1.
United Kingdom
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The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom or Britain, is a sovereign country in western Europe. Lying off the north-western coast of the European mainland, the United Kingdom includes the island of Great Britain, Northern Ireland is the only part of the United Kingdom that shares a land border with another sovereign state—the Republic of Ireland. The Irish Sea lies between Great Britain and Ireland, with an area of 242,500 square kilometres, the United Kingdom is the 78th-largest sovereign state in the world and the 11th-largest in Europe. It is also the 21st-most populous country, with an estimated 65.1 million inhabitants, together, this makes it the fourth-most densely populated country in the European Union. The United Kingdom is a monarchy with a parliamentary system of governance. The monarch is Queen Elizabeth II, who has reigned since 6 February 1952, other major urban areas in the United Kingdom include the regions of Birmingham, Leeds, Glasgow, Liverpool and Manchester. The United Kingdom consists of four countries—England, Scotland, Wales, the last three have devolved administrations, each with varying powers, based in their capitals, Edinburgh, Cardiff and Belfast, respectively. The relationships among the countries of the UK have changed over time, Wales was annexed by the Kingdom of England under the Laws in Wales Acts 1535 and 1542. A treaty between England and Scotland resulted in 1707 in a unified Kingdom of Great Britain, which merged in 1801 with the Kingdom of Ireland to form the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. Five-sixths of Ireland seceded from the UK in 1922, leaving the present formulation of the United Kingdom of Great Britain, there are fourteen British Overseas Territories. These are the remnants of the British Empire which, at its height in the 1920s, British influence can be observed in the language, culture and legal systems of many of its former colonies. The United Kingdom is a country and has the worlds fifth-largest economy by nominal GDP. The UK is considered to have an economy and is categorised as very high in the Human Development Index. It was the worlds first industrialised country and the worlds foremost power during the 19th, the UK remains a great power with considerable economic, cultural, military, scientific and political influence internationally. It is a nuclear weapons state and its military expenditure ranks fourth or fifth in the world. The UK has been a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council since its first session in 1946 and it has been a leading member state of the EU and its predecessor, the European Economic Community, since 1973. However, on 23 June 2016, a referendum on the UKs membership of the EU resulted in a decision to leave. The Acts of Union 1800 united the Kingdom of Great Britain, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland have devolved self-government
2.
Wildlife
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Wildlife traditionally refers to undomesticated animal species, but has come to include all plants, fungi, and other organisms that grow or live wild in an area without being introduced by humans. Wildlife can be found in all ecosystems, humans have historically tended to separate civilization from wildlife in a number of ways including the legal, social, and moral sense. Some animals, however, have adapted to suburban environments and this includes such animals as domesticated cats, dogs, mice, and gerbils. The global wildlife population has decreased by 52 percent between 1970 and 2014, according to a report by the World Wildlife Fund, anthropologists believe that the Stone Age people and hunter-gatherers relied on wildlife, both plants and animals, for their food. In fact, some species may have been hunted to extinction by human hunters. Today, hunting, fishing, and gathering wildlife is still a significant food source in parts of the world. In other areas, hunting and non-commercial fishing are seen as a sport or recreation. Meat sourced from wildlife that is not traditionally regarded as game is known as bush meat, in November 2008, almost 900 plucked and oven-ready owls and other protected wildlife species were confiscated by the Department of Wildlife and National Parks in Malaysia, according to TRAFFIC. The animals were believed to be bound for China, to be sold in wild meat restaurants, most are listed in CITES which prohibits or restricts such trade.60. Many Amazon species, including peccaries, agoutis, turtles, turtle eggs, anacondas, armadillos, others in these informal markets, such as monkeys and parrots, are destined for the pet trade, often smuggled into the United States. Still other Amazon species are popular ingredients in traditional medicines sold in local markets, the medicinal value of animal parts is based largely on superstition. Many animal species have spiritual significance in different cultures around the world, for example, eagles, hawks and their feathers have great cultural and spiritual value to Native Americans as religious objects. In Hinduism the cow is regarded sacred, muslims conduct sacrifices on Eid-ul-Adha to commemorate the sacrificial spirit of Ibrahim in love of God. Camels, sheep, goats, and cows may be offered as sacrifice during the three days of Eid, many nations have established their tourism sector around their natural wildlife. South Africa has, for example, many opportunities for tourists to see the wildlife in its national parks. In South India the Periar Wildlife Sanctuary, Bandipur National Park and Mudamalai Wildlife Sanctuary are situated around, India is home to many national parks and wildlife sanctuaries showing the diversity of its wildlife, much of its unique fauna, and excels in the range. This subsection focuses on forms of wildlife destruction. Exploitation of wild populations has been a characteristic of man since our exodus from Africa 130,000 –70,000 years ago
3.
