It costs you nothing

Using GiveAsYouLive as you go about your normal business can raise money for your favourite charity. I’ve raised £50 so far – for Butterfly Conservation – and all I do is book train tickets and hotels online (which I have to do anyway) and make a few (very few) extra clicks to make sure that…

Oh no! One of our harriers is down!

Henry! I did tell you to be careful! Will Henry be back tomorrow? #WillYouSeeHenryAgain? I suspect Henry may be back tomorrow and he was just larking around – he’s such a wag isn’t he? Where might he turn up next? #HaveYouSeenHenry?

High Peak – a marginal which should have Hen Harriers

High Peak is a marginal which has been the seat of Conservative Andrew Bingham (see here for some information about his voting record) since he won it from Labour in 2010. Mr Bingham asked a question about the publication of the Hen Harrier non-joint non-plan back in November 2014: To ask the Secretary of State…

Home thoughts from Mark Avery abroad

HOME THOUGHTS FROM ABROAD Oh, to be in England Now that April ‘s there, And whoever wakes in England Sees, some morning, unaware, That the lowest boughs and the brushwood sheaf Round the elm-tree bole are in tiny leaf, While the chaffinch sings on the orchard bough In England—now!   Robert Browning, of course.  …

Henry visits Dersingham Bog NNR

Dersingham Bog eh?  You be careful! Have you read Fighting for Birds pp196-202?   #HaveYouSeenHenry?

Blackbirds

Do you remember this ivy in my garden?  I never did get around to cutting any of it. Now it has a pair of Blackbirds nesting in it. That’s nice! And there is a pair of Blue Tits taking moss and feathers into the RSPB nestbox which is a new feature of the garden too…

Conservative manifesto – they forgot the countryside too

I’m really rather surprised. Five years ago the Conservative manifesto was streets ahead of the others in its treatment of rural, wildlife and some environmental issues.  That doesn’t mean I agreed with it, but one could see that someone, somewhere, had given it some thought. I was expecting the same this time around, and I…

Uncoiling Spring

I’ve been at Stanwick Lakes each morning for the last four and although Spring still has plenty of tension in it, it is beginning to unwind. Over the past four mornings Sedge Warblers have moved from absent (to my ears) to occasional, to all over the place and everywhere I would expect them to be….