Defra, the farmer’s friend, believes in permitting fire-bombing of the countryside, it seems. The map above is the distribution of signatures for an e-petition – not for Gavin Gamble’s e-petition asking for driven grouse shooting to be banned but for Hawk Honey’s (nice name!) to ban balloon and sky lantern releases. The Defra response…
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
Dr Coffey’s reading list (13) – we need a Reformation
Dr Therese Coffey is the junior minister at Defra. Now that Gavin Gamble’s e-petition in favour of banning driven grouse shooting has passed 10,000 signatures Dr Coffey will need to sign off a government response. In order that she does not make Defra look even more foolish than they do already I am providing a…
Sustainable dilemmas (1) – where you would send me
I expect that many of the readers of this blog feel a bit of nagging guilt about the impact of their lifestyle on the planet, and not just the planet but on the people with whom we share it. What we eat, what we wear, where we travel etc etc – all those things have…
Murmuration
Poor pictures (taken on my ‘phone) but they give you an impression of the murmuration of Starlings near to my home, at Summer Leys nature reserve yesterday evening. They didn’t put on a spectacular show, not much wheeling around, but there were quite a few of them – 6000? And against the setting sun they…
The first four weeks
Gavin Gamble’s e-petition to ban driven grouse shooting passed 10,000 signatures on Friday. This, importantly, will trigger a response from Defra – a valuable insight into whether the government is still in denial about wildlife crime or whether the message is getting through. Here are the leading constituencies so far – many of them are…
Blue Planet 2 – what did you think?
On the basis that ‘Dog bites Man is not news, but Man bites Dog is news’ then I can understand why we saw Giant Trevally fish gobbling up young Sooty Terns. Did you see them? Quite something when a nearly 6-foot fish jumps out of the water to catch a tern in flight. And, above,…
Oscar Dewhurst – Black-tailed Godwit
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Oscar writes: During the summer I found myself in Suffolk for a few days, so spent an early morning in Minsmere’s East Hide in the hope of photographing some of the waders that were there. A couple of summer plumaged Black-tailed Godwits were feeding close to the hide, and their colours looked fantastic in the…
Wild food (10) – Amethyst Deceiver by Ian Carter
This is a very common species in the autumn and early winter in deciduous woodland, mostly under Beech trees in my part of the country. It provides an excellent example of the concept of ‘search image’ whereby things become much easier to find once you have got your eye in. You wouldn’t think that vivid…
Behind More Binoculars
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Both Botham and the RSPB are wrong
Ian Botham talks rubbish a lot of the time, it seems to me (see here, here and here) and clearly I am not alone as Birdwatch readers voted in droves for YFTB, for whom Ian Botham has spoken in public, in last year’s ‘Guano awards’ (see here, and see here for this year’s contenders). One…