It’s always a pleasure when one of our members presents at our meetings, so we were very pleased to welcome Katherine Wiid and her friend Jackie Stone to our November meeting to transport us for a short time to Ecuador, ‘Land of the Equator’. Although a small country, Ecuador has a huge diversity of species including 1,600 birds and more than 400 mammals. It also has great chocolate, made from cocoa grown in citrus orchards! One source of inspiration for Katherine was Kate Rawles, who built a bamboo bike and rode 8,000 miles through the Andes on it, to highlight biodiversity loss. Her book about it called The Life Cycle.
There will be a full write up of Katharine’s colourful and educational talk in the next edition of the Batis (February 2026).