Wildlife News: 26th August 2011

• Recent research puts the total number of species on the planet at around 8.7 million, give or take a million. With 'only' around 1.2 million described thus far, that leaves a whole lot of species out there still to be found...

• Well, there's one of them... yet another titi monkey hiding away in the Amazon.

• Oh, and another... the world's smallest shearwater, hiding somewhere in the Pacific.
  

• Meanwhile, many of those species are apparently heading rapidly towards the poles and climbing the mountains... which obviously doesn't leave a lot of wriggle-room for those species already at the poles/mountain tops.

• November sees Ghosts of Gone Birds setting up shop in Shoreditch, with Margaret Atwood's knitted Great Auk among the ghosts... see you there?
  

• Rather more imminently, this weekend is the 15th annual European Bat Night. Our local Wildlife Trust has plenty of batty events to get involved in. I'm sure yours will too!

Oh, and the picture above is a Waved Albatross on Espanola, Galapagos for no reason at all really, other than the fact that, along with 188 other bird species,, this is one of those Critically Endangered birds that the Ghosts of Gone Birds project is trying to help. And co-incidentally, we'll be visiting Espanola in January: just two spaces left, if you want to join us!

Wildlife News: 10th August 2011

Our 2012 holiday brochure has now been printed and should be winging its way out to those of you on our mailing list very soon. If you would like a copy, get in touch, of perhaps come along and see us at BirdFair next weekend! We'll be in our usual place in Marquee 3, next to The Wildlife Trusts.

Meanwhile, it's been a summer of hatching news...

• A pair of Whooper Swans have bred in the East Anglian fens, the first recorded occurence in Norfolk since 1928.

• Tree sparrows have nested on the Western Isles for the first time in 25 years.

• A Short-tailed Albatross chick has fledged from the first recorded nest outside Japan, having survived the Pacific tsunami in March.

• Spoon-billed Sandpiper news over the summer includes the first chicks to hatch in captivity and a significant new breeding population discovered in Chukotka.