Natural history
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Natural history is the research and study of organisms including animals, fungi and plants in their environment, leaning more towards observational than experimental methods of study. It encompasses scientific research but is not limited to it, with articles nowadays more often published in magazines than in academic journals. Grouped among the sciences, natural history is the systematic study of any category of natural objects or organisms. That is a broad designation in a world filled with many narrowly focused disciplines. For example, geobiology has a strong multi-disciplinary nature combining scientists, a person who studies natural history is known as a naturalist or natural historian. The English term natural history is a translation of the Latin historia naturalis and its meaning has narrowed progressively with time, while the meaning of the related term nature has widened. In antiquity, it covered essentially anything connected with nature or which used materials drawn from nature. For example, Pliny the Elders encyclopedia of this title, published circa 77 to 79 AD, covers astronomy, geography, man and his technology, medicine and superstition as well as animals and plants. Medieval European academics considered knowledge to have two divisions, the humanities and divinity, with science studied largely through texts rather than observation or experiment. In modern terms, natural philosophy roughly corresponded to modern physics and chemistry, natural history had been encouraged by practical motives, such as Linnaeus aspiration to improve the economic condition of Sweden. Similarly, the Industrial Revolution prompted the development of geology to help find useful mineral deposits, the astronomer, William Herschel was also a natural historian. Instead of working with plants or minerals he worked with the stars and he spent his time building telescopes to see the stars and the rest of the time watching the stars. In the beginning, he believed there to be a known as a nebulae. Herschel can be considered a natural historian because he observed the natural world, in the process he made charts of all the stars and kept records of all that he saw. S. Wilcove and T. Eisner, The close observation of organisms—their origins, their evolution, their behavior and it encompasses changes in internal states insofar as they pertain to what organisms do. Some definitions go further, focusing on observation of organisms in their environment. Bartholomew, A student of history, or a naturalist, studies the world by observing plants. A common thread in many definitions of natural history is the inclusion of a component, as seen in a recent definition by H. W. Greene
4.
Birdwatching
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Birdwatching, or birding, is a form of wildlife observation in which the observation of birds is a recreational activity. It can be done with the eye, through a visual enhancement device like binoculars and telescopes, by listening for bird sounds. Birdwatching often involves a significant auditory component, as bird species are more easily detected and identified by ear than by eye. Most birdwatchers pursue this activity for recreational or social reasons, unlike ornithologists, the first recorded use of the term birdwatcher was in 1891, bird was introduced as a verb in 1918. The term birding was also used for the practice of fowling or hunting with firearms as in Shakespeares The Merry Wives of Windsor and her husband goes this morning a-birding. The terms birding and birdwatching are today used by some interchangeably, although some participants prefer birding, in North America, many birders differentiate themselves from birdwatchers, and the term birder is unfamiliar to most lay people. At the most basic level, the distinction is perceived as one of dedication or intensity, generally, self-described birders perceive themselves to be more versed in minutiae like identification, molt, distribution, migration timing, and habitat usage. Indeed, in 1969 a Birding Glossary appeared in Birding magazine which gave the following definitions, the acceptable term used to describe the person who seriously pursues the hobby of birding. A hobby in which individuals enjoy the challenge of bird study, listing, a rather ambiguous term used to describe the person who watches birds for any reason at all, and should not be used to refer to the serious birder. Twitching is a British term used to mean the pursuit of a previously located rare bird, in North America it is more often called chasing, though the British usage is starting to catch on there, especially among younger birders. The term twitcher, sometimes misapplied as a synonym for birder, is reserved for those who travel long distances to see a bird that would then be ticked. The term originated in the 1950s, when it was used for the behaviour of Howard Medhurst. Prior terms for those who chased rarities were pot-hunter, tally-hunter, the main goal of twitching is often to accumulate species on ones lists. Some birders engage in competition to accumulate the longest species list, the act of the pursuit itself is referred to as a twitch or a chase. A rare bird that stays put long enough for people to see it is twitchable or chaseable, twitching is highly developed in the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Denmark, Ireland, Finland and Sweden. The size of these makes it possible to travel throughout them quickly. The most popular twitches in the UK have drawn large crowds, for example, approximately 2,500 people travelled to Kent, England, to view a golden-winged warbler, twitchers have developed their own vocabulary. For example, a twitcher who fails to see a bird has dipped out, if other twitchers do see the bird
5.
