Tim writes: This photograph looks more like a painting. The colours in the water are reflections from Newcastle’s swing bridge and the surface of the River Tyne was just lightly rippled creating a wobbly mirror effect. The juvenile Kittiwake is almost incidental. Kittiwakes began nesting in Newcastle in the 1960s which was quite a thing…
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
Recycled Saturday cartoon by Ralph Underhill
Planet Earth 2
I’m looking forward to Planet Earth 2 which starts this weekend (Sunday BBC1 8pm) – the trailer is amazing and so are these images. What if? What if you could only watch this programme if you could prove that you had done something for wildlife this year? Or this week? It’s not a serious suggestion…
Did you see these?
What others say about the ban driven grouse shooting campaign: The RSPB is wrong not to back a ban on driven grouse shooting – Nick Milton, Guardian Time for change: a comment on the parliamentary debate on the future of grouse shooting, Martin Harper’s blog Dishonourable members, Raptor Persecution UK Don’t dismiss the Public NGO,…
Driving and thinking
On Wednesday evening I gave a talk to the Bangor Bird Group in North Wales. There was a good crowd there and they were pretty stirred up after seeing the debate on Monday. No sign of any of them giving up. I hope I entertained and energised them (I think I may have done) but…
You did this…
shone a light on the scale of illegal raptor persecution in the UK uplands brought the damaging impacts of grouse moor management to the attention of the media and the British public had a lot of fun persuaded M&S three years in a row to reverse its decision to sell grouse meat in stores got…
A day at Spurn
Last week I spent most of a day birdwatching at Spurn, and by chance the first person I met was Georgia Locock whose guest blog appeared here on that very day. So I had a chat with Georgia at about 8am and spent the rest of the time birding. It was a nice relaxing day….
Not much progress so far PM
In Monday’s debate on the future of driven grouse shooting Conservative MPs trooped out in numbers to defend their so-called sport rather than to address the concerns of their constituents. ‘There’s a lot we need to do in this party of ours. Our base is too narrow and so, occasionally, are our sympathies. You…
The ‘debate’ – some first thoughts
On Monday afternoon and evening a Westminster Hall debate was held where UK MPs discussed the idea that driven grouse shooting should be banned because 123,077 people had signed an e-petition. The e-petition system was set up by Parliament so that the people could bring matters about which they felt strongly to the attention of…
Thank you all
This post was written at the weekend – before whatever happened yesterday at the debate on the future of grouse shooting happened. I never really believed that we would get this debate until we were in the 90,000 signatures in early August 2016. But we have. And the way that people look at driven grouse…