Blogger: Aggie Rothon, Communications Officer

'Christmas is the one time of year that we collectively decide to go in to hibernation’ my colleague said the other day. ‘We don’t tell each other, everyone just knows that it will happen.’ Yet while we are all emerging from a restful and sleepy festive period, for birds the winter months are a continual frenzy of feeding activity. With little ‘natural food’ such as berries…

Blogger: Jacqui Miller, Conservation Officer

I used to go to lots of places to look for wildlife – everything from walks on the common to trips to remote Scottish Islands to listen to corncrakes, but always going somewhere. I would occasionally peer out at the garden, but it was a bout of flu that really made me look that bit closer to home.

I should have known that my garden would be a good spot for wildlife…

Bloggers: Jonny Rankin & Tristan Reid

Editors note: I love a story about wildlife heroes, and this one is up there as one of my favourites.  Read on to hear how four wildlife heroes are upping their game for nature!

Here's Jonny

Some RSPB members may have noticed the following mention in this weeks news on the RSPB website; Concerned bird lovers have stepped up to help out Operation Turtle Dove.  A group of…

Blogger: Rachael Murray, Communications Officer

The Twelve Days of Christmas is a song that echoes throughout the UK during the festive period, and whilst we all get a bit confused about how many drummers are drumming, maids are a-milking and geese are a-laying, everyone is clear on the star of the show - a partridge in a pear tree.  

On Christmas Day it seems fitting to explore the origin of the final true love's gift…

Blogger: Erica Auger, Communications Manager

For me, Christmas time seems to revolve around one rather important thing. Food! It is at the heart of our family get togethers, it’s what my friends and I gossip over and we do tend to overindulge a little tiny bit! It’s almost the complete opposite for our feathered friends and garden wildlife who need all the help they can get to stay full up this winter time. We can do…

Blogger: Sarah Green, Project Co-ordinator - Natura People Partnership

October 2013 saw another Natura People partner meeting.  The meeting was held near Lake Grevelingen at Renesse in the Netherlands and attended by representatives from all partners – the RSPB, Provincie West-Vlaanderen in Belgium, Provincie Zeeland in the Netherlands and Natuur-en Recreatieschap de Grevelingen in the Netherlands.

Photo credit…

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Blogger: Rachael Murray

As the New Year approaches, I can already feel that annual urge come upon me.  You know the one, the need to ‘take stock’, that growing list parked in a corner of your mind, or idly scribbled on a scrap of paper as you watch TV after another turkey based meal. The wish list of things you hope the forthcoming 12 months may have in store.

Often these aspiration inventories include…

Blogger: Sarah Green

Stuck for Christmas ideas?  Finding the shopping season a bit much and feel a need to get away from it all?

Why not support wildlife in the East through supporting RSPB Minsmere’s corporate members? 

Tala is a long established kitchenware brand selling pretty vintage style equipment for all your baking, icing and preserving needs (and probably more besides!).  Tala goods are stocked in loads…

Blogger: Steve Rowland, Public Affairs Manager for RSPB Eastern England

It’s now six days since the biggest surge tide to hit the East coast in 60 years. I’ve lived by the sea in North West Norfolk for 16 years, and every autumn / winter when there are spring tides I've looked at the weather forecast for those classic indicators of a storm surge; low pressure, a North West wind and big tides. There have been times over…

Blogger: Aggie Rothon, Communications Officer

I’ve written before about the constant battle I have with ‘mess’ in my house. I am forever shoving things in to cupboards or hoovering gerbil bedding from behind the table. Some tell me it comes with the territory of sharing a house with a five-year old but I’ve come to realise I can’t lay the blame entirely at that particular dinosaur-stickered door …

Blogger: Matt Parrot, RSPB Membership Development Officer

I am really enjoying our new campaign, Giving Nature a Home.  It provides me with a brilliant way to talk to people about how they can help nature without going any further than their own back gardens.

My job is to influence people to support the RSPB and rather than speaking about our reserves or species conservation, I now spend a lot of time talking about…

Blogger: Aggie Rothon, RSPB Communications Officer

Behind my house is a belt of trees - an ancient jumble of oak and ash, beech and sycamore. The tallest tree stands perhaps forty five metres high from its statuesque base to sky-skimming crown; a king amongst a princely crowd. The trees tower over my cottage, branches linked together like a football team defending an opponent’s penalty kick.

Today the copse…

Blogger: Simon Tonkin, RSPB Senior Conservation Officer

Andrew and Allison Bond are brilliant examples of wildlife friendly farmers, and like their namesake, 007, they too are heroes, in their own, understated, way. 

