I was lucky to have most of a day for mooching on Friday – and I was able to mooch in Perthshire and Angus. I first went to the Loch of the Lowes – a famous Osprey site but also an easy place to see Red Squirrels. Just because it is easy to see them…
Author: Mark
Born Bristol, UK
Educated: Cleeve House School Bristol, Bristol Grammar School and Downing College Cambridge
Ph.D. University of Aberdeen, Winter activity of pipistrelle bats.
NERC post-doctoral Research Fellow, Edward Grey Institute, Oxford University
Former Conservation Director of the RSPB, 1989-2011
Torch the parks
As I drove north up the A1 through Yorkshire, plumes of smoke were rising from our National Parks: the North York Moors on the right and the Yorkshire Dales on the left. They were being torched in order to provide the right conditions for unnaturally high densities of Red Grouse. Passing through parts of Yorkshire,…
Another great day
Last Sunday was a great day – how could it not be in scenery like this? And there was an adult White-tailed Eagle seen several times to add to the view (and a distant probable Golden Eagle too). As the eagle flew over these hills it scared Red Grouse into the air and they were…
Scary
Iolo Williams is a mate of mine but it was slightly unnerving to spend a night in the Grant Arms Hotel last week with his shiny face grinning at me through the dark all night long. Scary! Truly scary!
Great day
I spent Saturday – a lovely sunny day – inside the SNH conference centre at Battleby – at a Scottish Raptor Study Groups’ conference. It was a great day. I was speaking, which always takes the shine off my day (and perhaps others’ too), but the other speakers were a very impressive line-up. We…