Dr Dolittle
Not my own photograph at the head of this post (all photos on this blog are mine unless stated otherwise). I watched this last night: Violent Chimpanzees That Attack Villages and Steal Children | Our World Some of it is hard to see. I’ve long felt that the trouble with Chimpanzees is that they are…
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Wasps
Wasps. The Astonishing Diversity of a Misunderstood Insect, by Eric R. Eaton, Princeton University Press, 2021. The author has worked as an entomologist for institutions including the Smithsonian and is the lead author of the Kaufman Field Guide to Insects of North America amongst other claims to fame. Who hasn’t been annoyed by wasps on…
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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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From the heart of Bath to the outskirts of Bristol; the Sparrowhawk; Fergus the Silent; Patrick Galbraith
The Bristol and Bath railway path was the first major project undertaken by Sustrans. It’s more or less flat of course and asphalt all the way. I didn’t feel the need to continue on into Bristol – this had already been my most urban bike ride this year by far – so I turned around…
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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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Phoenix Trail, a double rainbow, a Sparrowhawk in the garden and a bird murder raffle
The Phoenix Trail I parked just outside Princes Risborough and easily picked up the Phoenix Trail which runs on variably surfaced paths to Thame, about a fifteen mile round trip. It was very peaceful and runs through wooded sections and arable fields, with great views of the Chiltern Hills. It’s also a sculpture trail with…
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Birdwatch magazine September 2025 – and my animal rescue volunteering comes to an end
Oxfordshire Wildlife Rescue was due no volunteers at all on Monday afternoon so I went in. Usually it’s Wednesdays for me. But from now on it will be not at all. As I wrote recently I have been volunteering for well over a decade. I left Trindledown and HART for a variety of reasons (more…
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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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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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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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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…
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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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The Kennet & Avon Canal part X
Newbury to Reading I hadn’t expected to manage the 21 miles in one trip but did have the advantage of coming back to Newbury by train. With a bit of judicious parking I was able easily to access Victoria Park and thence the canal exactly where I had left off last time. The landscape was…
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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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How to Speak Whale
How to Speak Whale; a voyage into the future of animal communication, by Tom Mustill, William Collins, 2023, a book review. I am not sure about the title of this and nor is the author – he expresses misgivings a couple of times. I am just not sure it quite works. Nevertheless this is a…
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The Kennet & Avon Canal part IX
Kintbury to Newbury Having learnt from the extremely useful website Home – Sustrans.org.uk that the towpath from Thatcham to Reading and from Devizes to Bath has been widened and surfaced, I thought I would tackle the roughest section left, about six miles each way. The path was very narrow in parts and I nearly knocked…
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King Charles is displeased, pheasants, licences to kill, badgers, camels, plastic, water and animal sentience.
Pheasants I don’t read Hello! magazine, but someone at Protect the Wild does and has reported with great wit on a piece which records that Charles (king) is “devastated” and “livid”. I am stealing from the PtW writer’s style, but about what could it be? The rise of the Far Right in Europe, the war…
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Gifts of Nature: The Return of the Starlings; A Wren’s Nest; Other Birds, a Ladybird and Flowers
Flowers Vibrant carpets of Buttercups and Oxeye Daisies: The alliums have gifted generously this year too. This is strikingly coloured Honey Garlic, or Sicilian Honey Garlic, Allium siculum. These are Drumstick Allium or Round-headed Garlic, Allium Sphaerocephalon: The colours couldn’t complement each other better it seems to me. Here they are just a day later:…
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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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The Kennet & Avon Canal part VIII
Horton to Devizes & Caen Locks I have wanted to see Caen Locks ever since I have lived in this part of the world. They did not disappoint. First though, from the Bridge Inn at Horton where I left off last time, the usual narrow towpath and more picturesque bridges, this being Laywood Bridge. Then…
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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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Being a gosling chauffeur; Tumuli and White Horses; Birdwatch magazine and Lucky Dube vs Keir Starmer
I have wanted to visit Swan Lifeline for a long time. On Saturday the perfect opportunity presented itself: a Canadian Gosling needed to be taken there from HART Wildlife Rescue, otherwise there would be just one lonely recuperating gosling at each rescue. The one pictured above was a HART rescue from a couple of years…
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The w word: ‘weeds’
One man’s weed … Perhaps this is a word we should stop using, as Chris Packham has done with the p and v words, pest and vermin. All of the photos here are from the garden. I love thistles, this, above and below, being Sow Thistle (pigs like to eat it), Sonchus oleraceus, which I…
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The Kennet & Avon Canal part VII
Honeystreet to Horton This was the longest ride yet, six and a quarter miles*. Not very far but the first mile or so was pretty tough in terms of the usual hazards of the towpath. Knowing, with my new strategy for the ambition of riding the entire canal, that I would be making the return…
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The Kennet & Avon Canal part VI
Pewsey Wharf to Honeystreet Which sounds as though it might be the title of a novel or a poem. On my way to Pewsey I came to a rapid halt. Two tractors and a couple of other farm vehicles were working a field. This attracted no fewer than twenty-two Red Kites. Quite a spectacle. My…
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Greenham Common, Bowdown Woods
Greenham Common I first wrote about Greenham Common here: Sett survey September 2024 – Animal Wild My daughter has now submitted her dissertation and although it is perhaps not for me to say, it is brilliant and very moving. I learnt a very great deal from Greenham Women Everywhere: Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp Ideas,…
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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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Heron
I have already posted these but feel they deserve a separate post of their own. From: The Kennet & Avon Canal part V – Animal Wild). Burbage Wharf to Pewsey Wharf – including a fabulous surprise.
