Standing up for Nature
Tim writes: Photo-opportunities of perched Merlins are few and far between. So I could hardly believe my luck when I spotted one on a roadside post some distance ahead. I took a few record shots then inched closer in the car until it was only about 25m away. It then turned its head and made…
I’m keeping a note of whether I see Red Kites on each day through the year – in March the tally has been 26 days out of 31. January: 22 days out of 31. February: 24 days out of 28. That makes 72 out of 90 overall. That’s an even higher strike rate than…
Gavin Gamble’s e-petition continues to motor along – it passed 44,000 signatures this morning and must, surely, be heading for well above 45,000 signatures by midnight on Monday? Generally speaking, we know that support for banning driven grouse shooting is greatest from rural constituencies (not townies at all). But all signatures count, and there are…
Yesterday another eight Westminster constituencies joined the ‘100 signatures’ club taking the total past 100 to 102 constituencies. And the last 24 hours delivered 600 signatures in total – a very good day. The total is now 43,886 signatures in favour of banning driven grouse shooting. Another 38 constituencies are in the 90s and many…
Back in 2006 I had the opportunity to do an RSPB sabbatical colleagues to assist with some bird surveys in the Gola rainforest in Sierra Leone, West Africa. This is the largest remnant of Upper Guinean Tropical Rainforest left in Sierra Leone. It covers nearly 700 square kilometres with more than 330 bird species,…
Artist Jackie Morris says; ‘The language we use when it comes to our fellow species on this planet needs to change. Birds are not commodities to be exploited for sport, and the persecution of raptors and other wildlife in areas where shooting is practiced is appalling. The industrialisation of the ‘shoot’ has given rise to…
Thank you to everyone for your birthday wishes yesterday for me and my binoculars – we were together all day and had a good day’s birding at Titchwell RSPB reserve in Norfolk where the sun shone for all of our visit. In these days of social media I found I have birthday wishes arriving from…
Sometimes a book arrives in the post, out of the blue, and I wonder why I was sent it. That applied to this book although I wasn’t complaining as it’s beautiful and has an interesting story to tell. The ‘people’s mountain’ refers to the Kinder Mass Trespass of 1932 which hastened (or just perhaps delayed,…