Chris Sharpe
@sharpebirder.bsky.social
Conservation biologist: threatened birds, Redlists, bird vocalisations, RAPs & surveys, shorebirds. Working in 🇻🇪 & Latin America since 1988. Made in The North 🇬🇧.
Common Quail (Coturnix coturnix) singing yesterday evening becomes the 100th bird recorded at our S Norfolk house. I first found the species around here during a @btobirds.bsky.social Turtle Dove survey—attached recording made in the same area five years ago. macaulaylibrary.org/asset/353004...
ML353004191 - Common Quail - Macaulay Library
Macaulay Library ML353004191; © Chris Sharpe; Norfolk, England, United Kingdom
macaulaylibrary.org
England's first legally designated freshwater bathing site...
Two corrupt regimes in perfect harmony: no transparency or control of US extraction of $8+ billion of oil, gold and other resources from its recently acquired viceroyalty of Venezuela, with undisclosed payments laundered through an opaque Qatari 'short-term' account. www.cfr.org/articles/the...
The U.S. Took Over Venezuela’s Oil Industry. Where Has All the Money Gone? | Council on Foreign Relations
The American and Venezuelan people remain in the dark about how the Trump administration is controlling billions of dollars of Venezuelan oil revenue. Without accountability mechanisms or a clear demo...
cfr.org
Incredible views of a migrating Common Quail as it flew past the ship in the English Channel! @sophieshrike.bsky.social
The wheat harvest in some parts of East Anglia is looking a little thin on the ground... #climatechange
"Americans should be cleareyed about what the president is doing. He is taking their money and showering it on criminals." www.nytimes.com/2026/05/20/o...
Opinion | There Has Never Been an Example of Presidential Corruption Like This
nytimes.com
More incisive journalism from the Fox News [sic] host who advocates "bombing or gassing" the United Nations.
"we found mutualism values (seeing wildlife as part of one’s social community) prevail in Iberian-origin Latin American countries, whereas domination values (seeing wildlife as a resource for human use) are more prevalent in British-origin North American countries." www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Enduring cultural legacies affect Euro-American wildlife values - Nature Sustainability
Little is known about how values emerge, evolve and affect people’s relation with their natural environment. A study now sheds light on the influence of the institutions of European colonization on pr...
nature.com
This year we have a garden Blackcap (Sylvia atticapilla) with such a lovely opulent song, so rich with mimicry that today @cornellbirds.bsky.social Merlin identifies Garden Warbler, Song Thrush, Robin, Nightingale and House Sparrow in its repertoire! A joy to hear! #ornithology
Arguably not the primary motivation, but this would catapult the USA to #1 megadiversity country...
Regrettably 'Fraudubon' was an unreliable narrator, but his artwork is still breathtaking... This copy recently photographed at Cambridge University Library: www.facebook.com/share/p/1HAa... #ornithology
The three high-school birders, dubbed The Pete Dunnelins, have one day to count as many bird species across the state of New Jersey as physically possible. Here's what it takes. n.pr/49IeEWd
24 hours with 3 teenage birders: Welcome to the World Series of Birding
The three high-school birders, dubbed The Pete Dunnelins, have one day to count as many bird species across the state of New Jersey as physically possible. Here's what it takes.
n.pr
"Natural England recognises the value of White Stork as a visible and charismatic species in engaging people with nature but releases of this species are not a priority for us." 👏👏👏 #ornithology naturalengland.blog.gov.uk/2026/05/08/w...
White stork, black stork and other vagrant bird species
By Jeremy Sabel and Matt Heydon Natural England’s Species Recovery & Reintroductions Team Projects involving the release of white stork Ciconia ciconia capture the public imagination. If fairy tales a...
naturalengland.blog.gov.uk
It's perhaps understandable that an embittered man whose father, Baron Young of Dartington, had to pull strings to get him into Oxford Uni on poor grades should be deeply envious of someone who has made such an impact on our world. dailysceptic.org/2026/05/12/t...
The Descent of Attenborough – The Daily Sceptic
As David Attenborough turns 100, Ben Pile looks back on the "national treasure's" worst moments of climate alarmism, such as when he blamed Ethiopia's famine on the country having "too many people".
dailysceptic.org
Politicos indulging in this level of crass disinformation are inherently unfit for public office. Is this just ignorance on the part of one ill-informed rogue local candidate or a deliberate, coordinated and well-financed attempt to deceive? #climatescience
Long-term data from UKCEH reveal that Windermere has warmed by 1.5°C in the past 80 years. Find out more as TV presenter Helen Skelton joins our scientists on the lake to see this work in action: www.ceh.ac.uk/press/worryi... 🧪
Worrying warming trend at Windermere over past 80 years
Long-term monitoring data collected by the UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology (UKCEH) show that surface temperatures in Windermere, the largest lake in England, have warmed by 1.5 degrees in the last 8...
ceh.ac.uk
Four of these beauties singing on territories, together with an additional pair, in cereal fields in Cambridgeshire this morning. A strongly declining summer visitor, it has been a few years since I have seen so many in England.
Cornell Lab's BirdCast predicts 246 million birds to be airborne tonight over the USA after sunset. Bird migration is astonishing! @cornellbirds.bsky.social #ornithology
The US government is buying illegally mined gold from the same cartels and 'narco-terrorists' it claims to be bombing under its programme of extrajudicial executions, and laundering it into official minted US currency. www.nytimes.com/2026/04/26/w...
U.S. Mint Buys Drug Cartel Gold and Sells It as ‘American’
nytimes.com
There's something touching about this year's tiny Cowslip in our garden. An augury of something...
"Venezuela's got $500 billion of gold but they've also got other critical minerals, bauxite for aluminium which we need for defence and for consumer goods. They've got coal resources that can be used to help generate power to help us win the AI arms race with China." www.abc.net.au/news/2026-04...
Trump is the latest to enter a decades-long fight for this nation's gold
The stockpile is part of a longer skirmish for access to and control of a bonanza playing out an ocean away, in a country clambering to reinvent itself amid political turmoil.
abc.net.au
news.mongabay.com/2026/04/vene...
Venezuela’s new mining law could spell disaster for the Amazon, critics warn
Venezuela is close to passing a law to update the country’s mining regulations and attract private investment in gold, silver, coltan and other minerals. But advocacy groups say the law may end up exa...
news.mongabay.com
Ceding to US demands for gold and minerals, Venezuela passes the new law allowing foreign investors to expand mining operations in the Guayana Shield, a biodiversity hotspot that includes key biodiversity areas and centres of endemism. www.nytimes.com/2026/04/09/w...
Venezuela Approves New Law to Open Mining to Foreign Investors
nytimes.com
On the US viceroyalty of Venezuela by John Feeley, ex US Ambassador to Panamá. elpais.com/america/2026...
Venezuela: la virreina moderna y sus visitadores
La apertura de la embajada estadounidense en Caracas se asemeja más a la oficina de los emisarios de Felipe II en tiempos de la colonia que a la sede de una misión extranjera
elpais.com
A program that, to those of us on the other side of the Atlantic, has long been something we've held up as example of what could & should be done to support some of the most important types of field study. Very concerning to see this under threat
Mike Kaspari@mikekaspari.bsky.social · 5mo agoNSF LTER program “archived”. LTER=“Long Term Ecological Research”. This program has been incredibly successful, incredibly frugal for what they accomplish, and…of course…targeted by evil know-nothings. My heart is breaking.
WILLOW WARBLER is home, on a territory where every year a male sings. Each year in April this is the song that floors me, that takes me back to a wide-eyed child, falling in love for the very first time with the wild.
Crippling defunding of US environmental programmes proposed. “It's an extinction-level event for science.”. www.nature.com/articles/d41...
Massive budget cuts for US science proposed again by Trump administration
Budget proposal would also curb federal payments for scientific publishing.
nature.com