Standing up for Nature
In a bold but sensible move, Ruth Tingay and the Scottish Raptor Study Group are seeking leave for a judicial review of SNH’s careless and foolish licensing of a Raven cull in Scotland. Please support it with your dosh – I have.
I am a 63 year old retired British and Sultan of Oman’s Army Officer living overseas, in Oman, running a small business advisory consultancy in Muscat, helping small to medium sized British and European Companies achieve business there. I am a salt water (mainly) catch and release fly fisherman who occasionally shoots for the pot…
Michael Gove has done nothing visible to me to deal with the many ills and misdemeanors of driven grouse shooting. In fact, he is said to have told representatives of grouse shooting that he was seeking to ‘protect their vulnerable flank’, whatever that might mean (grouse shooting has enough exposed flanks to be spherical). Crispin Odey is a…
Tim writes: Snipe make a weird noise known as drumming, but it does not sound like a drum, more like a humming vibrato sound. During the early years of the twentieth century debate raged as to whether this sound was produced vocally or mechanically as wind rushed past the outer tail feathers. The conundrum…
I’m keeping a note of whether I see Red Kites on each day through the year – in May the tally was a feeble 7 days out of 31. My absencves from the country this month, and from the world range of the Red Kite, explain the low strike rate. Let’s see what June has…
Tim writes: In Britain, Choughs (Pyrrhocorax pyrrhocorax) are rather rare, and probably always have been as there are few English folk names for them. There are many ancient references to Chough but that is because this was the name originally applied to the Jackdaw. Shakespeare refers to Choughs in seven of his plays but at…
Would you really want to pick a violet? They look so frail and tender to me. They look like they need a helping hand rather than a rough tug. But Plantlife says it’s OK provided we don’t go overboard in our picking. Who thought of calling them dog violets? What sort of a name is…
Cow Parsely is one of the plants that Plantlife says we can pick! It’s in the Plantlife Pickable 12. There is lots of Cow Parsley in flower by the roadsides at the moment – our motor fumes fertilise the verges and Cow Parsley is a species that laps that up! As a hopeless botanist –…
Paul writes: I had a quick check through my insect records and found I have seen over 20 different hoverfly species feeding on Dandelions. Here are two beauties I have seen recently. Unfortunately neither have English names but I think they both deserve to be better recognised. The yellow and black one is Chrysotoxum arcuatum,…