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Nature Watch

Birdwatch, January 2019

Published in Nature Watch

Steve Jones reports a slow start to the birdwatching year in Dol, following on from the disappointing numbers at the end of 2018.

Black-necked Grebe – Stari Grad – 13.01.19
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Bush cricket - seeking identity

Published in Nature Watch

Identity found! Our bush-cricket has turned out to be Ephippiger discoidalis, the Dalmatian Saddle Bush-cricket.

Bush cricket, July 2018.
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Birding at the end of 2018

Published in Nature Watch

Steve jones' last report for 2018, rounding up a year whose final months ended with noticeably few new sightings.  

Chaffinch: reduced numbers present in 2018.
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Birdwatch October 2018

Published in Nature Watch

Yet again our birdwatcher Steve Jones reports lower numbers of species sighted than might be expected.

Group of Starlings
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Birdwatch: rounding up the summer of 2018

Published in Nature Watch

Steve Jones reports from Dol on the new bird sightings and interesting insects which have showed up during the long hot summer of 2018.

Greenfinch
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Bee-Eaters, one of Hvar's prime attractions

Published in Nature Watch

Bee-eaters (Merops apiaster) are brightly coloured, exquisite birds. On Hvar they appear every summer, and are highly prized by bird-loving visitors to the island.

Bee-Eater in flight.
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Nature Watch, May 2018

Published in Nature Watch

Steve Jones, ever on the watch for birds, has some exciting sightings in May. 

Roller (zlatovrana)
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Birdwatch March-April 2018

Published in Nature Watch

Steve reports from Dol on the unsettled spring weather, and the welcome bird arrivals on Hvar: March and April have continued to bring the species in and as at April 24th I have seen 77 species with possibly two or three unidentified.

Spring-time and the Golden Oriole is back.
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Birdwatch, January - February 2018

Published in Nature Watch

Well as I type this on March 1st looking out at my bird feeders amidst heavy snowfall, the birding calendar tells me Spring is on its way.

Kingfisher, January 2018
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Birdwatch & Insects, Autumn-Winter 2017

Published in Nature Watch

Steve Jones rounds off the year, puzzled by the absence of some birds he expected to see.

Common Scarlet Darter Dragonfly
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The Bee Hotel: Encouraging Wildlife in our Garden

Published in Nature Watch

Having offered hospitality to a young swallow family earlier in the year, Marion and Zzdravko decided to extend their facilities to welcome bees. It turned out to be a very rewarding learning experience!

Honey bee
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Birdwatch, August - September 2017

Published in Nature Watch

Well summer is over, birding-wise, and during the last three months, hopefully, birds have bred successfully on the island. I have certainly seen evidence of this, particularly recently, with good numbers of House Sparrows all around. Also frequently during the summer months I have seen birds carrying food to nests.

Two Storks holidaying in Jelsa, September 2017.
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Birdwatch, June - July 2017

Published in Nature Watch

The summer months were intensely hot. By June 12th there was very little about. On a trip to the pond that morning I found that the biggest area was about to evaporate later that day– there was a tiny little pool with the remaining fish all gasping. Equally I saw a Cormorant, probably stocking up with an easy source of food.

Scops Owl
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Storks visit Jelsa!

Published in Nature Watch

On September 17th 2017, two storks touched down in Jelsa.

Storks in Jelsa, September 2017.
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Nesting swallows: good luck promised!

Published in Nature Watch

Marion Podolski has the good fortune to have swallows nesting in her doorway in Vrboska on Hvar. Exciting and fascinating!

Barn swallow singing
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Eco Environment News feeds

  • Slow burn? The long road to a zero-emissions UK

    Extinction Rebellion protesters want a carbon-free UK by 2025. But can the financial and political hurdles be overcome?

    It is the near future. You wake in a house warmed by a heat pump that extracts energy from deep below the ground and delivers it to your home. (Your gas boiler was outlawed years ago.) You rise and make yourself a cup of tea – from water boiled on a hydrogen-burning kitchen stove. Then you head to work – in a robot-driven electric car directed by central control network to avoid traffic jams.

    At midday, you pause for lunch: a sandwich made of meat grown in a laboratory. At the end of the day, you are taken home by a robot car – through countryside festooned with solar panels and turbines.

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  • Extreme conditions, loud birds and fresh food by boat – could you live on a remote island?

    The wardens of Britain’s small islands talk about daily life with little more than thousands of puffins for company. By Patrick Barkham. Photographs by Alex Ingram

    After supper, while Eddie Stubbings was washing up, huge flocks of puffins would come whirling past his kitchen window. Later, when the sun had finally dipped into the ocean, the Skomer night filled with the bizarre caterwauling of 350,000 pairs of manx shearwaters, which fly under the cover of darkness to burrows dotted across the small island.

    “Living on the island was absolutely amazing,” says Stubbings, 40. Alongside his partner, Bee Bueche, 41, he has completed six years working on Skomer, 720 acres of seabird-populated rocks off the Pembrokeshire coast.

