Weekly Update and Another Book Recommendation

It has been a quiet week for me birding-wise this week for a number of reasons, but one of the main ones being the dense fog that we have had over a number of days. I have been visiting my feeding station every other day and numbers of Tree Sparrow and Chaffinch are building up. Currently there are about 200 Tree Sparrows and 60-70 Chaffinches.

Yesterday we had a failed attempt at catching and marking some Turnstones. The 'Terry's' were reluctant to come in for the food we have being out out as they seemed to prefer foraging amongst the grass for invertebrates. The other factor was an idiot with his three collie dogs that chased the Turnstones completely off the site. I have come to the conclusion that most dog walkers must be illiterate as they seem not to be able to read signs put out by the local authority requiring them to keep their dogs on a lead!

I read a great book recently called 'Wild Hope - On the Front Lines of Conservation Success' by Andrew Balmford. Andrew takes a 'cup half full approach' to look at several conservation success stories from around the world where unlikely people have got together for a variety of reasons to solve some conversation problems. Don't be fooled as Andrew does point out the perilous state that the world's biodiversity is in, but his case studies illustrate that there is a way to solve some of these problems if there is a will to do it. He finishes the book with a chapter on 'Stemming the Loss - Or what We Can All Do to Save Nature' and we all can take something from this and put it in place. An excellent read!