Blog

The Habitat Aid blog is set in Somerset. The blog tries to introduce some of the issues surrounding our natural environment as understood by a non ecologist. You’ll also find some practical “how to” guides. It’s written by Nick Mann, who runs Habitat Aid. Nick is an increasingly curmudgeonly bald middle-aged bloke of familiar type.

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Industrial Moonscape v. Green and Pleasant Land
April 7, 2019
Last week entomologist Liam Olds published a fascinating study on invertebrates living on colliery spoil heaps in the south Wales valleys. If you ...
- bees
- biodiversity
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Where Have All The Hedgerows Gone?
February 13, 2019
What people need on Twitter is more education and less politics. I had a classically nonsensical conversation with a couple of twitterati over t...
- biodiversity
- hedges
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The Green Blob Fights Back
February 9, 2019
I have avoided politics in my blog as much as I can over the last 10 years. So you can tell I'm pretty upset to break this cardinal rule. For the ...
- biodiversity
- Digressions
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Farming With Wildlife in Mind
November 25, 2018
Farming With Wildlife in Mind This weekend the Times recommended Isabella Tree's excellent Wilding as one of its books of the year. It "forces us ...
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A Little Knowledge...
October 23, 2018
I had a great weekend, brushing up my little knowledge. On Saturday I was at the mighty Bumblebee Conservation Trust's (BBCT) members' day in Cardi...
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How Not To Plant "Woodland"
October 14, 2018
There's a great and commendable enthusiasm about tree planting in the UK. We know the reasons why. Every year, especially when the floods come, peo...
- biodiversity
- trees and woodland
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September in the Garden
September 6, 2018
Things are beginning to look knackered in the garden in September. You might think it's time to cut back some of those long flowering perennials wh...
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Things Fall Apart
July 16, 2018
From time to time I used to suffer from what doctors call "anxiety" - I guess a form of mild depression, which I've learnt how to manage over the y...
- biodiversity
- Digressions
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The Green Economy in the UK... What's Missing
June 29, 2018
According to Wikipedia, the green economy is one which "aims at reducing environmental risks and ecological scarcities, and... aims for sustainable...
- biodiversity
- Habitat Aid Ltd.
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The Ecological Apocalypse (Again)
June 12, 2018
Follow my blog with Bloglovin Chris Packham hit the headlines this weekend by announcing that the UK was facing an ecological apocalypse. Yikes. He...
- bees
- biodiversity
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Weed or Wildflower? Which is Which?
March 29, 2018
I always tell punters one man's weed is another one's wildflower. I'm not sure that's strictly true in most cases. Problematic plants? I know dande...
- biodiversity
- meadows
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House Sparrows
March 23, 2018
For fellow baby boomers, the demise of house sparrows is an obvious and distressing sign of the crisis in nature around us. In a week when we celeb...
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