Golden Grenades is a weekly podcast about birds and those who worship them, all set against the heart-warming, upbeat backdrop of the end of the world. Each week, YOLOBirder chats to a special guest about their five favourite birds, one of which must enter a best bird duel against the mighty peregrine falcon!
In this Golden Grenades bonus/extra episode Kit talks to writer and conductor Lev Parikian about his new book, Taking Flight.
https://levparikian.com/index.php/books/taking-flight/
This episode of Golden Grenades features Arjan Dwarshuis, a professional bird guide, writer, and motivational speaker, who also holds the current Guinness Book World Record for observing the largest number of bird species in a single year. In 2016, he launched his global “Big Year” and ultimately observed 6852 of the world’s roughly 10,900 bird species, setting a record that stands to this day. His yearlong adventure raised nearly 50,000 Euros for the BirdLife’s Preventing Extinctions Programme. Arjan also starred in the award-winning documentary Arjan’s Big Year, and appears regularly on radio, television, and podcast programs in the Netherlands and beyond.
Kit is joined by naturalist and conservationist Nick Acheson for a chat about his new book, The Meaning of Geese, published on Thursday 9th February 2023 by Chelsea Green Publishing.
Buy it here:
https://chelseagreen.co.uk/book/the-meaning-of-geese/
YOLOBirder’s guest on Golden Grenades in this new episode is actor and sometimes director Samuel West. He’s played Hamlet and Richard II for the Royal Shakespeare Company, Jeffrey Skilling in Enron in the West End and the voice of Pongo in Disney’s 101 Dalmations II. His television work includes Slow Horses, The Crown, Small Axe, Mr Selfridge and his films include Darkest Hour, Suffragette, Van Helsing and Howards End. He plays Siegfried Farnon in the new TV adaptation of All Creatures Great and Small. As a narrator, he has appeared with all the major British orchestras. Sam is an Associate Artist of the RSC and a trustee of the Campaign for the Arts.
YOLOBirder’s guest on the podcast this time is North Shields born singer/songwriter Aaron Duff, who works both solo and with his full band under the name Hector Gannet.
Aaron talks about his five favourite birds, the five species that he would protect above all others when the environmental apocalypse arrives. We chat about how he started in music, his connection to the natural world, and the birds he would include in an all-bird band! Birds that mean home, the bird that “writes all his own stuff”, the bird with the “slicked-back hairstyle” and the bird that seems “as hard as nails”!
YOLObirder’s guest in the post-environmental apocalyptic wasteland is Dr Brian Briggs, a conservationist and musician on a lifelong quest to tune into the natural world. Brian is both a manager of an internationally important nature reserve, and the singer/songwriter for the band Stornoway.
Stornoway were the first unsigned band to appear on Later… With Jools Holland and have subsequently toured worldwide and enjoyed main stage appearances at festivals including Glastonbury, Latitude and Isle of Wight. Stornoway’s three acclaimed albums and three EPs combine Brian’s two great passions of music and nature and their most recent, Bonxie, entered the UK Charts inside the Top 20 and featured the songs of twenty different species of birds.
YOLOBirder is back with a brand new Golden Grenades episode with the fantastic artist, writer and all round nature lover Kerrie Gardner.
Kerrie is a nature inspired artist and writer living in Devon who likes to dabble in a variety of crafts. Before becoming self employed she worked as an ecologist and prior to that was an environmental educator with the Dorset Wildlife Trust. She contributed to the BTO’s Red Sixty Seven book and has written for Penguin, discussing the loss of biodiversity in the UK over the past 70 years.
Kerrie talks to Kit about her five favourite birds, particularly those that look like foliage, and why she has a tendency to load dead animals into her wheelbarrow!
YOLOBirder’s special guest on the increasingly infrequent Golden Grenades podcast is Kwesia, AKA City Girl in Nature.
Kwesia is from South East London, and her experience of the outdoors growing up was playing football on the streets with dustbins for goalposts. She developed a secret interest in nature documentaries, and did not expect that a visit to her youth club from the British Exploring Society would change her life…
Now Kwesia is on a quest, through her “nature connection activism”, to share her story with other young people to help them experience the benefits of the wild world too.
Please donate to Kwesia’s crowdfunder here:
After a bit of a hiatus, Golden Grenades is back! Joining YOLOBirder this time is ornithologist, Jamie Dunning. Jamie is working on his PHD at Imperial College on the social lives of House Sparrows, has discovered that Puffins’ bills fluoresce and has an amateur project on the go on Twite in England. Some of us are interested in birds, but Jamie has taken it to the next level!
Contains the birds that led to the creation of the Muppets, birds that go to the pub and the bird that keeps Jamie awake at night!
In this episode of Golden Grenades nature writer Nicola Chester discusses her work and recently published memoir, On Gallows Down. Why do people keep giving her dead things in a Bag For Life? Which bird would she like to rename the Spangle Speaker? And which species did she use to spook armed American servicemen? Have a listen to find out!