Author
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An author is narrowly defined as the originator of any written work and can thus also be described as a writer. More broadly defined, an author is the person who originated or gave existence to anything, in the copyright laws of various jurisdictions, there is a necessity for little flexibility regarding what constitutes authorship. The United States Copyright Office, for example, defines copyright as a form of protection provided by the laws of the United States to authors of works of authorship. After a fixed amount of time, the copyright expires on intellectual work and it enters the public domain, however, copyright is merely the legal reassurance that one owns his/her work. Technically, someone owns their work from the time its created, an interesting aspect of authorship emerges with copyright in that, in many jurisdictions, it can be passed down to another upon ones death. The person who inherits the copyright is not the author, questions arise as to the application of copyright law. How does it, for example, apply to the issue of fan fiction. If the media responsible for the authorized production allows material from fans, what is the limit before legal constraints from actors, music. Additionally, how does copyright apply to fan-generated stories for books, what powers do the original authors, as well as the publishers, have in regulating or even stopping the fan fiction. In literary theory, critics find complications in the term author beyond what constitutes authorship in a legal setting, in the wake of postmodern literature, critics such as Roland Barthes and Michel Foucault have examined the role and relevance of authorship to the meaning or interpretation of a text. Barthes challenges the idea that a text can be attributed to any single author and he writes, in his essay Death of the Author, that it is language which speaks, not the author. The words and language of a text itself determine and expose meaning for Barthes, with this, the perspective of the author is removed from the text, and the limits formerly imposed by the idea of one authorial voice, one ultimate and universal meaning, are destroyed. The psyche, culture, fanaticism of an author can be disregarded when interpreting a text, because the words are rich enough themselves with all of the traditions of language. To expose meanings in a work without appealing to the celebrity of an author, their tastes, passions, vices, is, to Barthes, to allow language to speak. Michel Foucault argues in his essay What is an author and that all authors are writers, but not all writers are authors. He states that a letter may have a signatory—it does not have an author. For a reader to assign the title of author upon any written work is to certain standards upon the text which. Foucaults author function is the idea that an author exists only as a function of a work, a part of its structure
6.
Bill Oddie
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William Edgar Bill Oddie, OBE is an English writer, composer, musician, comedian, artist, ornithologist, conservationist, television presenter and actor. He became famous as one of The Goodies, a birdwatcher since his childhood in Quinton, Birmingham, Oddie has established a reputation as an ornithologist, conservationist, and television presenter on wildlife issues. Some of his books are illustrated with his own paintings and drawings and his wildlife programmes for the BBC include, Springwatch/Autumnwatch, How to Watch Wildlife, Wild In Your Garden, Birding with Bill Oddie, Britain Goes Wild with Bill Oddie and Bill Oddie Goes Wild. Oddies father was assistant chief accountant at the Midlands Electricity Board and his mother was diagnosed with schizophrenia and, during most of his youth, lived in a hospital. He was educated at Lapal Primary School, Halesowen Grammar School and King Edwards School, Birmingham, an independent school. He then studied English Literature at Pembroke College, University of Cambridge, whilst at Cambridge University Oddie appeared in several Footlights Club productions. Meanwhile, still at Cambridge, Oddie wrote scripts for and appeared briefly in TVs That Was The Week That Was and he appeared in Bernard Bradens television series On The Braden Beat in 1964. Subsequently, he was a key member of the performers in the BBC radio series Im Sorry, Ill Read That Again, some were released on the album Distinctly Oddie. In many shows he would do impressions of Hughie Green. On television Oddie was co-writer and performer in the comedy series Twice a Fortnight with Graeme Garden, Terry Jones, Michael Palin and Jonathan Lynn. Later, he was co-writer and performer in the comedy series Broaden Your Mind with Tim Brooke-Taylor and Graeme Garden, Oddie, Brooke-Taylor and Garden then co-wrote and appeared in their television comedy series The Goodies. The Goodies also released records, including Father Christmas Do Not Touch Me/The In-Betweenies, Funky Gibbon, and Black Pudding Bertha and they reformed, briefly, in 2005, for a successful 13-date tour of Australia. Oddie, Brooke-Taylor and Garden voiced characters on the 1983 animated childrens programme Bananaman, in the Amnesty International show A Poke in the Eye, Oddie, Brooke-Taylor and Garden sang their hit song Funky Gibbon. They also appeared on Top of the Pops with the song, together with Garden, Oddie co-wrote many episodes of the television comedy series Doctor in the House, including most of the first season and all of the second season. He has occasionally appeared on the BBC Radio 4 panel game Im Sorry I Havent a Clue, on which Garden, in 1982 Garden and Oddie wrote, but did not perform in, a six-part science fiction sitcom called Astronauts for Central and ITV. The show was set in a space station in the near future. Oddies first published work was an article about the birdlife of Birminghams Bartley Reservoir in the West Midland Bird Clubs 1962 Annual Report. He has since written a number of books about birds and birdwatching, as well as articles for many specialist publications including British Birds, Birdwatching Magazine and he discussed bird song recordings with Derek Jones in an August 1973 BBC Radio 4 programme called Sounds Natural
