Letter to my new MP, Lee Barron – Mark Avery
Lee Barron MP. Photo: official portrait https://members.parliament.uk/member/5315/portrai ^(https://www.blogquicker.com/goto/https://members.parliament.uk/member/5315/portrai)t Dear Lee, May I offer my formal congratulations on your election as an MP. I’m not just being polite, I delivered lots of leaflets for your campaign and I am a Labour Party member. We have met briefly – I was one of the small group of […]
Birthday Nature Walk along the Beach – The Tidepooler
Tide Pooling Log: Birthday Nature Walk along the Beach November 11, 2024 On the morning of my birthday late this summer, I wanted to go to the beach– of course! The tide was somewhere between 1 and 2 feet, so I didn’t expect to do much tide pooling, if any of the rocks would evening be […]
Birds from Below • John Muir Laws
Class session 5 April 2022. We usually want to draw birds from front, three-quarters, and side views, but is that really the angle we see them at most? In this class, John Muir Laws addresses how to draw birds when you’re looking up at them perched in a tree, the angle least talked about. Add […]
Open letter to the new Chair of RSPB – Mark Avery
Email to Sir Andrew Cahn, RSPB Chair Dear Sir Andrew, Congratulations on becoming Chair of RSPB Council, although I have to say that at the online AGM I voted against your appointment, not because I have anything against you personally but because I know practically nothing about you but I didn’t much like the look […]
Students in Crisis • John Muir Laws
The Nature Journal Educators Forum has a conversation about signs of crisis in students and how we might help and support them, as educators and concerned adults. ***Content warning: this conversation includes heavy topics such as students in crisis, harm, self-harm, neglect, signs of abuse, suicide, and others.*** Disclaimer: We are not health care professionals, […]
Guest blog – Walshaw Turbine 65 by Kate Haslegrave – Mark Avery
Kate Haslegrave. Photo: Kate Haslegrave Kate is a photographer and has lived in Haworth for the past 20 years. She has been walking up on the moors for the past 10 years or so and one thing she has come to learn is that no two days out on the moors are ever the […]
Omar Gallardo: 1975–2024 – Bay Nature
Omar Gallardo. (Illustration by Eric Nyquist) Sonoma County environmental educator and community activist Omar Gallardo passed away after a three-year fight with ALS on October 23, 2024, according to The Press Democrat ^(https://www.blogquicker.com/goto/https://www.pressdemocrat.com/article/news/sonoma-county-omar-gallardo/). The following profile of Gallardo, by Guananí Gómez-Van Cortright, was first published in the spring of 2023, when he was honored with […]
Sunday book review – Small Game Hunter by Peter Smithers – Mark Avery
We are asked ‘Have you ever wondered what entomologists do?‘ and I have, and I enjoyed finding out what this eminent entomologist (a vice-president of the Royal Entomological Society) has done. It seems to me, he has had a lot of fun and his enthusiasm is infectious. But his main field of research has […]
A Hazardous Waste Site Becomes ‘San Francisco’s Next Great Park’
Since he moved to Bayview at five years old, Darryl Watkins wondered why a neglected lot, called 900 Innes, was closed off. He often played basketball at India Basin Shoreline Park next to the yard sloping into the Bay, and peeked through the fence to find dirt, trash, neglected buildings, and a dilapidated cottage that […]
Sunday book review – Landscape Change in the Scottish Highlands by James Fenton – Mark Avery
This is a stimulating book which takes an independent view of Scotland’s Highland landscape. The author challenges the current orthodoxy (is it?) that most of the Highlands was not so long ago wooded and that restoring woodland cover, the great Forest of Caledon, should be an aim of rewilding and nature conservation. No matter […]