[trigger warning: this post discusses some distressing details of animal harm] You don’t have to be interested in British nature for very long before you hear the words “schedule 1”. It’s a reference to part of the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981, the very thin piece of paper which is all that sits between Britain’s wildlife and those who wish it harm. The recent news that people from the UK were involved in a “baby monkey torture” group, paying individuals …
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Although you might not realise it from the weather, it’s late Spring, almost Summer. That makes it time for all of the new life that is entering our world to make itself seen. It’s also that time when parent creatures are driven frantic by the need to deliver food to growing families. The parents of this pair of little grebe chicks were in constant motion, finding insects and even small fish to feed to their pair. The effort involved …
It’s National Mammal Week, and with the latest David Attenborough series “Mammals” showing us just how diverse a group of creatures these are, who wouldn’t want to take a moment to celebrate them? Britain has a healthy range of mammals, occupying all spaces from our seas to our mountaintops. Regular readers will know that I have a deep love of hares, those long-eared, long-footed super-sized rabbits who sit out in the countryside and take whatever the weather throws at them …
Recently,I stood next to a small patch of scrubby grassland. Roughly triangular in shape, bounded on each side by footpaths worn by countless walkers boots, it measured perhaps ten feet across with the rotting remains of a small tree, now reduced to just a few moss-covered logs in the the middle. Anyone, including me, would have glanced at it quickly, seen a tangle of leaflitter and nettles and passed by. But yesterday I was looking for a bee. I’m trying …
As widely reported, the Scottish Government has acknowledged that its environmental target of a 75% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 is now unattainable, and has been widely condemned for it. It’s certainly easy to feel angry about this admission. But to criticise it misses three important points. Firstly, if we condemn our politicians for admissions of failure, we simply encourage them to conceal any such failings. It’s a common trick to release bad news on a day when …
Odd things, knees, when you think about it. At some point in evolutionary history, nature decided that instead of walking on a single, rigid stick, life would be better if we broke the stick in the middle and made it floppy, and then had to have a complicated system of muscle and tendons and ligaments to make it all go straight again. Why? If a straight leg was too long, surely the answer was just to make it shorter. But …
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