Author name: Richard Clarke

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 […]

An undated letter (probably 1775/’76) on p. 100 of the above book has added to it the colour plate shown above. To see a sparrow-hawk take its prey is a fearful sight, the final swoop to the prey being so lightening fast. The plate correctly shows the sparrow-hawk having gone for the throat of the

The Rev. Gilbert White (see previous blog), being a keen gardener and observer of farming practices as he walked around his parish as well as being an ornithologist, wrote that harvest bugs (s.p.b.) gathered on kidney beans and legumes and that they could swarm in such numbers on the chalk South Downs as to discolour

(Sorry for the ‘break in service’ – personal issues). If swifts, swallows and martins rely on winged insects, or more correctly insects on the wing, then this seems to be a niche food source and thus more susceptable to changing environmental conditions. On the short theme of flies I can remember as a child having

The picture above shows a species of fly called Voria ruralis and was scanned from a website titled ‘Nature Spot, recording wildlife of Leicestershire and Rutland’. The v.r. may be seen in flower meadows and on waste land in the summer months and is fairly common in parts of the Midlands and Easter Counties south

Todays picture is also scanned from Susan Butler’s booklet (s.p.b.s) and shows the front of Saltmarshe Hall (north facing). There is no publication date in the booklet so not sure when ‘The present’ was. Clearly the Hall once had quite extensive parkland (emparked) north of the Hall itself but now the remaining mature trees of