Glis glis

Snow! There’s a steady stream of thrush species landing in the fields and trees near our house; it looks like the heavy snow to the east has pushed them over to us – what a sight!!

Tagged by Andrew: Pick up the nearest book. Open to page 123 Find the fifth sentence. Post the next three sentences. Tag five people, and acknowledge who tagged you. “It feeds mainly on insects, which include earwigs, gall-insects, beetles, moths, ants, blow-flies and tipulid flies. It also eats spiders, centipedes and worms, while its vegetable [...]

Over the next few months, Dorset Wildlife Trust are auctioning signed pictures of butterflies drawn by loads of celebrities, including Katie Melua, Graham Norton, Ricky Gervais – go have a look at their eBay page! =)

Nirah is a new proposed “freshwater sanctuary” near Bedford. The overall concept is very appealing, although I haven’t quite made up my mind about it yet. It looks Eden Projecty, but a bit more commercial (with the water rides and 4D cinema stuck on). It’s definitely a good idea to have a centre dedicated to [...]

It looks like the effects of MSC Napoli are worsening – a new slick has formed =( Hurray for the wonderful RSCPA workers and volunteers, who are working hard to help the birds… Wish I could help, especially as it’s all happening so close (apparently they originally intended to get the ship to our beach [...]

We watched the first episode (Born of Fire) of BBC’s new series on Galapagos the other day… I don’t think I’ve said “wow” so many times since Planet Earth was on XD I’d never quite realised that marine iguanas can actually stay underwater for up to half an hour to eat the algae – and [...]

We had the loveliest time on Sunday – it was a gloriously sunny day so we went wading in the River Otter, and saw lots of fab creatures =D We kicked up tiny little flatfish, eels and scary huge fish =) Also saw an elephant hawkmoth caterpillar, golden-ringed dragonflies and stunningly vivid, irridescent blue and [...]

Recently, Tom and I were discussing swan species we’d seen, and I dug out some photos of a pair of swans I’d seen in Solihull in January 2006. I realised I hadn’t ever identified them, so with help from Tom and nice people on Flickr I found out. It seems that they were hybrids – [...]

Concern over seal threat to fish “Almost half of the fish passing under a Teesside bridge are being eaten by seals, a pilot study has found.” That sounds quite worrying… until you read: “The 21-day survey was carried out by tagging the progress of 18 fish.” … Wow, what a large and representative sample size [...]

Happy Easter all! We went to Slapton Ley yesterday, and saw lots of nice birds including a Cetti’s warbler (which rather bizarrely seemed to have white wing bars), and a marsh harrier =D The Cetti’s warbler song is very loud and distinctive (especially when it’s going on all around you), but you’ve got to love [...]