Raven on the Wing
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Tales of a timid traveller – (Part 6) “Z” is for…
Zanzibar, the last leg of our safari. A place so exotic that it’s got two z’s in it. It apparently means black coast, which it most definitely wasn’t. (For the record it was mostly sparkly white, with little crabs popping up and walking sideways along the sand like they were in a ’50s Disney wildlife…
Never say, “Never again!”
“Never again!” I’ve said that loads of times. I’ve said it at Christmas when I’ve watched the same movie for the umpteenth time; I’ve said it every single time I’ve driven down south on holiday and been stuck in traffic jams, and I’ve said it way too many times when deciding that I should give…
Tales of a timid traveller – (Part 5) “Just so!”
People are improbable. I mean, I’ve never quite understood how something like us could have evolved. The “just so” story is that as the land got drier we adapted by swapping the ability to climb through the disappearing forest for the knack of walking upright for long distances in the blazing heat, with our expanding…
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Ian Bond
Wildlife enthusiast by nature; professional wildlife consultant by good fortune; ageing, amateur athlete by doggedness and aspiring writer by choice.
Welcome to my website. It is meant simply as somewhere to hang the various bits of writing that I have done and hopefully will continue to do; mostly about nature with the occasional diversion into running or other topics.
Writing is something I’d always fancied having a go at but never got round to trying, except for some slightly tongue-in-cheek columns called “Big Cat Diaries” and “Droppings” which I wrote for Northumbria Mammal Group’s quarterly newsletter for several years. Then, in 2007 I finally went for it and entered BBC Wildlife magazine’s annual Wildlife Travel Writing competition. My tale about not finding Red Squirrels in Hartlepool won the competition that year and following that I wrote a few other essays, mostly about wildlife, which were published in the Northern Echo.
I hope that you enjoy reading them. Of the traits I list in my bio, I don’t regard myself as good at any of them other than enthusiasm. But enthusiasm is contagious and if I manage to enthuse anyone about wildlife or exercise then I will be a happy man.
Shrew and I
Britain has a new mammal! In 2022, through the somewhat unusual combination of Facebook and DNA, the Greater White-toothed Shrew was recognised as the first terrestrial mammal to become established in the country for a century.
First records of the greater white-toothed shrew Crocidura russula from Great Britain
The Path of the Panther
Ian Bond
Northumbria’s very own Big Cat Diaries, a light hearted compilation of big cat reports in North East England spanning the first decade of this century.
To See a Thousand Things
A Northumbrian Nature Quest
My attempt to see 1,000 different species in north east England in 2021.
Mammals, Amphibians and Reptiles
of the North East
Edited by Ian Bond
The historical and recent (2012) status of all the species found in North East England. My thanks to the Natural History Society of Northumbria for kindly permitting me to reproduce it on this website.
Droppings – the full latrine
Ian Bond
All the editions of “Droppings”, which was a column containing bits of information about mammals, mostly in North East England, written for Northumbria Mammal Group’s quarterly newsletter, from 2001 to 2014.
Raven on the Wing 