Paul Sterry has an academic background in freshwater biology and is a passionate conservationist. He has been writing about natural history and photographing wildlife for the last 40 years, with an emphasis on the British scene. He now has a string of beautifully illustrated guest blogs here. Wildflower Verge or Colourful Eyesore? I don’t regard…
BLOG POSTS
Looking forward to the Game Fair a week today
Back in 2017 I wrote this blog post – it’s worth a re-read I think because I was surprised (I’d forgotten, these things don’t stay with me very long) how vitriolic the shooting industry can get. In that blog, I wrote this; Some in the shooting industry think that I have broken that promise but…
Wild Justice in the news again – challenging gamebird releases
See this piece by Patrick Barkham in the Guardian.
PMQs, self-awareness, grouse shooting and this blog
It was a strange day in the closing moments of the current Prime Minister’s time in office. Listening to the media I got the impression that Jeremy Corbyn was asking lots of questions about climate change and that Mrs May was avoiding them and keeping coming back to anti-semiticism in the Labour Party (a party…
Cattle Egrets breed in Northants
This blog is based on Mike Alibone’s blog on the same subject – a must read every week (or more) for Northants birders and with enough interesting information to be of wider than local interest. I’ve become a little blase about Cattle Egrets in the last 12 months as there have been regular sightings of…
Mimicry in biscuits
I like a digestive biscuit. When we were up in Scotland in June I was sent off to an unfamiliar supermarket with a list. I struggled to find everything on the list and was delighted to stumble across a familiar pile of distinctively wrapped biscuits after minutes of looking in many wrong places for them….
You might have missed this rally in the news
Back in April they said this – we’re going to have a rally. And they had help, advice and support from the Countryside Alliance, the National Gamekeepers Organisation (I always want to put the apostrophe in there, but they don’t…) and BASC (but it’s not just shooters, oh no!) And they did get a crowd…
Gove’s landmark environment speech
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Social media and some mainstream media are all over Michael Gove’s ‘landmark’ environment speech. Here is the text. It’s a pretty good speech but I think the signs are that it is a land-grab speech as much as a landmark one. There is so much in here about climate change and yet no-one seems to…
Natural England praises moorland estates
One can almost forgive the Moorland Association’s over-the-top spin – that’s all they have left to give. There are a few pairs of Hen Harriers on English grouse moors this year. Not as many, I think we will find, as are nesting in other places but the Moorland Association had to jump the gun (apt…
Gove environment speech
Michael Gove is to make an environment speech at around midday today. I wonder what he will say. Presumably he won’t just wave and say goodbye!