when the Cabinet reshuffle will come and who will get the DEFRA job? when DEFRA will respond to the Godfray report on Badgers? Commissioned two years ago, published 16 months ago and no response yet. what the new DEFRA licences for lethal bird control will look like and when exactly they will be published? when…
BLOG POSTS
Guest blog – Planting Trees (4) by Ian Parsons
Ian Parsons spent twenty years working as a Ranger with the Forestry Commission, where he not only worked with birds of prey and dormice, but where he developed his passion for trees. Now a freelance writer, Ian runs his own specialist bird tour company leading tours to Extremadura. For more details see www.griffonholidays.com This is…
Press release from Ban Bloodsports on Yorkshire Moors
Government urged to deliver moorland burning ban following Yorkshire floodsEnvironment campaigners are warning that Yorkshire’s moors are no longer acting as effective flood barriers for the region following decades of burning for grouse shooting. It comes as Yorkshire counts the cost of the third major floods to have hit the region in seven months, with…
Licensed killing of birds
When Wild Justice challenged the general licences issued by Natural England last year all hell broke loose. A year later we are seeing new licences being issued by public bodies in Scotland and Wales, and are awaiting the new DEFRA licensing regime for England. There’s a lot going on on this subject and, as one…
Love the Linnet?
This book, 67 species, 67 authors, 67 artists, is about the red-listed birds of the UK and goes on sale on Valentine’s Day. Show some love for our birds and buy a copy, please. Money from sale will go to RSPB and BTO projects on the Red67. All the artwork is brilliant and I expect…
Tim Melling – Brown Parrotbill
Tim writes: Parrotbills are a small family of south and southeast Asian birds that have taxonomically puzzled ornithologists for years. They used to be in a genus Paradoxornis, which means “puzzling bird” because nobody knew where they belonged in terms of bird families. The confusion was exacerbated because it was long thought that the Bearded…
Saturday cartoon by Ralph Underhill
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7000th blog post
This is this blog’s 7000th post since starting up in April 2011. I didn’t write them all but I have read them all! How about you? There is a slowly growing archive of posts to be found here.
Dead Starlings on the road update
I’ve meant to come back to this for a while. Do you remember the dead Starlings found on a road in Anglesey? Well the police say that they were avoiding a predator – see here. I wonder. I’m not sure that the burden of evidence is anything like good enough. I’m happy to put it…
5G
When Donald Trump is apoplectic with Boris Johnson in a phone call it’s a bit difficult to know where one’s sympathies lie. I guess that we know that Donald Trump is pretty certainly irredeemably bad whereas Boris Johnson has time to amaze us with good things in future. But it did mean that for a…