August 2020

A while back English Heritage announced that where possible some programme for the 2020 Heritage Week should go ahead, while mindful of social distancing etc. I know of some places where, in view of the difficulties involved, their programme for this year has been abandoned, but John Netherwood, who organises Hull Civic Society’s programme for

In writing about sand-martins, the smallest of the ‘hirundines’ (s.p.b.s.), the Rev. White  focussed on their manner of nest building. Unlike swallows and house martins, sand-martins built their nest in a hollowed-out hole in an earthen bank, these holes, he claims, being up to two feet in depth. White develops a moral point from this

Just a couple more of Rev. Gilbert White’s eloquent observations on the lives of swallows; Having  described the fledglings as ‘perchers’ because on first leaving the nest they perch on a branch (more often these days a telephone wire) as yet unable to fly White writes (1774) ‘in a day or two they become flyers,

There seems no doubt that of all the birds closely observed by the Rev. Gilbert White over his lifetime, mostly in his parish near the south coast, swallows and others of the swallow ‘family’, martins and swifts or ‘hirundines’ as he collectively called them, held a special place in his affections. As touched-on in a

Researching the biographies of Rev. Gilbert White’s two main correspondents provides an interesting insight into the methodical studies of late 18th century intellectuals – the two main correspondents being Thomas Pennant (1726 – 1798) and The Honourable Daines Barrington (1727 – 1800). Pennant was a Welsh naturalist, writer and antiquarian who corresponded with many contemporary

Throughout the Rev. White’s letters  are recorded moments when he shot birds, indeed it might seem sometimes as if he carried his gun on all his walks. To the mind of the modern conservationist this seems unforgivable but in an age before ‘protected species’ and the R.S.P.B. it must be stated that his reason for