I’m interested in Pallid Harriers for a number of reasons; they are very beautiful birds, they are expanding their range dramatically westwards in an interesting manner and I have a bet with my friend Ben Koks (which I will be happy to lose) that Pallids aren’t going to have bred in the UK by the…
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Let’s hope not
I hope this cartoon by Mr Carbo is unnecessarily pessimistic. It remains to be seen whether the SNP government is prepared to act on wildlife crime and unsustainable moorland management. They have acted on Mountain Hares but if they thought that was enough then they have not read the mood of the Scottish electorate nor…
It’s the silly season on the grouse moors
This piece in The National is a hoot. You can always spot dodgy pseudo-science when something is aiming to ‘prove’ something rather than to investigate it. And in this case gamekeepers are going to collect data on birds of prey on grouse moors. Quite what all this is about, who knows? We know birds of…
Dear First Minister – what you told Nicola Sturgeon (2)
Yes, back to that poisoned White-tailed Eagle found on a grouse moor in a National Park. Why? Because it’s just as shocking and awful this week as it was last week. Nicola Sturgeon and Roseanna Cunningham may feel that they had a bit of a torrid time on this subject last week but, after the…
News from the grousers
Crispin Odey, grouse shooter and funder of You Forgot the Birds (logo any harrier except a Hen) seems like a lovely man. Craig Whitaker MP for Calder Valley whose constituency is often flooded by water pouring off grouse moors, and who spoke in favour of driven grouse shooting in the 2016 debate seems like a…
Just saying…
The GWCT are badgering me to buy a badge of their logo to support their vital conservation work for the Grey Partridge. That’s a more than 50% decline since 1994. Somebody’s not been buying enough badges? This is the GWCT’s best-studied species, by far, I’d say. Now the conservation of widespread farmland species is difficult,…
Riches not beyond measure
I got this from Pelagic last week. Most publishers do this, they have a minimum amount under which they don’t pay you the royalties earned in a period but carry it over to next time. And I’m not complaining, and certainly not about Pelagic because they pay royalties every six months whereas most publishers pay…
Hen Harrier Day online – this Saturday
This Saturday will see an online Hen Harrier Day like no other. Hosted by Chris Packham and Megan McCubbin, the team that brought you a new, and many say improved, Springwatch, it will have some things and people old and some new, some things borrowed and some things blue, or at least blue-grey. I don’t…
Tim Melling – Willow Tit
Tim writes: this is a recently-fledged Willow Tit that I found on 9th June this year. It was one of a brood of four youngsters being chaperoned by both parents, although they were constantly moving so it could possibly have been five youngsters and one parent. They were contact calling constantly as they slowly moved,…
Sunday book review – Snared by Bob Berzins
As regular readers of this blog will know, Bob Berzins has written several guest blogs here, mostly about goings on in the Peak District but also about other upland areas. This book, written by Bob Berzins, published by Bob Berzins and, because I can’t find an acknowledgement to anyone else in the book, probably the…