Guest blog: pesticides and farmland birds by Gerald Collini

Gerald Collini was an arable agronomist for 43 years. For the latter 33 years he worked independently.     The declining numbers of some farm land birds and a possible contributing factor?   Several recent European and home studies suggest that insecticides may be implicated? The 1970s and the start of intensive arable farming appears to…

Bird Fair – favourite things

I’ve closed the questionnaire on Bird Fair speakers – watch this space. But one of the questions asked was ‘What was your favourite moment of the 2018 Bird Fair?’. Here are lists of answers for men and women separately. I’ve tabulated the answers that scored more than one mention from each gender. This has to…

Hen Harrier survey, 2016, published

The headline results of this survey were released in June 2017 but now the full paper has emerged in Bird Study. Status of the Hen Harrier Circus cyaneus in the UK and Isle of Man in 2016. Simon R. Wotton, Stephen Bladwell, Wendy Mattingley, Neil G. Morris, David Raw, Marc Ruddock, Andrew Stephenson and Mark…