Jason Woodcock

With a background in conservation and animal behaviour studies, Jason's passion lies in the natural world. He adores all things nature and enjoys nothing more than spotting rare and interesting species out in the wild. He has also worked in a zoo and knows plenty about keeping the animals inside our homes healthy and happy, too.

British Wildlife of the Week: Wren

Wherever you are in the UK, you’re probably never far away from a wren. Although many people have never seen a wren, at least not knowingly, it is far more common than other garden birds that we may be more familiar with, such as sparrows and robins. In fact, it is our most common breeding bird, with around 11 million pairs here in Britain. So how come we rarely see them?

Lost Forever: Dodo

The dodo has the unenviable distinction of being a byword for something both dead and stupid. Many people view this big-beaked flightless fruit-eater as an unfortunate evolutionary mistake – a creature so fat, so painfully unintelligent, so useless, that it has no option but to die out. Perhaps because it was apparently so unfit for survival, its extinction seems somewhat acceptable to us, maybe even deserving.

British Wildlife of the Week: Adder

Last week, I heard that someone had been bitten by an adder while examining some movement in the undergrowth around the Clennon Valley Lakes in Paignton – the site of The Nature Nook’s latest wildlife walk, which you can read about here. The person in question, thankfully, was fine (after a night in hospital on anti-venom), but it inspired me to write a post about my favourite British snake.

In Search Of… Dabbling Ducks

The Nature Nook’s latest wildlife-spotting walk took Alex and I to the Clennon Valley Lakes, just south of Paignton Zoo, in search of ducks. Not mallards or tufted ducks, mind you – we’d already seen those. No, we were looking for a couple of slightly more uncommon species. We had received a tip-off that two dabbling ducks – the gadwall and the pintail – had been recently spotted at the lakes and we thought it would be relatively easy to add them to our list of birds.

British Wildlife of the Week: Soay Sheep

St Kilda. A remote, windswept archipelago in the storm-tossed seas 160 kilometres west of mainland Scotland. This scattering of rugged islands is famed for its birdlife. Nesting on and around its sea cliffs – the tallest in Britain, up to 426 m – are a huge variety of seabirds, including fulmars, gannets, puffins, guillemots, storm petrels, razorbills, shearwaters and skuas.

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