• Oh I do like to be beside the seaside

    Erica Auger
    I’ve often wondered why being near the sea is so captivating. In all the years i’ve lived in Norfolk and holidayed sporadically along the coastline of the UK, the sea has always drawn me in.  When the winds blow in from the North Sea and you’re stood on the Norfolk Coast, wrapped up in your jacket and hat, fingers freezing and cheeks biting, you sometimes feel like the only person in the world. Not in a lonely…

  • A shy, medallion wearing geezer? The contradiction of the acorn collector...

    Kate Blincoe
    Jay image copyright Liz Cutting, www.lizcuttingphotos.com
    How many conkers have you collected this autumn? If you’ve got children or grandchildren then I’d guess at least thirty and if you haven’t, there is still something so pleasing about their glossy chestnut gleam that I bet there is one in your pocket from your last stroll.
    Spare a thought for the busy jay, who takes collecting rather more…

  • Don't mention the C word

    Erica Auger
    Uncertain future for the grey partridge
    It has certainly been a busy week all round. I don’t really want to mention the C word, through fear of it’s very mention sending you all dashing for the return button. But it would be an oversight to not touch on the government’s spending review and the aftermath of our budget cuts. And with it, the very deep hole that now sits in the nation’s spending.…

  • Confronting the hard facts of Hard Rain

    Kate Blincoe

    Oiled bird, credit: D.Rodrigues / UNEP / Still Pictures

     I’ve got a framed photo in my bedroom and one of my friends has got the exact same one on the shelf in his kitchen. The photo is of a Montagu’s harrier, the centre of a wildlife watching project that I worked on, gliding on grey-blue wings and staring imperiously down from it’s lofty flight towards the camera. The picture is a good few years…

  • Bat's the way to do it!

    Erica Auger
    Image: Kevin Simmonds www.wildlifeimagary.co.uk
    With the nights well and truly drawing in, the cold, crisp autumnal air is biting more and more at our cheeks and it’s the time of year to start thinking about those classic winter comforts. Home-made soup, a roaring fire, big snuggly jumpers and hot chocolate to name a few. How about filling your belly with a side dish of 3000 insects; spiders, flies, mosquitoes all…

  • Falling in love with a sandy carpet ...

    Erica Auger
    Hummingbird hawk moth
    Every summer, when I was young, my parents would take me and my brother off camping for a fortnight’s holiday.  These camping trips were always carefree and despite the inevitable rainy days stuck in the tent, the middle-of-the-night trip to the loos in my wellies and having to boil our water the ‘old-fashioned way’, I wouldn’t have changed them for anything. Camping does however, expose a whole new world; a world…

  • There's no need to be part of the X Box generation

    Aggie Rothon

    Apparently it took me ages to say my first word, but when I did eventually decide to make myself heard I pronounced 'horse' with such clarity that it took my mum aback. I think the fact that I could look out on to a stable yard from my cot must have had something to do with it. Strange too that my first word really stuck with me - I am completely in love with anything equestrian to this day!

    So I'm really pleased…

  • It's been a rollercoaster ride.

    Erica Auger

    Have you ever been on one of those rollercoaster rides, the ones where you plummet into a dark hole from a crazy height emerging only seconds later into the light looking shell-shocked, hair dishevelled and knuckles white? The moment that really makes my tummy go all jittery is when you’ve just had the safety harness pulled over your head, the mechanics start kicking in and you go clunk, clunk, clunk, up the rollercoaster…

  • Nature is amazing!

    Aggie Rothon
    Did you get the rain over the past few weeks too? Sheets of slanting, leaden rain plummeting from a bulging grey sky. The garden was glad for it, but the watery chill certainly didn’t make it feel like August. On one of these wet afternoons, huddled inside with puddle-lakes forming outside the door, I sat peering from the window down to the courtyard below. A line of swallows were shivering on the telephone wire just…

  • Don't cut our curlews

    Aggie Rothon

    Often, in spring, I’m thrilled to hear an unusual wailing call sailing its way with the wind across RSPB Minsmere nature reserve. It sounds like a high-pitched referee’s whistle. This means one thing – the stone curlews are back.
    These birds are extremely rare and I always feel privileged to be able to go and see them at Minsmere (not something that everyone gets to do because they…

  • Oil spill in the Thames

    Kate Blincoe
    Sometimes we are reminded just how vulnerable the natural world is and how at mercy of human actions it is at all times.

    No one could have watched the BP Gulf of Mexico disaster without fearing for marine and bird life.

    Just yesterday, we had one of those ‘oh no’ moments in our region too, with the news that about 500 litres of oil had leaked from a ship in the Thames Estuary. The oil soon spread and reached…

  • Monday Morning Ditty

    Adam Murray

    Blogger: Laura White, PA to Public Affairs Management Team

    I'm one in a million voices but I don't want to be out in the field

    Don't want to watch bitterns feeding on fish, spot redshanks, wigeon or teals.

    I don't want to spend time on a small boat giant waves lashing about

    Just to add weights to a fishing line to give the albatrosses a shout

    I don't want to march through the streets waving my banner…

  • I am a Janner Birder - what are you?

