Devoted to the point of exhaustion, Two-Tone the Blackbird has fulfilled every one of his responsibilities as a husband and parent to the nth degree. From March, right through to the end of July, he’s thought of nothing else but the welfare of his mate and the youngsters he helped bring into such a totally unforgiving world. Now, he’s a mere shadow of his former self and I’d guess that he’s probably lost as much as 25% of the weight he was in early Spring!

Talking to a friend this morning (no not my pretend one….he’s on holiday at the moment), I happened to mention how often I’ve been seeing Wasps while out and about….in fact,  I’ve been seeing them since December! Not surprisingly, he was slightly skeptical, not having seen one himself so far this year (remember, none of the Wasp species are really due to be particularly active until later in May). Quick as a flash, I decided to smear some of my special home-made,…

I think this has a kind of Middle-Earth quality to it and is the first photo I’ve taken so far in 2009 that I like and for that reason.

Normally the sort of thing you’d expect to see attached to someone’s face in a Sigourney Weaver film, this creature is, nevertheless, a horror story in its own right, but if you want to know more about it, then I suggest you try Googling “American Signal Crayfish” because I simply don’t have the time to begin even scratching the surface when it comes to this particular ecosystem disaster area!

Red Clover roots contain a bacteria capable of turning nitrogen in the air into salts essential for the plant’s growth and it is now possible to transfer this nitrogen-fixing bacteria to crops such as wheat, thus saving farmers in some parts of the world a small fortune on fertilizers, some of which can be harmful to the environment.Meanwhile, Clover has always been valuable to livestock farmers as a source of fodder and to crop farmers as an enrichment plant when ploughed into the…

February through to May is just about our busiest and most work-intensive time of year. We’re all out from dawn to dusk almost every single day, covering (almost entirely on foot) as many miles as we can physically manage in as wide a range of habitats as possible, including ancient mixed, coniferous and deciduous woodland, farmland, moorland, coastal, wetland, flood plain, mountain and urban.We take thousands of photographs, scribble countless notes, make little marks on maps, draw…

“What do you mean….‘A Chicken’! If you must know, I happen to be a Fenning Sussex!”

A lover of disturbed ground, the poisonous Common Ragwort has been the bane of horses for centuries where it frequently grows in pasture-land churned up by their hooves. It’s also the favoured nursery plant of the Cinnabar Moth caterpillar which has learned to absorb its poison as a means of defending itself in both its larval and adult Moth form against insect-eating birds. Wet, Cold and Seemingly Unable to Cope I know I keep banging on about Bees, but things are going from bad to worse…

We had two or three degrees of frost here in the UK last night and to listen to the news on the radio this morning, you’d think we were on the brink of a new Ice Age!

An Afternoon at the Wildlife Park on the Survival Guide Thingy page atwww.wildliferanger.comas well as Cleopatra? on the Diary and General Stuff page Crimson and CreamTulips….looking like a sunset over Sydney Opera House….or maybe just a bunch of flowers