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Lead ammunition was part of the Wild Justice legal challenge to DEFRA but DEFRA (and Natural England) tended to ignore it. I can see why, it’s a very difficult issue for them politically though very clear biologically. Just as readers of this blog think that Waitrose should deal with the issue of lead in the…

Here’s a dead Pheasant. Something will come along and eat it (although since it is surrounded (for a distance of far more than 500m in all directions) by grouse moor the density of scavenging birds and mammals might be quite low. A good bet for the destination of quite a lot of roadkill gamebirds is…

The issue of the droppings of 60 million released gamebirds was not one that was large in my mind when I started thinking about Pheasants and Red-legged Partridges but that is because I am a blinkered ornithologist. What has emerged (see previous blog) is that those droppings are a great threat to many habitats: while…

Tim Bonner made an extraordinarily brash claim on Today on Saturday; There is no evidence whatsoever that Pheasant or Red-legged Partridge are doing any significant damage to these special sites. There is simply no evidence. https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m000p0fj It is unlikely that DEFRA would have been forced to bring in regulation of gamebird releases (by Wild Justice’s…

All 13,000 birds kept at this site near Frodsham will be killed. This outbreak is of a different strain of bird (poultry) flu from that also announced yesterday in Kent. The DEFRA announcement has plenty of emphasis on the role of wild birds and see here for more information on a couple of Mute Swans…