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  • Battle of Waterloo Bridge: a week of Extinction Rebellion protests

    Group’s ongoing peaceful disruption in London is gaining it global attention and new members

    On Monday morning a strange sight appeared, edging its way through the buses, taxis and shoppers on Oxford Street in London.

    A bright pink boat, named Berta Cáceres after the murdered Honduran environmental activist, was being pulled carefully through the traffic, eventually coming to a halt in the middle of one of London’s busiest thoroughfares.

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  • We are not yet doomed: the carbon cutters determined to save the world

    An orchestra, a village, an entire country: the movement to rein in greenhouse gas emissions is growing

    We are all doomed, it is said. Carbon dioxide is amassing in the atmosphere at levels not seen for millions of years when there were trees at the South Pole and Florida was under water. We have barely a decade to make amends. Protesters are on the streets.

    But huge numbers of people have not given up. Not yet. Call them the carbon cutters. They are companies and cities, niche groups and nations. They are commuters and communes, off-gridders and off-setters, investors and institutions – and countless individuals, cutting their meat intake, installing solar panels, eschewing gas guzzlers and long-haul flights.

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  • 'Not what you expect in Doncaster': suspected piranhas found in lake

    Fears for wildlife after fierce predators apparently discovered in Yorkshire

    Late on Monday night, a reporter at the Doncaster Free Press received an unusual phone call. A piranha, one of the world’s fiercest predators normally found stalking the waters of the Amazon basin, had apparently been discovered in a lake in Doncaster.

    There were dramatic rumours of ducks being massacred and other wildlife being torn to shreds by the razor-toothed fish in the freezing waters of Martinwells Lake.

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  • 'Decades of denial': major report finds New Zealand's environment is in serious trouble

    Nation known for its natural beauty is under pressure with extinctions, polluted rivers and blighted lakes

    A report on the state of New Zealand’s environment has painted a bleak picture of catastrophic biodiversity loss, polluted waterways and the destructive rise of the dairy industry and urban sprawl.

    Environment Aotearoais the first major environmental report in four years, and was compiled using data from Statistics New Zealand and the environment ministry.

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  • Mark Carney tells global banks they cannot ignore climate change dangers

    Financial sector warned it risks losses from extreme weather and its stakes in polluting firms

    The global financial system faces an existential threat from climate change and must take urgent steps to reform, the governors of the Bank of England and France’s central bank have warned, writing in the Guardian.

    In an article published in the Guardian on Wednesday aimed at the international financial community, Mark Carney, the Bank’s governor, and François Villeroy de Galhau, the governor of the Banque de France, said financial regulators, banks and insurers around the world had to “raise the bar” to avoid catastrophe.

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  • Why nightingales are snubbing Berkeley Square for the Tiergarten

    Scientists, including a descendant of Charles Darwin, are researching the birds’ preference for Berlin

    They were once among Britain’s most beloved singers, their “murmurs musical” giving melancholy poets solace in their darkest hours. But these days the world-famous warblers are more likely to be found jamming with jazz musicians in neglected Berlin parks than serenading Londoners in Berkeley Square. Some even claim that their latest outpourings feature elements of German techno.

    Luscinia megarhynchos, the common nightingale, has been shunning the UK since the 1960s, during which time the population has slumped by 90%. The number of birds in Berlin, however, is on the rise. According to cautious estimates by the city senate, the German capital’s nightingale population grew by 6% every year from 2006 to 2016: “a very high rate”, said Johannes Schwarz, a species conservation officer, who puts the current number of nesting pairs at between 1,300 and 1,700.

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  • Could flexitarianism save the planet?

    Scientists say a drastic cut in meat consumption is needed, but this requires political will

    It has been known for a while that the amount of animal products being eaten is bad for both the welfare of animals and the environment. People cannot consume 12.9bn eggs in the UK each year without breaking a few.

    But the extent of the damage, and the amount by which people need to cut back, is now becoming clearer. On Wednesday, the Lancet medical journal published a study that calls for dramatic changes to food production and the human diet, in order to avoid “catastrophic damage to the planet”.

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  • How Native American tribes are bringing back the bison from brink of extinction

    The continent’s largest land mammal plays crucial role in spiritual lives of the tribes

    On 5,000 hectares of unploughed prairie in north-eastern Montana, hundreds of wild bison roam once again. But this herd is not in a national park or a protected sanctuary – they are on tribal lands. Belonging to the Assiniboine and Sioux tribes of Fort Peck Reservation, the 340 bison is the largest conservation herd in the ongoing bison restoration efforts by North America’s Indigenous people.

    The bison – or as Native Americans call them, buffalo – are not just “sustenance,” according to Leroy Little Bear, a professor at the University of Lethbridge and a leader in the bison restoration efforts with the Blood Tribe. The continent’s largest land mammal plays a major role in the spiritual and cultural lives of numerous Native American tribes, an “integrated relationship,” he said.

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