500 days ago I set myself the daily challenge of identifying and then sharing at least one different species of bird, insect, plant etc that I could find locally. Yesterday the number reached the 500 mark. My intention is to double that and reach at least 1000 species but no longer will I [...]
Saving the planet, one electron at a time About six weeks ago now, we got rid of our very low mileage (kilometrage?) Honda Civic with only 16,500km on the clock after four years driving in exchange for a spiffy all-electric cross-over Hyundai Kona. We get 460km out of a battery full of electrons [...]
We get a number of requests from interested gardeners wishing to see our developing "Lo-Mow" ex-lawn. Accordingly this year, as visiting and seeing in person is still not wise under present circumstances, we are creating a page on this website devoted to seasonal changes. In essence, every week or two we will add [...]
I am reading and enjoying a fascinating memoir at the moment. If you'd like to read it, look for "A Curious Boy: The Making of a Scientist" by Richard Fortey. The author is a contemporary of mine, just a couple of years older, and was a palaeontologist at the Natural History Museum in [...]
Best time of the year Well - almost :) Faithful followers of this journal will recall that we spend three to four months each winter visiting and walking around the nearby bird observatory in the snow and deep cold to top up the feeders and to take a census of what birds [...]
I’m just getting into a collection of essays ("Vesper Flights" - Helen Macdonald) by a Historian of Science at Cambridge. I was struck by this paragraph from her introduction. "What science does is what I would like more literature to do too: show us that we are living in an exquisitely complicated [...]
Snowy Owl on the Winter Solstice We spent all of a very cold (-14C) and breezy Winter Solstice doing "our" route as part of the annual Christmas Bird Count. There were not as many birds as we usually expect - the absence of Snow Buntings was particularly badly felt as they are favourites [...]
The uncomfortable silence of 2.9-billion missing birds ** I usually confine my political or controversial comments to Facebook and face-to-face but this editorial from the 5th October Globe & Mail newspaper says it equally as well, if not better, than I could ... so here are my thoughts written by someone else. The last couple [...]
This has been a busy couple of weeks, culminating today with the planting of a new community orchard in our little town of Baie-D'Urfé. This is NOT me ... Those of you who knew our garden in England 21+ years ago will remember that we had lots of fruit trees, bees [...]
It's early July and during this week of unbearably hot weather (many days of >35C with humidex in the low to mid forties) there are some magnificent flowers are blooming at the moment - native and horticultural varieties. The first of this year's lilies are showing well. Pictures further down. As you can see [...]