BLOG POSTS
BBC Wildlife – Hen Harriers, Buzzards and Red Grouse
The article by Amy-Jane Beer in this month’s BBC Wildlife is certainly worth a read. It’s also worth a look – Laurie Campbell’s photographs are stunning. You should buy the magazine to see the images and read the words – and there is plenty more to enjoy in the magazine’s pages of course. The current…
BBC Wildlife – the landowners speak
In the same, current, issue of BBC Wildlife magazine in which I am ‘quoted’, so is Tim Baynes of the Scottish Land and Estates. He gets 50+ words to explain why we need grouse shoots. He gets off to a very bad start in a wildlife magazine by writing ