It’s “a cold spring” wrote Elizabeth Bishop, “the violet was flawed on the lawn. For two weeks or more the trees hesitated; the little leaves waited, carefully indicating their characteristics.” It feels almost as if these Pulitzer prize-winning words, written back in 1956 and on the other side of the great Atlantic, have somehow lifted off the pages, travelled over land, sea and time and fallen down over our old continent like a touch of frost. Read more...

Harry Potter – beloved by children around the globe – may be a wizarding wonder but he has nothing on the ‘real’ magic in store for us over the next number of weeks: the magic of migration. And every year, to coincide with this natural spectacle of the skies, BirdLife partners across Europe, Central Asia and Africa come together to cast a spell over young and old alike – and that spell is called Spring Alive!

VBN/BirdLife Netherlands has been working closely with Dutch farmers in the hopes of making the country’s world-famous dairy products as sustainable and nature-friendly as they are tasty. 

In early 2017, the government of Kazakhstan introduced a ban on spring hunting. One year on, Danara Zharbolova (ACBK/BirdLife Kazakhstan) reflects on why this decision was – and remains – so important. 

In the United States, one of the world’s most important and influential bird protection laws is under threat – but all is yet not lost. Here in Europe, BirdLife mobilised over half a million EU citizens to turn around a similar crisis.