Whilst they are not seen in pursuit of baddies across the vistas of iconic cities, their ideals and actions are just as heroic as any Bond plot line.  Andrew and Allison Bond are protecting the very foundation…

Blogger: Rachael Murray, Communications Officer

With Halloween around the corner, scary stuff is pretty de rigueur, but when the fear inducing fodder relates to our children’s connection with nature, we at the RSPB get unseasonably jittery.

Recent news stories on the subject have highlighted that our future generation are on average spending four and a half hours a day surfing the internet or watching TV and…

Blogger: Alex Johnson, Garden Designer: DesignWild Associates

It is with heart in mouth that designers go back to gardens that they have designed. In my case, I had less to fear, having seen photos of the [RSPB Flatford Wildlife] garden taken in the two years since its completion, and heard from my design partner Catherine Heatherington who had made some visits in the interim.

During its conception, a garden lives in…

Blogger: Jon Reeves, Reserves Livestock & Grazing Advisor

Note from Editor: Meet Riverside Beef, one of RSPB Minsmere’s corporate members.  The RSPB has a variety of partners all committed to protecting the environment and providing homes for nature.  Riverside Beef produce wildlife friendly cattle on the pastures and meadows of Cambridgeshire, Norfolk and Suffolk.  Read on to find out how they work with their…

Blogger: Sarah Green Project Coordinator - Natura People Partnership Project

A few months ago I marked my very first trip to the Birdfair.  I was there to assist with the RSPB birder reception, where a small but very keen team of us mixed up approximately 350 Black Grouse whiskey cocktails for sampling by lecture attendees.

 Why Black Grouse whiskey?  Well, the RSPB has a partnership with Famous Grouse whereby for…

Blogger: Hannah Gray, Work Experience Volunteer - July 2013

Firstly, I have to say most people think the RSPB is all about birds and you have to know loads about birds to get involved in it. However, this is not the case, the RSPB try to conserve a multitude of habitats and animals that live in them, and a knowledge of birds whilst useful is certainly not necessary in this organisation. The RSPB offers a range of different…

Blogger: Laura White, PA to Public Affairs Team Manager

Today we had a terrible thing happen in the office. It was mid afternoon, the time when the blood sugar is falling and inspiration gets up and heads for the door. Around this time we usually put the kettle on and head for the biscuit tin. We have two biscuit tins in the public affairs office and they are kept stocked with a wide assortment of goodies. Today our…

BLOGGER: Adam Murray, Communications Officer

The RSPB currently has 52 Facebook accounts which include regional, reserve, country, volunteering, online shop and national pages.

This lack of consistency is confusing. It makes it difficult for good people to find what they’re looking for and for.

It is not practical for every reserve to have its own account, as we are lucky enough to have over 200 nature reserves…

Blogger: Rachael Murray, Projects Officer

The colour green has, in recent years, been adopted as the hue of choice for endeavours including environmentally friendliness, recycling and energy efficiency.  It is a tone imbued with an inherent sense of ‘goodness’; to be ‘green’ is to be kind to the world. Isn’t it?

I’m going to have to make a confession.  Before I worked for the RSPB I…

Blogger: Lex Gardner, RSPB Volunteer

A few months back, I jumped a bicycle for the first time in a decade. As a kid, riding bikes round my home village of Wicklewood was a favourite pastime but as I grew up, I grew out of my little bike and never bothered to buy a new one. However, I have rediscovered my love of cycling.

It was a rare, sunny day in April and I decided to be spontaneous and jump on my granddad’s old…

Blogger: Lex Gardner, RSPB Volunteer

My name is Lex and I recently managed to raise just over a hundred pounds for Operation Turtle Dove.

When I first set out, I wanted to think of a different and possibly challenging way to raise some funds. I had a little experience working in music and gigs so, naturally, I put two and two together. I quickly found I might have bitten off more than I could chew because I was used…

Blogger: Gena Correale-Wardle, Senior Community Fundraiser

Sometimes the feeling the trouble our natural world is in overwhelms me until I was to scream about it in the middle of the street. “Don’t you know that our starlings are disappearing?” “Where have our hedgehogs gone?” “Where has our society’s bond with nature gone?” Of course I’m far too sensible to shout these things, but my anxiety teeters on the edge, threatening…

Blogger: Agnes Rothon

Can you remember what it was that inspired you to do the job that you do today or the job that you did throughout your working life? I can remember mine and I revisited it quite by accident the other day.

I was clearing out the spare room – the drawers at the bottom of the book case were beginning to sag under the weight of the cargo that they carried. It was time to get down to the serious business…