Yesterday afternoon Natural Resources Wales answered my questions about Jay culling on NRW land as follows: Our response to your questions is as follows – 1. Does NRW cull Jays under the provisions of the general licences on its land? NRW does not currently cull jay on land it owns or manages. 2. Does NRW…
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
Just a reminder on Jays
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If you go back to May 2019 you will find that I quoted from the BTO’s Andy Clement’s blog at the time as follows; … there may be insufficient scientific evidence to merit the inclusion of Jay on the licence list in order to conserve birds … https://www.bto.org/community/blog/2019/general-licences-and-bto And yet, the Jay is still listed…
Natural England blog makes Wild Justice’s point
In a recent blog, Natural England sets out its approach to issuing specific licences for lethal control. You could be completely forgiven for not quite understanding how the licensing system works in England at the moment but I think it is like this: all wild birds are protected by law you can kill any species…
Rewilding and National Parks
I asked a simple question and in under six days 908 people responded: Now that’s quite clear. We have no way of knowing who these people were – the survey was promoted on social media and was open to any to answer (but that doesn’t mean that the respondents were anything like representative). But the…
Guy Shorrock – Golden Eagle
Guy writes: Golden eagle – it doesn’t really get much better does it! Probably one of the most well-known birds to the man on the street – symbolic of beauty, power, speed & wilderness. I saw my first eagles when I was about 11 years old on a holiday with my father to Scotland. A…
Guest blog – Nature Writing and Gender by Daphne Pleace
Daphne’s bio and work can be seen at www.daphnepleace.co.uk. In brief, she describes herself as an elder, writer, facilitator and lifelong learner, gone feral, wandering about in nature whenever she’s allowed out. Twitter: @DaphnePleace Nature Writing and Gender: 12 ‘different’ books by women Many of the (published) ‘nature’ books women have been writing these last…
Tim Melling – Purple Hairstreak
Tim writes: Purple Hairstreaks are one of our commonest hairstreaks, but they are not easy to see and even less easy to photograph. That’s because they are essentially a treetop butterfly that only occasionally ventures down to ground level. They occasionally visit flowers but usually obtain their sugary fuel from aphid honeydew on tree leaves. …
Saturday cartoon by Ralph Underhill
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News round up
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Stuff that’s happened: Government’s/Boris’s 10-point plan: Official GOVUK, New York Times, Guardian, Independent, BBC. Some of this isn’t new, some of it isn’t great, but some of it is pretty good. Is it enough? I’m struck by the fact that journalists can’t get past the large amount of money involved (to be spent over a…
Bird/poultry flu at Slimbridge it seems
Yesterday DEFRA announced that avian influenza H5N8 (pathogenicity to be confirmed) has been confirmed in captive birds at non-poultry premises near Stroud in Gloucestershire. I think we can be fairly sure that this is Slimbridge WWT. And the cases in wild birds (which mostly appear, given the vague way in which DEFRAA reports these cases)…