I spent some time, on both Saturday and Sunday, talking to BASC people on their stand at the Game Fair. I’ve always thought that BASC was the serious and nice end of shooting with lots of wildfowlers and not many grouse shooters, and my conversations strengthened that view. They also plied me with cold drinks…
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Hen Harrier Day updates
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Hen Harrier Day is now supported by RSPB, the Wildlife Trusts, the National Trust, the Hawk and Owl Trust, the Peak District National Park, the League Against Cruel Sports, Birdwatch magazine, Rare Bird Alert, the Welsh Ornithological Society and Quaker Concern for Animals. Thank you to all who are supporting this day. Three events are…
August Birdwatch coming soon – Stop Killing Our Harriers!
Coming through your letterbox or to a newsagent near you very soon. There is a striking editorial by Dominic Mitchell and a couple of pages on the subject of Hen Harriers by yours truly. I just hope that many newsagents put this next to The Shooting Times and The Field on the shelves. Birdwatch is…
Game Fair 3 – in photos
This must be about my 20th Game Fair, so I realised that when it said that it opened at 9am this was just nonsense – soon after 8am I had parked, got a lift on a trailer from the car park to the entrance, paid to enter and then started walking down the hill where…
Oscar Dewhurst – Bluish-fronted Jacamar
Oscar writes: Bluish-fronted Jacamar: Bluish-fronted Jacamars were fairly common in the lowlands and I saw them most days around the station buildings. Luckily this one perched out in the open and gave me a nice clean background. It would sit on this branch before shooting up to snatch flies from the air and returning to…
Game Fair 2
What sort of people come to the Game Fair – you might (or might not) wonder? All sorts – although there is more tweed worn at the Game Fair than you will see at most July events with the temperature in the high 20sC. But judging from the cars parked near mine on my two…
Sunday book review – Shrewdunnit by Conor Mark Jameson
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There are two things I like a lot about this book – and four things about which I am less keen. The two are overwhelmingly more important than the four. Shall I get the four niggles out of the way first? I shall. I don’t like the title, I’m not drawn in by the cover,…
Game Fair 1
This year the Game Fair is in the grounds of Blenheim Palace. The Game Fair could keep a blogger going for full year, but let me tell you about some sensible people I met today. Today, Saturday, is ‘Conservation’ Saturday apparently. I noticed that there was a talk about rivers but it was as much…
Saturday cartoon by Ralph Underhill
What they say 10:
The latest in the excellent series of BAWC podcasts – this one by Terry Pickford. ‘In 1974 we had 39 breeding females…every single estate had hen harriers…but many of them were interfered with’ ‘It changed about 1980’ ‘Derek Ratcliffe was asked the reason why there had been such a calamitous collapse in Hen Harriers…