£1m capital investment from South of Scotland Enterprise for community moorland buyout South of Scotland Enterprise’s Board has announced up to £1 million financial support to the Langholm Initiative charity in its venture to purchase part of Langholm Moor from Buccleuch Estates. The Langholm Initiative is spearheading a campaign to raise enough funds to buy…
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Register for the RSPB AGM
If you are an RSPB member, and there are over a million of us, then you can attend the AGM. This year, it is online and could end up being the biggest Zoom call in history. You have to be an RSPB member (I am) and you have to register (I have). One of the…
Blackbird reporting rate
Yesterday’s Birdtrack reporting rate graph was Blackbird. The biggest clue is the high reporting rate through the year. As with all the reporting rate graphs (reporting rate is the proportion of all complete lists of birds in which the species is recorded) the shape of the graph is affected by where birders go and what…
England tree strategy – respond this week
You can have your say on the England Tree Strategy by filling in all or part of an online form by the end of Friday this week. Click here for link. This is an important issue – though I can’t promise the DEFRA will take any notice of your response – though I can promise…
I’d still like a response please
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Dear Ms Sturgeon (firstminister@gov.scot) I sent you this on 29 July. I received this on 4 August telling me I am reference number 202000070343. I’d still like a response please.
Green Woodpecker reporting rates
Tim Melling’s photographs and text on Green Woodpeckers on Saturday were well-timed for me because on my recent visits to Stanwick Lakes, my local patch, I’ve recorded Green Woodpeckers on each recent visit even though I’ve not seen a single one. They are very shouty at this time of year. And I’ve heard some from…
Brexit, COVID and hope for the future
Brexit. Remember Brexit? The UK left the EU at the end of January this year (boo!) but we are in a transition period until the end of 2020 – that’s less than four months away. The time has passed for extending the transition period, it ends on the last day of December. By that time…
RSPB press release – Spoonbills breed successfully in Suffolk
Rare birds raise chicks in Suffolk for first time in over 300 years The spoonbill nesting site was remodelled to protect Havergate Island from flooding, also helping to alleviate flooding near homes and businesses further along the estuary. The RSPB encouraged the birds to nest by experimenting with a range of conservation techniques including using…
Talking
I like giving talks and have given a lot of them over the last few years. But with COVID-19, the opportunities have disappeared. In some ways, this is a bit of a relief as, a bit like air travel, travelling to remote village halls in the dark on rainy days in November may sound ultra-glamorous,…
Sunday book review: Framing Nature by Laurence Rose
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There seems to have been something of a flood of very good books for me to review here recently, and here’s another one (and there are some more in the pipeline). Laurence Rose’s book is a thoughtful and well-informed look at nature conservation in the UK and every few pages I was thinking ‘That’s a…