You are browsing the archives of 2007 October.

‘Twas a cold rain that swept me southward to Cape May Autumn Weekend. Through New Jersey’s industrial corridor, across pristine stretches of barren pinelands, past every storied beach town along the Garden State’s Atlantic edge, temperamental squalls kept pace with me, presaging a very wet weekend indeed. For the two days I spent immersed in [...]

Apparently the British are already growing tired of being asked to help preserve the planet I and they need to survive, and are suffering from “eco-fatigue”. ‘Eco-fatigue’? Must be exhausting turning the heating down, putting the recycling out or using a low-energy bulb…

I’m sitting at home today with the whole family riddled with cold, a leaden sky hurling little pellets of hard rain at the windows, my new deluxe garden-bird feeding station attracting absolutely nothing but gusts of wind, and waiting for Mike’s report from the BIG weekend at Cape May to tell us all what a [...]

It took until the last day I was in northeastern Germany to see Eurasian Coots. I was worried I wouldn’t see one at all, but Hendrik and I tracked some down in some sewage ponds (don’t worry, the story will be told). We didn’t get the best looks but we did see them. [...]

 
Organisation: Buglife - Conserving the small things that run the world
 
Who are we? Buglife -The Invertebrate Conservation Trust is a registered UK charity and the first organisation in Europe devoted to the conservation of all invertebrates. Buglife was first registered in December 2000 and its formation was announced with widespread support from the [...]

New research from the University of Bonn shows that as Coal Tits get older they are more likely to father offspring with females that are not their mate. Those dirty old dogs!

Welcome to the latest installation of the award-winning, imaginatively-titled series of posts “Birding Northeastern Germany.” When we last left our intrepid trio of birders both the beach and the bombed-out pine forest had been pretty productive in terms of bird-life and we were about to depart on a wild goose chase after a hoped-for [...]

Some enterprising grad students in the School of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University just released a tasty little tidbit entitled “Cost-effective Outbreak Detection in Networks.” The authors pose a simple question: Which blogs should one read to be most up to date, i.e., to quickly know about important stories that propagate over the [...]

Corey’s recent posts from Europe mentioned the native Red Squirrel and the problems it’s facing from the introduced and more aggressive North American Grey Squirrel. Introduced species are rarely beneficial (eg see Mike’s post on the Common Myna): ecosystems are complex things and build up over thousands of years, and whilst we over here would [...]

Will at The Nightjar, who enjoys the coveted status of official friend of 10,000 Birds, just completed an excellent series analyzing how American farms have historically affected avifauna. While he concerns himself primarily with agricultural ecosystems prevalent from the nation’s bread-basket to our mid-Atlantic coast, Will’s treatment of grassland birds and the role [...]