You’re reading this because, like me, you love a good bird. Even though we all say we appreciate every bird no matter how common, everyone has their favourites. Some people pick favourites based on how they look or their behaviour. Some people pick a favourite because it marks a special occasion or reminds them of a special place. My favourites are carefully selected for a variety of reasons. Here’s five of my favourites…

A month ago I was spending balmy evenings watching the swift colony swirl around the rear of our terrace. One particularly joyful evening saw half a dozen swifts using my guttering as a launch pad, shrieking with cacophonous glee as they dropped from the high eaves, wheeled above the backyards and returned to the guttering in a noisy, ungainly flap that betrayed the strength and bulk beneath that plumage. They’d then…

Few birds look as characterful as a stone-curlew. That big yellow eye immediately draws your attention, their plumage is beautiful and practical, and their thick and knobbly legs round off a bird I never get tired of looking at on a magazine page. I’ve been enamoured with them since, but I’d never actually seen one in real life before. Just a couple of weeks ago I decided that the prospect of seeing them and their chicks…

I'm delighted to present a guest blog from one of my colleagues, and talented photographer Michael Harvey, who is often to be found at lunchtimes here at RSPB HQ The Lodge putting his skills to good use. I also had the privilege of being able to select some of my favourite shots from his portfolio to accompany the blog. I hope you'll be inspired to keep taking your wildlife shots and sending them in to natureshome…

With Editor Anna enjoying a well-earned summer holiday, Deputy Editor Emma guest writes this week's blog.

If there’s one nature experience in life I never want to repeat, it’s cycling home from work on flying ant day. The air was thick with them buzzing vaguely and, unable to dodge their hoards, I ended up covered. They got caught in my hair, stuck to my skin, they got in my eyes and mouth and nose. By the time I…

It’s Sunday morning, sunny, and I’ve woken up at the same time I would for work. I’m meeting one of the finest naturalists I know, who also happens to be a very good friend of mine. We’re heading to Cherry Hinton Chalk Pits in Cambridge to try and find some moon carrot.

No, we’re not mad. It’s real and looks a lot like cow parsley. Instead of writing about the challenges we faced, the fun we had…

Plover, stint, sandpiper, stilt, godwit, snipe and shank. Great names for great birds: our wonderful waders!

When I was a child, I was absolutely fascinated by these mud-loving, long-beaked travellers. The idea that they travel halfway round the world on migration to come to the UK to stop to feed up on my favourite wild places - estuaries and marshes – was thrilling. It all started with a poster I had on my wall…

Today’s the last day of term for my kids. Their little heads are full of an endless, sun-soaked holiday, and I am madly searching for coastal campsites, desperately seeking anywhere that can squeeze us all in at short notice.

One of the joys of a family trip to the beach is the rockpooling. I’ve been fascinated by it since I was small. My mum would take my sister and I down to the south-west most summers, which…

Close encounters with wildlife are always very special. Two years ago I had a close encounter with a swift – probably my favourite bird if I had to choose. Sadly, it had become grounded due to an infestation of parasitic flat fly, and we tried for hours to pick off the flies and rehydrate the swift. A volunteer from Swift Conservation was kind enough to collect the swift and look after it, but it didn’t recover…

Regular readers of my Monday morning blog will be aware that I like a rarity and my weekends are often spent tracking down species I haven’t seen before here in the UK, or exciting recent arrivals such as the Bee-eaters in Nottinghamshire and the tremendous flora and bats of the Avon and Cheddar Gorges.

So today I intend to carry on in that vein, but also share a lesson I learned about the need to keep your eyes…

Earlier this week the media reported that Earth’s sixth mass extinction event is underway (The Guardian). This is not news - we all know that wildlife populations have been plummeting across the world - but these latest findings suggest that we’re further into the extinction than we thought. 

Earth has undergone five mass extinctions before, all triggered by natural calamities such as meteor strikes, chemical…

Crawling, creeping, fluttering and skittering. The walls, the curtains, the floor – my house comes alive at night. I’ve been documenting these creatures of the dark, these Night Crawlers for a few months now, and keeping track of their movements… All the following images were taken on the same night.

Subject 1 – Volucella inanis, hornet mimic hoverfly

Photo: Jack Plumb

A nest of wasps in…

I love Bristol. It's a beautiful city and is where the fantastic team at Immediate Media who produce the RSPB magazines with us are based, so I always love going to visit. It is also an absolute hotspot for wildlife. It even has its own endemic species – that means they are found nowhere else in the world!

