Hen Harriers in England have had a good breeding season this year – there were 14 nesting attempts, of which 9 produced a total of 34 fledged young. These 9 nests were, I think: 3 nests on United Utilities land (where grouse shooting occurs) in the Forest of Bowland, Lancashire, which were guarded by RSPB…
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
Nice bag RSPB
It was good to see tht my Nature’s Home magazine (it’s still a ghastly name) came through the letterbox in a compostable wrapper. Well done RSPB! The wrapper says that you can recycle it in four ways: Put it in your compost heap Put it in your green garden waste bin Put it in…
Cool Coul news
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Good news for Coul Links – a pause, if not a reprieve. See also: Conservation partnership unites to protect precious dune habitat in Sutherland from development, 30 August 2016 and Not at all cool at Coul , 7 November 2017. Press release issued yesterday afternoon by RSPB, Plantlife, Buglife, Scottish Wildlife Trust, National…
Save the date – 22 September
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A’Mhoine 2
This is interesting. It relates to the plan, or should that be incredibly vague idea, to build a space port (whatever that might be) on the A’Mhoine peninsula in Sutherland – ‘a remote boggy stretch of land’. Have a look at this journey made by a young Golden Eagle in 2014 where it headed off…
Save the date – 11 August 2019
Let’s have a 5-year reunion at the Derwent Dam! Chris Packham is up for it, Ruth Tingay is up for it, I’m up for it – are you up for it? Next year – Sunday 11 August 2019 – save the date.
Four signatures so far (Icelandic whaling letter from tour operators)
The letter below was sent to eight travel companies asking them whether they would sign up. So far we have four signatures and two refusals (see below). I have no beef with the two companies, so far, who have said a polite ‘no’. All companies are different, they face different constraints and signing this letter…
After they get back from Specsavers, the Angus Glens Moorland Group may wish to have a go at this one… Many thanks to Mr Carbo for this.
Angus Glens – they should have gone to Specsavers
The Angus Glens Moorland Group provide this useful checklist for visitors – there won’t be too many genuine ticks on the left hand side of the page and anyone ticking Redshank here ought to provide a photo of the bird to their local county bird recorder for verification. 103 bird species were not just recorded…
A letter to the Icelandic Prime Minister from wildlife tour operators?
Following on from last week’s blogs about tour operators and Icelandic whaling (see here and here ) I have had some fruitful and positive interactions with several tour operators who take visitors to Iceland. I have to say that these have been entirely polite, apparently open and wholly constructive. As a result I have drafted…