I mentioned last week, at the very end of this blog post, that I was planning to be at the Game Fair at Hatfield House on Friday . I didn’t make a big deal of it as I have been to c20 Game Fairs over the years and been on a panel for a good…
BLOG POSTS
Feedback on Pheasants
I’ve had some lovely feedback on my British Birds paper on Pheasants. Here are some examples: I read this excellent and thought-provoking BB review with great interest and respect! It is very balanced and well informed and one can but hope that the shooting hierarchies will think about the issues constructively – though I regret…
August Birdwatch
Comments Off on August Birdwatch
August’s Birdwatch magazine arrived with me yesterday and I’ve already read lots of it – even though it is a bumper issue with 96 pages. There’s an interesting article on what I’m still going to call Marsh Harriers in normal speech (Western Marsh Harriers, more correctly these days) which reminds me that I probably saw…
Guest blog – Volunteers in the conservation sector (3) by Louise Bacon
Volunteers in the conservation sector: Part 3: Being a county recorder – volunteers with a spiralling data problem? I took on the role of butterfly county recorder around a decade ago. As someone working in the environmental records centre network and an active county naturalist, it seemed the obvious thing to do at the time…
6,000,000+ page views
This blog has had over 6 million pageviews since it started running in April 2011 (or actually since Google Analytics started running on it in July 2011). I have no idea whether to feel delighted or disappointed in that figure – but that’s what it is. Thank you for your ongoing interest in what I…
RSPB press release
Wasp discovered by volunteer at RSPB Loch Lomond is a first record for Scotland Sam Buckton is a volunteer at RSPB Scotland Loch Lomond. He set himself a challenge to record 250 new species for the reserve this summer. So far, he has found 315. One of the species is a first record for Scotland,…
RSPB begins to lose patience with grouse shooters
The RSPB held a ‘debate’ on the future of grouse shooting in Westminster last week. You can listen, though it is difficult to hear everything, and it is quite long, to the ‘debate’ here. It’s a pity there isn’t a video because then we could all check on the accuracy of the reports that the…
Paul Leyland – Blue-winged Tachinid
Paul writes: I came across this beautiful fly last week, along a wide footpath through the woods near Allerston in North Yorkshire. July is a great time for finding flies feeding on umbellifers, the flowers are at just the right height for comfortable viewing and there are lots of them in the right habitat. There…
Sunday book review – Bird Cottage by Eva Meijer (translated by Antoinette Fawcett).
Review by Miles King. Miles works for People Need Nature, and writes about nature on his blog. One of the unexpected bonuses of being a regular writer is that publishers’ PR agents send you books, for free, in the hope that they will be reviewed, perhaps even favourably. Even if that writing is only a…
GWCT called out over spin
The Game and Wildlife Conservation Trust is in serious trouble over its spin. See this series of tweets from Jeff Knott, RSPB Director of East England (and former species policy officer at The Lodge). All the above tweets come from current or past RSPB staff (one of whom was also an ex-GWCT staff member). I…