Pete Cooper

@petemrcooper.bsky.social

Species Recovery Manager at the Wildlife Trusts. Naturalist, writer, Glow-worm keeper. Chaotic nature TikToks and mammal poo sniffer. (Views own)

BlueSky doesn’t have the numbers or life of old Twitter, partly why I’m so quiet. But I’ll round-up the sorts of thing that would’ve gone down well there. On my substack, you can read all 3 parts of my deep-dive into the native status of white storks here petemrcooper.substack.com/p/to-stork-o...

To Stork or Not to Stork? (Part 1)

White Storks are being released into Britain, but the government recently said they aren't native. Is this really the case, and can further releases be justified?

petemrcooper.substack.com

A follow up to my deep dive on the history of storks in Britain - Harvey Tweats provides a guest post looking into why it may have gone extinct in Britain but not Europe, and whether there is another explanation for its absence in folklore. petemrcooper.substack.com/p/what-did-t...

What did the Romans ever do for Storks?

A guest post by Harvey Tweats following the deep-dive into the past status of White Storks in Britain with hypotheses as to why they left little cultural mark.

petemrcooper.substack.com

I thought I’d settle down to write something uncontroversial - so I wrote about stork releases. With Natural England recently declaring white storks non-native, can their releases be justified? A tale in 3 parts. petemrcooper.substack.com/p/to-stork-o...

To Stork or Not to Stork? (Part 1)

White Storks are being released into Britain, but the government recently said they aren't native. Is this really the case, and can further releases be justified?

petemrcooper.substack.com

I thought I’d settle down to write something uncontroversial - so I wrote about stork releases. With Natural England recently declaring white storks non-native, can their releases be justified? A tale in 3 parts. petemrcooper.substack.com/p/to-stork-o...

To Stork or Not to Stork? (Part 1)

White Storks are being released into Britain, but the government recently said they aren't native. Is this really the case, and can further releases be justified?

petemrcooper.substack.com

The temperatures taken in my Glow-worm rearing shed yesterday. Ambient conditions are better for breeding native invertebrates, but thankfully its shaded position keeps the shed at least 2-3 degrees cooler than outside. All are doing well.

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A study focusing on interactions between European wildcats and domestic cats found evidence of behavioural barriers for both hybridisation and disease transmission, including larger wildcats excluding domestic cats from their territories, and sexual selection by wildcat females 🐈

A female wildcat sits in tall green grass, looking back with its eyes partially closed and tongue out, conveying a playful and relaxed mood.

A snail puts up a bubble wall to defend itself from Glow-worm larvae, but the paralysis from the toxin is already beginning to take effect - more is delivered in another bit for good measure. 145 Glow-worm larvae have completed their second winter and are due to pupate in the next couple of months

This really does feel like a distant time now. 2 years into Brexit and Trump v0.1, we knew the world had taken a turn. But before that all got to its current extremes, before Covid, and when X was Twitter and it was a busy and generally nicer place to be as we hit the ‘sweet spot’ with social media

The Museum of English Rural Life (MERL)@themerl.bsky.social · 6mo ago

Happy 8th anniversary to the tweet that changed us forever. Look at this absolute unit.

A very stocky Exmoor Horn ram.

Book announcement!! 🎉 CREATURES OF STORY AND SONG looks through Britain’s stories and poems to rediscover our lost species. It’s time to remember what people thought about wolves, lynxes, great whales, great auks, sturgeon & more when they were all still here! 🐺🦫🐳💚 @reaktionbooks.bsky.social

Book cover - Creatures of Story and Song: Tracing Britain's Lost Species by Lee Raye. The cover is a dark turquoise or teal. At the top there is a picture of people and wolves walking together through a wood. They seem to be talking with each other. At the bottom there is a long spiky fish.  This flier offers 20% off at www.reaktionbooks.co.uk - code is CSS26

🪪 European wildcat (Felis silvestris) One of the UK's rarest mammals | Accomplished mesopredator | Cultural icon | UK's last native cat species | Experienced camera trap model | Working parent | Species reintroduction specialist Cairngorms National Park, Scotland

Split image of a wildcat’s face on a white background. Left text "Reality" with the wildcat scowling; right text "LinkedIn" shows the same wildcat with tie. Both images have job description text underneath. There is a humorous tone.

I will never not adore "and allies" in a fieldguide title. Don't mess with the grasshoppers or the earwigs and crickets and cockroaches will fuck you up

UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology (UKCEH)@ukceh.bsky.social · 7mo ago

🦗 This #WorldWildlifeDay, discover Britain's grasshoppers, crickets & allied species in a brilliant new field guide! It's co-written by our former colleague Björn Beckmann with recording scheme coordinator Peter Sutton. Allied species are earwigs, stick insects, mantids and cockroaches 🪳 🧪 1/

Illustrations of grasshopper, cricket and earwig on the front cover of a book called Field Guide to the Grasshoppers and Allies of Great Britain and Ireland

When your proposed source of birds comes from a different subspecies from Scandinavia, an area even cooler than the region where you want to release is and warming climate is likely to be the major extinction driver, genetics matters very bugger much actually.

Jamie Dunning@j-dunning.net · 7mo ago

This is a difficult read, considering we all want the same thing. Here's the rewilding view on the feasibility of reintroducing pipilans Twite back to the hills of England 🪶🧪 derekgow1.substack.com/p/the-song-o...

If you loved Detectorists and you haven’t yet watched ‘Small Prophets’, get on iplayer and do so immediately. It’s classic Mackenzie Crook with his gentle appreciation of nature sown in subtly and beautifully at times.

A well-run project that restored the north-west European population of Dalmatian Pelican would be a massive boost to the global population of this threatened species and is supported by the chair of the IUCN pelican specialist group. But no, let’s take pot-shots.

James Emerson@norwichbirder.bsky.social · 8mo ago

It's a new month, so lets spin the wheel and find out what species a rewilding company wants to introduce next, as we play "Let's turn Norfolk into a big zoo". Ooh, it's...Dalmation Pelican! www.rewildingbritain.org.uk/why-rewild/r... and pressreleasehub.pa.media/article/inte...