Category: Environment

  • Sorrow and delight in the same breath: a quantum conundrum as a noctule #bat comes my way

    Ranger Gemma bought me a present this morning and since its very nearly my birthday I got excited. Then she produced a small plastic bag and out of it pulled this Noctule bat who had caught her last insect on the wing. Gemma had found her at  at Wisley Common and by the look of the…

  • The Essex Otter and The Mayfly Knight

    A week or so ago I found myself in Essex on the Rivers Colne and Stour http://wtp2.appspot.com/wheresthepath.htm?lat=51.91318812737575&lon=0.8061829263453214&gz=11&oz=6&gt=1   I was meeting up with other otter ecologist colleagues from neighbouring counties where otters are few and far between to keep our hand in with surveying for otter and water vole signs. After about our third attempt at…

  • Evolution at Easter: science or spiritual?

    Just contemplating Easter and all that new life stuff and finding peace and existential satisfaction from the ecological and evolutionary processes inherent in the new anemones, bluebells and sorrel peeping through in the woods, the newts and frogspawn in Nower Woods ponds and the Red Kite in Pirbright village. But is that satisfaction scientific and…