Following on from a dawn chorus walk and Redstart Ramble, last Saturday was a nightjar walk at Sherwood Forest National Nature Reserve. I met Nottinghamshire County Council ranger Claire Watson and 20 people in the car park at 9 pm and we headed off into...

What do house sparrows in London, vultures in Mumbai, white-headed ducks in Turkey and yellow-eared parrots in Columbia have in common?

Apart from the obvious - that they’re all birds in trouble which the RSPB or its partners in BirdLife Inter...

Hello from a very sunny and warm Skinflats (I have worked in this office for nine months now and that is the first time I have been able to say that!). The good weather means it is the perfect time to get out and about, and what better way to spend a 

Just listened to the addresses given by our speakers at the launch of State of Nature – my selection for line of the evening goes to Plantlife’s chief executive Victoria Chester who asked biodiversity Minister, Richard Benyon the question in the headline...

Guests are gathering to launch State of Nature here at the Natural History Museum. Twenty five organisations have come together carry out a stock take of our natural world – you can read more about it here.

This evening we are honoured to be...

Here I am at the Natural History Museum located glamorously behind the cloakroom awaiting the start of the launch event of State of Nature. Speakers are rehearsing their lines and we are all looking forward to the arrival of Sir David Attenborough.

Your Saving Special Places blog will be off to London shortly and I will blogging from the launch event of State of Nature at the Natural History Museum.  Here’s some links from today’s media coverage the Guardian, BBC Online and the Daily...

“So we’re probably looking at a 5:30am start......”, cue silence at my end of the phone. Toby, one of RSPB’s conservation officers for the Inner Forth area, had agreed to help me out with a breeding bird survey in Bo’ness and, although I was expecting...

Spring is slowly taking hold around Morecambe Bay, but as temperatures drop and the rain blows in, you could be forgiven for thinking otherwise. Even on a rainy day there are some special places to explore with signs of spring and hopes for a sunny day...

Roughly once a decade airport planners cast their eyes east of London into the marshes and wetlands of the Thames Estuary. In some sort of grotesque bring-forward diary the arguments for (largely its not somewhere else) and the arguments against (communities...

Sherwood Forest is a special place with a wealth of special wildlife. The redstart is an iconic bird of Sherwood Forest – more widespread and numerous in upland areas, it is on the edge of its eastern range in the Midlands here in Sherwood Forest....

Sunday 28th April - 5am in the main car park of Sherwood Forest NNR and 10 people had gathered for a dawn chorus walk with Claire Watson, Nottinghamshire County Council ranger, and me.

The early birds singing in the dawn chorus were blackbirds, robin...

The annual Easter craft fare came to the grounds of Wollaton Hall and deer park , Nottingham on the 29th-30^th March, hosting a wide range of stalls and displays from local craftsmen and women throughout Nottingham. From cakes, to knit wear, bird boxes...

Hello from a very sunny (for the moment) Skinflats nature reserve. We have a bit of a treat today, it's the first Futurescapes guest blog! This has been written by Kate Fuller of the Inner Forth Landscape Initiative, a project which is delivering parts...

Every year my colleague Rolf (Williams – Kent Communications Officer) gets the plum job of soaring 1,000ft up above the Thames Estuary in a micro-light. In his words this is “a privileged, if precarious, position from which to visit the whole...

Press reports have picked up on the abundance of birds that called RSPB Cliffe Pools nature reserve home this winter. Over 10,000 black-tailed godwits (like the three in the picture below) have been setting records for this North Kent coastal wetland...

A few hours ago I sadly posted this blog, setting out our initial reaction to the shocking news that the proposal to extend the famously unsuccessful Lydd airport’s runway has been approved. I also had to tell my 8 year old son who has come to love Dungeness...

Today’s shocking decision to approve an extension to Lydd airport in Kent is the latest stage in the sorry saga of attempts to develop the site. We’re very disappointed at the news and are profoundly concerned for the future of one the UK’s most important...

This blog is filled with the stories of special places for nature. It makes sense to indentify those sites that most important for particular species and ensure that they are effectively protected.  But what happens if the species that depend on particular...

Avocet!! Right here on the Skinflats reserve, an avocet!! Amazing! You can probably tell I am a little excited (hence all the exclamation marks) but at the end of last week I got a glimpse of a bird that I have never seen before and certainly did not...

In a few short weeks nightingales will return. They are not amongst our earliest summer migrants so there is still time for the cold that is currently strangling spring to relent.

Fewer nightingales will jug, jug, jug their songs into the night in fewer...

Here’s some great news for Easter. Kenya’s Dakatcha Woodlands have featured on this blog over several years – and we’ve followed the campaigning of Nature Kenya and local people to protect the woodlands and seasonal wetlands. The area has...

Wednesday is the first anniversary of the National Planning Policy Framework, or NPPF. The draft was subject of much controversy, and even though the final version was much improved, it’s clearly open season for debate about its impact, especially about...

This post is based on an article I wrote for Conservation Planner, our twice-yearly newsletter for planners interested in nature conservation. You can see the new edition on-line here, but if you want to receive a regular paper copy, please contact...