    Adam Murray

    Blogger: Simon Tonkin, RSPB Senior Farmland Conservation Officer

    I am a Janner Birder! A Janner is to Plymouth what a Scouser is to Liverpool or a Geordie to Newcastle. I spent all of my childhood birding the Plymouth, with delights like the rusty anchor (a sewage outfall), fishscale beach (a fish factory discharge pipe) and the pool of dreams (a pool that never produced anything!).

    I'm sure I have sold the birding…

  • When will I, will I be famous?

    Erica Auger

    Without wanting to put that rather overplayed Bros hit from way back in the day in your head, it's not too far from the truth! As Communications Manager for the RSPB in the East, my role is as varied as a Blue Peter Presenter's and as exciting as a lead part on EastEnders. Ok, so EastEnders may not be everyone's cup of tea, but hopefully you get my point! Aswell as the the writing, the talking, the listening and…

  • Thoughts of home

    Aggie Rothon
    I bumped in to an old primary school friend the other day. I hadn’t seen her for 17 years but she seemed just as lovely as she had been back then. She reminded me
    of playtime at my childhood home. Us building rafts together to float on the lake and my mum making us chicken kievs – Lucy’s favourite for tea time. The sky would turn Prussian blue outside the kitchen window as the blackbirds hurried to and fro, making…

  • Pimp my Heron

    Adam Murray

    Blogger: Becky Ingham, Face to Face Team Manager

    "How is H (the cleverly named Heron) doing?", the masses ask. He is now on his way to the repainting clinic, to have a lick of new feathers, some go-faster stripes and potentially a built in stereo, ready for his annual exciting excursion to eastern Englands largest heronry in St Albans. Each year, H plays an important part in this Date with Nature, standing next to…

  • Identity Crisis

    Adam Murray

    So the keen and observant ones amongst you would have spotted our slight change to our blog group title. The blondes in question have not been turned into bugs you will be pleased to know. The proliferation of non-blondes in the team meant that it was time for a change. I still consider myself a blonde and do even have "blonde moments" but as winter limps along my winter plummage changes to its more dull appearance. …

  • Best Served Chilled

    Adam Murray

    Blogger: Janneke Dobben, Membership Development Assistant

    How did you spend your Saturday? Shopping? Gardening? Freezing your socks off in Norwich City Centre with only a bright green marquee saving you from the elements? I'm guessing not the latter. The dismal weather through the winter months is not enough to stave off us hardcore recruiters, and all through December and January we have been battling the cold, snow…

  • Good grief Tenerife!

    Adam Murray

    Blogger: Gena Correale-Wardle, RSPB Community Fundraising Officer

    Last week I spent a lovely week on annual leave in sunny Tenerife. Not only were my friends and I excited about relaxing by the pool and basking in the sun like lizards, we were looking forward to seeing some too. With over 100 endemic species of fauna, more than 50 bird species and several reptile and mammals inhabiting this volcanic island we were expecting…

  • They Think It's All Over...

    Adam Murray

    Blogger: Kim Matthews, Membership Development Officer

    What do a sofa, Andy Murray and a cup of tea have in common?  Well, last Sunday they were all part of my Big Garden Bird Watch! 

    It's not often that bird watching involves comfy furniture, or tennis for that matter.  However on Sunday morning the Murray match had already begun by the time I settled myself onto the arm of the sofa.  Armed with a supersized mug of…

  • The Ghosts of the Hickling highway

    Adam Murray

    Blogger: Becky Ingham, Face to Face Team Manager

    I have a white car, occasionally.

    Strictly speaking, for the 2 days a month after cleaning it. In between times it reverts to its traditional Norfolk winter plumage of muddy brown, with odd insults scrawled in the back. This is the downside of life on the Norfolk coast in the winter months and I have to say, it's not a bad price to pay for some of the amazing wildlife…

  • Time for Jack Frost

    Adam Murray

    Blogger: Aggie Rothon, Communications Officer

    Look out, look out, Jack Frost is about! I love the idea that if you glanced out to the fields in the crisp early hours of a January morning you might glimpse a spiky figure darting from tree to tree. Sharply glistening hair do glowing white in the moonlight, ice crystals crackling over leaves and grass, spread by a mere graze from Jack's fingertips. I know exactly what Jack…

  • Name that bird, Colin

    Adam Murray

    Blogger: Erica Howe, Communications Manager

    They're a bit like Colin Firth really aren't they, crows? I'm not talking about his charming good looks, his wonderful articulation and his knee-weakening exit from the 'pond' scene in Pride and Prejudice, but the way people quickly jump to conclusions about him. Only recently did my trip to the cinema to see The Kings Speech, leave me wanting to tell everyone I know about…

  • My Valentine’s date – with Nature

    Adam Murray

    Blogger: Gena Correale-Wardle, Community Fundraising Officer

    This Valentine's day I am showing my love in many ways... presenting my boyfriend with a romantic treasure hunt, giving one of my best friends a handmade card to show how much I love and appreciate her, and I am using the rest of my affection to sign up for this year's Love Nature Week! I have never been a huge 'Valentine's' fan but I do think it's a great…

  • H has found himself a lady friend

    Adam Murray

    Blogger: Kathryn Leigh, Date with Nature Officer

    Well it is the time of year for courtship, fights, mating, breeding and rearing young and H is on his first step to this year's family. However, he is rather premature and has found his potential partner in the office! She is a fine specimen, the larger lady, just how he likes them. Thankfully, she has agreed to go down to St Albans with him, so there is a blossoming…