Ian Bond

White and wild

Back in 2013, I realised an ambition and finally made a pilgrimage to a North East relic that I’ve been meaning to see for years. In fact I made two such pilgrimages that year. The first was to Durham to see the Lindisfarne Gospels which were on loan there from the British Library for threeContinue reading “White and wild”

Away with the fairies

I had always regarded a trip to Middlesbrough as being a bit like a visit to the dentist, you dread the thought of it but it usually turns out not quite as bad as you expected. More recently though, thanks mainly to my wife’s ardent defence, I’ve seen a different side to “The Boro’”. AddedContinue reading “Away with the fairies”

Wild Teesside

What do you think of when you think of Teesside? A “Smoggie Land”, where a vascular system of metal pipes provides the life blood for tall, steaming towers? A multicultural metropolis, where the parmo is the entrée for modern art? I bet you don’t think of wildlife, but you should; Teesside has more wildlife thanContinue reading “Wild Teesside”

March Madness

There are two types of animal. There are the real ones that share the world with us and then there are the ones that live in our heads. The problem is in knowing where one ends and the other begins. Ever since cavemen drew animals on walls and probably long before then as well, peopleContinue reading “March Madness”

The Alpine Newt in North East England

This article is an update of the species account which I wrote for the book, Mammals, Amphibians and Reptiles of the North East, which was published by the Natural History Society of Northumbria in 2012. With one notable exception the situation, as far as I knew it, remained unchanged until 2022, when a search viaContinue reading “The Alpine Newt in North East England”

Shades of Grey

Blame it on our island mentality, but this country seems always to have had a somewhat ambiguous relationship with foreigners. It is probably no surprise then to learn that for a sizeable number of people in this country there is a long-standing campaign to get rid of some unwelcome Americans. Not that this should riskContinue reading “Shades of Grey”

Tales of a timid traveller – (Part 4) “I’ll take heaven for the scenery and hell for the wildlife”

I don’t recall much of the journey from Selous to Ruaha but there was no doubting that we were no longer in the same place. If Selous had seemed like the Garden of Eden, Ruaha was more like the Israelite’s soujourn in the desert. In spite of the absence of the annual “little” November rains,Continue reading “Tales of a timid traveller – (Part 4) “I’ll take heaven for the scenery and hell for the wildlife””

Run and become!

According to a Horizon programme that I watched entitled, “What makes us human”, our distinctiveness was unsurprisingly put down to the complex nature of our brains. Now, while I wouldn’t dream of disagreeing with the good doctor Alice Roberts, there are undoubtedly other things about us that define us as a species and one ofContinue reading “Run and become!”

To see a thousand things – December

Well that felt like the quickest year of my life; perhaps seeming even quicker for documenting it on a monthly basis. December was a good month for my list with the addition of over 50 species, though most of them were technically not new species. Instead they were ones that I had just got roundContinue reading “To see a thousand things – December”

Exotic and Evasive – Escaped Mammals in North East England

This article is an update of the “Escaped Mammals” chapter from the “Extinct and Evasive” section of the 2012 book, “Mammals, Amphibians and Reptiles of the North East”, in which I listed all of the records known to me, of species’ not normally found in Britain that had turned up locally. Since 2012, a fewContinue reading “Exotic and Evasive – Escaped Mammals in North East England”