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The Kennet & Avon Canal part V
Burbage Wharf to Pewsey Wharf – including a fabulous surprise Eleven miles there and back, which doesn’t sound a lot especially on an electric bike, almost effortless, but you really do have to concentrate to avoid the worst of the roots, stones and overheard branches and other hazards, such as where the towpath narrows worryingly…
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Gallimaufry: Badgers, birds and birdsong, royal hands, Coyotes, an Oak Tree, a Colossal Squid, a Slow Worm & aliens
Gallimaufry is a great word. A colleague at an antiquarian bookshop was very fond of it and various other synonyms for miscellany. It’s a French stew. Olla podrida is a Spanish stew (pot pourri is the direct French equivalent), also used by the book cataloguer to my mystification at the time, salmagundi and macédoine are…
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Alderney wildlife
Even during such an emotional trip (see previous post) I did not of course forget about the wildlife. My first stop was the Alderney Wildlife Trust’s (AWT) centre and shop. I had hoped to meet the new warden at the observatory as well but timings unfortunately did not allow. The Trust is very active, organising…
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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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The Kennet & Avon Canal part IV
Great Bedwyn to Burbage Wharf Another boneshaking but wonderful ten miles or so, there and back. The new electric bike seems remarkably robust so far, although there were some squeaks of protest for the last couple of miles, so I think some tlc is in order. On this stretch alone, which continues the southward direction…
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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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Collared Dove
An adult pair were regular visitors earlier in the year as usual, but I haven’t seen them for weeks. Then two appeared this morning, but something was different and not just in their slightly fluffy appearance. They were shy and reticent, staying in the tree. I think they are juveniles and like to think the…
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Rattus norvegicus, George Monbiot and a few more garden birds
Rats Rattus norvegicus, variously know as the Norway rat, sewer rat, brown rat, wharf rat, common rat and Hanover rat. I had noticed an unusual although not unpleasant smell in the shed some weeks ago and some minor evidence of rodent damage. If I ignore it for long enough, I thought, it will go away.…
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The Kennet & Avon Canal part III
The Bedwyns Which sounds like a family name from a Jane Austen novel. Again starting where I left off, there was a surprise under Little Bedwyn bridge. A pair of Muscovy ducks. I had seen a male before but never a female and wasn’t immediately sure who I was looking at. I slowly pushed my…
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The Kennet & Avon Canal part II
Hungerford to Little Bedwyn I started a little east of Hungerford at Lower Denford, exactly where I had stopped on the previous trip (I do like to be thorough), aiming for Little Bedwyn. I covered around eleven miles, the last two on the way back on foot following a front wheel puncture. Recognising the weight…
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The Kennet & Avon Canal, Part I
This is one of those marvels of engineering which we are lucky enough to have running through our village. I have spent a lot of time on and alongside it over the years, mostly with the children. It has long been an ambition to follow the towpath the entire distance, if only in short sections…
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Garden trees, shrubs & flowers, Magpies, Taxonomy, The Urban Birder, Ruddy Ducks and Temple Elephants
Garden trees, shrubs and flowers I have spent the morning going down rabbit-holes. Not literally of course. It began with a few photographs of trees and plants in the garden. I had been in a terrible muddle about the former and remembered the lesson never to assume anything, to question everything even when you are…
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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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Simon Barnes. How to be a Bad Botanist. Book review. Part II
Barnes (Simon). How to be a Bad Botanist. Simon & Schuster, 2024. Next, Barnes takes us on a walk along an “entangled riverbank”, then a chapter on domestication (mostly of plants) in which he surprises me: aurochs, the extinct ancestors of modern cattle, is an unusual word. Aurochs is both singular and plural but there are two…
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Simon Barnes. How to be a Bad Botanist. Book review. Part I
Barnes (Simon). How to be a Bad Botanist. Simon & Schuster, 2024. Following his earlier How to be a Bad Birdwatcher, Simon Barnes here writes as beautifully, accessibly and inspiringly as ever. He is a very fine judge of how best to impart information and enthusiasm and to philosophise without ever patronising. The book is…
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Coal Tit, Chaffinch, Bees and Worms
The Merlin app identified Coal Tits for me a some days ago, but I only caught a passing glance. Yesterday at least one was back, with the unmistakeable white nape patch and a slightly scruffy appearance. Fond though I am of them, I realised that I am not so keen on worried-looking birds, a description…
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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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British Wildlife magazine February 2025 on lead shot; fox hunting and more protest news
Volume 36, Number 4 There is invariably a superb photo on the cover, but this issue also has the text “An End in Sight for lead Ammunition?”, which is the opening editorial piece by Ruth Cromie. We have known about the toxicity of lead for over 2,000 years and its very severe effects on wildlife…
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Fallen oak
Having heard about this near a local farm I drove over hoping for a photo of a massive circular root system, but there are some nice textures here, especially the fungi. Sometimes it’s just the simplest things.
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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…