Iolo Williams, naturalist and TV presenter, says: ‘I am not, and never have been, anti-shooting but over the past decade, it has become patently obvious that the levels of bird of prey persecution associated with driven grouse shooting are sending some iconic species to the brink of extinction in many areas. This is totally…
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
Charlie Moores says ‘Ban driven grouse shooting’
Charlie Moores, a founder of Birders Against Wildlife Crime, birder, ace podcaster and audio-producer for Lush, says: ‘The ‘glorious’ ritualised slaughter of hundreds of thousands of wild birds can’t be defended from any moral or ethical position. It takes a wrecking ball to precious moorland habitats and is underpinned by wildlife crime. Let’s get…
Paul Leyland – Tawny Mining Bee
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Paul writes: This is one of my favourite bees, mainly because it’s one of the first solitary bees to emerge in Spring. This is a freshly emerged female and is wonderfully striking with its rich orange fur and dark black legs. Its common name is the Tawny Mining Bee. It’s very easily spotted in late…
Sunday book review – Food you can Forage by Tiffany Francis
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Reviewed by Ian Carter There are plenty of books about wild food these days, describing how to find it and how to make best use of it. This one deals with a comprehensive selection of plants, including seaweeds. It also includes a handful of fungi (just 7 species) but, rather oddly I thought, it ignores…
Tim Melling – White-capped Water Redstart
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Tim writes: This will be a familiar bird to anyone who has spent time near a river in SE Asia. They are noisy, bold, and very photogenic. They were once placed in a genus (Chaimarrornis) but molecular studies have shown it is definitely a typical redstart, in the same genus as our two British species. …
An Unreliable History of Birdwatching (49) by Paul Thomas
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Due to circumstances beyond Paul’s control he was not able to add the usual header this week – but I guess you can all live without it, can’t you? Just a teaser, Paul has provided a cracking cartoon for a series of blogs which will appear here next week.
Saturday cartoon by Ralph Underhill
Ralph writes ‘This toon is from the Framing Nature Toolkit to be launched on the 28th of March. You can buy a hard copy or download it for free here.‘.
Limp response from Natural England
I’ve been at Cheltenham racecourse this week, and it was just before the last race on Wednesday that our lawyer, Tessa Gregory, phoned me to say that we had had a response from Natural England to our pre-action protocol letter. It wasn’t a very interesting response as NE said that because they were dealing with…
Birding in the Cotswolds
As well as meeting lots of friends, drinking lots of red wine, eating lots of fantastic food and watching horses running around in circles, I did some birding this week. The drive from near Oxford to the racecourse produced the first transect when Red Kite numbers from the car equalled Buzzards – and the Red…
Guest blog – Bookends by Tim Bidie
I am a 63 year old retired British and Sultan of Oman’s Army Officer living overseas, in Oman, running a small business advisory consultancy in Muscat, helping small to medium sized British and European Companies achieve business there. I am a salt water (mainly) catch and release fly fisherman who occasionally shoots for the pot (with…