Wildlife

Butterflies in crisis

Britains butterflies are suffering a dramatic decline. Can they be saved? Read more at The Guardian. Right at this moment I have a Large White butterfly crysylis attached to the frame of the back door. It should emerge in May or June.

Thuggish geese

Imagine the scene: a beautiful sunny Autumn day on the banks of the canal in Castlefield, golden leaves rustling above my head. I sit down on a bench, lift my Greggs chargrilled chicken sandwich out of the paper bag and suddenly I’m surrounded by three large geese. One of which keeps running up to me, Thuggish geese

BBC Springwatch swallows

I just managed to catch the young swallows leaving the nest on the BBC Springwatch live webcam. Cute. It was a great show this year, especially the ‘Nightshift’ infrared cameras after midnight, which have regularly featured the antics of badgers. It has had better viewing figures than the Big Brother live feed. I hope the BBC Springwatch swallows

Red Squirrel Week

Excited to see a red squirrel in the garden this morning. It was being chased by more than a dozen sparrows. They have made the overgrown clematis their base and I expect they saw the squirrel as a predator. From 30th September to 8th October 2006 it’s Red Squirrel Week. This one was nine days Red Squirrel Week

When cows attack (video)

When cows attack

MP4 version here (iPod compatible). Click through to my site for Flash video.

I had an eventful five hour walk this afternoon. This is a short extract from a much longer video that I’ll be making about it. I’m laughing about this but, with a calf on the track ahead of me, I wasn’t sure whether angry mum and dad and all their friends might be able to get out the field if they reached the corner before me.

There have been a few cases of walkers being trampled to death by cattle. Especially when there are calves: BBC report.

(Peter says: ‘get back to the city centre!’)

Birdlife

One of the things you notice when you come from Manchester city centre to a small village out in the country is the birdlife. Sure we have magpies, pigeons, starlings and even parrots where I live in Manchester. But here there is just so much more variety and so many of them: swifts, swallows, thrushes, Birdlife