Snapped chat

On the coast you can't go far now without hearing the  chink and  chack of two small stones being clashed together: it's the sound of a stonechat. Perched on bushes, walls or fence posts they signal to each other with a ceaseless repartee of pebbly sounds.

These two were poised on adjacent blackthorns. I thought at first they were female and male but I've since realised that the one on the left is a youngster, telling dad to hurry up with the next caterpillar.

Their sizes appeared to be identical, as are the male and female of the species. Which leads me to mention something I picked up on Twitter (!) today. A young birder in Bristol has pointed that on RSPB posters female birds are depicted much smaller than males. (They are more usually not, and may even be bigger.) She is supported by #sexisminbirding followers but people commenting on this newspaper article about her evidently do not.

Whatever your thoughts on the subject, Dr Mya-Rose Craig (19)  was given an honorary degree by University of Bristol at age 17 after visiting 38 countries over all seven continents to see over half the world's bird species. Mya-Rose also heads up Black2Nature, campaigning to get equal access to nature for visible minority ethnic (VME) people,  and she is an active  climate change protester.


The future of the environment rests on the shoulders of her and other highly committed young naturalists. Such as Dara McAnulty who I mentioned about a year ago, and who has just been awarded Book of the Year (narrative non-fiction) for his Diary of a Young Naturalist. (Now that it's out in paperback there's no excuse not to read it.) Still in his school uniform he gave an endearing, but, as always, highly articulate, astounded reaction to the news as it broke.