Roofs & Rambles

It is 20 years since I visited Cordoba in Spain, though I have been a regular visitor to Andalusia and Extramadura since on birdwatching trips. My good friend and colleague recently visited the Grand Mosque and noticed these excellent examples of rain gardens built over 1000 years ago.

Inspecting a green roof for a client the other day in London, I chanced upon an intrepid sole, who unbeknown to the management team of the estate had been doing a little urban farming of his own.

The Blues are difficult enough to identify in the UK. Trying to identify North American ones is a real task, especially when you are back on this side of the pond. I am grateful for a twitter dialogue with Carole Brown, @CB4wildlife. Carole runs a great website on gardening for wildlife. It’s title is great [...]

A number of pictures of Tiger Swallowtails have been doing the rounds on Twitter this week. This stimulated me to do a bit of research on which of the three North American species I had seen hawking over clover at Beaverhill Lake Bird Observatory, near Tofield, Alberta.

Now I spend most of my time doing green roofs and the like, it sometimes difficult to find time to bird watch in the London area. A tweet came through today from @2greenfish about the success of Peregrines in Ontario. This reminded me to check out my old friend, Dave Morrison, and his London Peregrine [...]

Wandering through the allies and small squares of London today whilst on the way to a meeting at the Museum of London, I encountered this small Square. Besides a new development the sides of the south facing walls were adorned with steel wires up which various ‘Hedera’ [Ivy] species were climbing.