This very rare bird (from Asia; rare in the UK) chose a quiet part of the Cotswolds to make a long stay and was thus available to view for over two months. Considering this was the third British record and the first two were on the Western Isles and in Fife, neither stayed very long, this bird was a welcome gift for twitchers.
The bird was first noticed by the Old Etonian landowner, Tarquin Millington-Drake (this is the Cotswolds) who kept the news quiet for a couple of weeks but then opened up a field where birders could park to watch the rare bird – thousands did.
The field had a donations box which, we read, has raised £12,000. Fair enough, it was a stunning bird (I gather from the photos and from a few people I know who saw it) and such an addition to one’s life list will have been a great treat to many visitors.
Mr Millington-Drake has a travel business, Frontiers Travel, which provides luxury holidays so that you can catch fish and shoot birds (and maybe other animals) in far-flung and scenically stunning localities. If I were a twitcher with no concerns about climate change, I might go to some of these places to see wildlife, and if I were a different type of twitcher I might take my rod and/or gun with me.
A few people have pointed out to me that the allocation of the £12,000 from grateful birders’ pockets is quite interesting. Some have said that they thought the money was going to local charities but I’m told that the donations box in the car park simply said ‘Donations’.
£2,500 is going to local charities; £500 to the village hall and £2,000 to Kate’s Home Nursing, based in Bourton on the Water. Another £2,500 is being spent on the land on which the shrike was found, and the car park generously provided (Mr Millington-Drake’s land, it seems), and that seems fine to me. The majority of the money, £7,000) is going to a charity, Conservation Communication, which is local only, I think, in the sense that Mr Millington-Drake was one of its founders.
Conservation Communication has a website and an entry at Companies House – neither of which are amazingly forthcoming about what these private chats are all about.
The Conservation Communication website is very attractive and has images of large numbers of shootable species (Red and Black Grouse, Grey Partridge, Pheasant, Woodcock, Snipe, Golden Plover) and a dearth of raptors – a very accurate representation of the status quo in the uplands. Mr Millington-Drake, has published two books, with very fine photographs, one on grouse moors and another on Grey Partridges.
The Companies House entry shows that this CIC was only incorporated in November 2025 and we’ll have to wait a while for any accounts to be filed (and they probably won’t tell us anything anyway) but we can look out for that £7,000. The two current, and the one former, directors all live within a few shotgun discharges of grouse moors but that might just be a fluke.
I’ve had to point out to a couple of visitors to this site that there is nothing disreputable going on here: it’s reasonable for a cooperative and helpful landowner to benefit from providing parking for the fieldsport of twitching, it’s perfectly OK for that money to be invested (partly) in management of the site in question, and it’s entirely understandable that the recipient channels money into good causes that he supports. I do wonder though whether the thought of all that bird lovers’ cash heading into grouse moor discussions might have put a smile on a face or two.
However, there are a few birders who, had they known, might have baulked at the close relationship between grouse shooting and Mr Millington-Drake. It was a message of Reflections that if we donate to conservation then we should do due diligence to check whether our investment is a good one.
I don’t see Kazakhstan on the list of destinations for Frontiers Travel but if Mr Milington-Drake wants to see another Long-tailed Shrike that might be where to look. Is it legal to shoot Saiga these days?
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In point of fact there were more than a few birders who were aware of the charity the majority of the donations were going to and asked a few questions. But I suspect in the majority of cases the need to tick the bird overruled any reservations they might have had. Its a frequent conundrum one faces in life, one of my other interests is preserved railways and a number of prominent individuals involved and who fund some activities have views diametrically opposed to mine, one being a prominent supporter of Brexit and funder of right wing political parties.
I personally didn’t go to see the bird, because I have a limit on how far I travel to see a “one off” bird. But did do some research in to CIC having heard other birders reservations. I’m still not entirely sure what it’s purpose is, other than making the case that shooting/hunting can be a positive conservation activity.
The web-site indicates that one of the organisation’s projects is a film and the blub about this includes the following: “Grouse moors and the idea of grouse shooting in the United Kingdom are constantly in the proverbial crosshairs for removal of the activity from the rural countryside, contending it is an outdated activity and no longer socially acceptable. The story of what hunting/shooting is doing for grouse moors as an activity driving biodiversity is the opposite of this message.” There is also a blog by Simon Lester arguing the need for predator control, so I guess it is fairly clear what Conservation Communication’s purpose is.
As you say, there is no reason why Mr Millington-Drake should not spend the money raised as he sees fit but perhaps there is an issue regarding clarity here. Did the twitchers believe they were contributing to a charitable collection or did they believe they were paying a voluntary parking charge to the land-owner? If the implication of the invitation to donate was the former it might have been more honest to indicate which charities would benefit, especially as it could have been expected that many birders would not choose to support a grouse shooting organisation. It is not easy to perform due diligence on your donation if there is no information provided at the box where you make it.