We have friends who conveniently live 10 minutes from the world famous Avon Gorge, home to many rare plants…

The magazine fairies have been, again… we’ve just had Wingbeat (our magazine for teenage members) back from the printers’ and two copies have magically appeared on my desk. 

As you can see, we’re all about sharks this issue. This blue shark had such a nice (if slightly nervous) face, we put him on the cover.

I was chatting with the team about sharks while putting the issue together…

I’ve been making my way down to Cornwall for many years to surf and be an emmet. It’s a rich place, and always feels a little bit like being abroad. It was only a few years ago that it became a special place to me for nature after experiencing a bit of a wildlife documentary moment. Walking along the picturesque South West Coast Path, I came across some commotion at the cliff edge. Close enough to not need binoculars…

I am generally a happy chap around the office but today I am feeling even happier than usual, and its all down to the lack of sleep and exertion of a much-anticipated Saturday night "stag do"...

I spent the morning in the build up to the big event in the company of some very colourful, very special visitors in Nottinghamshire. I travelled up to see the bee-eaters that have become media darlings by settling at…

As deputy ed Emma recently blogged, there’s lots of fun working on our two magazines for primary-age RSPB members.  

Wild Times (for kids up to 7) and Wild Explorer (8-11 ish) are packed full of fun ways to engage kids with nature; whether it’s making bird-seed cakes, dens in the woods or torch-on-a-bedsheet moth lures. Then we work in lots of nature know-how and wild challenges for older kids, and colouring, cutting…

I began my blog last week by expressing how hot it’s been. This week, some parts of the country saw a month’s worth of rain in a few days. The important thing to remember though is that there’s still plenty of wildlife to see at this time of year regardless of what the weather is doing. With the rain hammering the bathroom skylight as I got ready for bed, this friendly looking chap scaled a sheer cliff face without the…

This week, I've been finding all my evening entertainment in our resident swift colony. But let's just say the photographic evidence leaves something to be desired. 

I have absolutely loved this ‘heatwave’. I used to live in Sydney, Australia, and this week’s weather has reminded me of innumerate summer evenings on my little apartment balcony overlooking the vast Pacific, with groups of wild …

Phew! I hope you've been getting out in this hot weather. I know I have, as you've got to make the most of it before the British summer hits. Sticking to my word and hunting down some damselflies and dragonflies, I thought I'd head out to a very local reserve last weekend. RSPB Fowlmere in Cambridgeshire is just down the road from me, a measly 10 miles, so in stunning weather there really was no excuse not…

I spent last week in the sweltering heat of Tuscany and arrived back on Saturday to find conditions back here in the UK pretty much the same!

But it isn’t just the weather that linked my first trip to Italy and what's going on here in the UK. A surprise visitor to my garden pre-work this morning took me right back to Italy. My wife Laura was hanging the washing out and I, of course, was doing my equal share of the chores…

Somehow, it seems we’re already approaching midsummer - 21 June – the shortest night of the year - and soon the nights will be drawing in again.

Wednesday night, I got home from work around 7pm, got my kids into bed, and an hour later I was out in the garden, bathing in warm, golden sunlight. I have an obscenely comfortable new (ex-display) garden recliner, and 9pm saw me stretched out most contentedly, glass…

You never know when or where wildlife is going to turn up. The chance encounters and everyday surprises always remind me of the fact that nature doesn’t obey the rules. It does what it wants, when it wants, and always will. I’ve often found watching nature quite humbling. Living things, doing what they’ve done for thousands of years, despite everything humans have done to disturb them or make things difficult. Nature…

I'm delighted (and more than a little envious) to present a guest blog from former RSPB Director of International Operations, Tim Stowe who brings a tale from the high seas of an AGM with a difference. Wish I'd been there? You bet and I'm sure you will too!

“It would be great if you came to our AGM”, Mark said the last time we met. “Sure!” I said, half heartedly. Mark is the dynamic…

As Britain went to the polls yesterday, I was spending a very pleasant afternoon up at RSPB The Lodge, meeting with ed-in-chief Mark to do final checks on the next issue of Nature’s Home, and sign it off for print. We also couldn’t resist a tiny nature walk, to see how the resident family of greylag geese is doing (very well, as it happens!) and spot some interesting bees, micro-moths and beetles. 

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