• Life Amongst The Lovage

    Loving this iNaturalist App. Three of the many insects buzzing around the lovage outside the tent this morning, a bald faced hornet Dolichovespula maculata, a gloriously shiny sweat bee Augochloropsis metallica and a hummingbird clearwing Hemaris thysbe who wouldn’t stay still long enough for a good photo. All identified through the App. We now have…

  • Dear mouse-please leave the tomatoes alone

    I’ve been in Canada a month now spending much of my time exploring new pathways around hedgerows and traditional skills so thought it was about time I got back to some field ecology. Sarah has a problem in the upper field at Mount Wolfe Farm where the young tomato plants are being eaten, so I…

  • Another Dangerous Narrative In Conservation

    Originally posted on Thinking like a human: Emery Roe, an American policy scholar, first developed the idea that ‘narratives’ – stories about the world and how it works – are used in policy making processes to cut through complexity and justify a particular course of action. We are a storytelling species, and people find it…

  • #30DaysWild Welcome To Ontario

    #30DaysWild Welcome To Ontario

    In wildness is the preservation of the world- Henry David Thoreau, in  ‘Walking’ (1862) Its Sunday June 3rd and back in the UK my colleagues at Surrey Wildlife Trust have already been busy filling social media with their #30dayswild posts to encourage their friends, family and the public to take time each day through June…

  • Last Day

    My last day at SWT for a while, I’m heading out on sabbatical to Ontario next Friday to join the Hedgelaying in Ontario’s Greenbelt project as a Visiting Scientist at the University of Waterloo. Just some of the things I wont leave behind…