NEWS – Hen Harriers with Bird Flu on the moors

The impact of bird flu on wild birds is seen to be growing, even though the governments across the UK are proving to be pretty useless in having a view on this important conservation issue.  Much of the impact this summer has been seen in seabird colonies such as gannetries and tern colonies (eg see…

Latest BBS report from BTO/JNCC/RSPB

The latest excellent BBS (and WBBS) report arrived through my letterbox last week. It’s a concise and beautiful report which is a model of comprehensible summary of somewhat complex data. If you want to know how a wide variety of commoner and widespread birds are faring in the UK, and often in individual nations or…

Sunday book review – Birds, Beasts and Bedlam by Derek Gow

A very enjoyable read – Derek Gow has good stories galore and not only are they good stories, but he tells them very well.  We learn quite a lot about Derek’s past, including his early jobs – an interesting mixture. But much of this book is about keeping animals in captivity, often for conservation purposes,…

Sunday book review – Cornerstones by Benedict Macdonald

This is, in my opinion (and why are you reading this review if you don’t want my opinion?), Benedict Macdonald’s best book to date. Yes, Rebirding (reviewed here) was a very good book, and Orchard (with Nicholas Gates, reviewed here) was perfectly OK, but this is a very, very good book. Nine groups of species:…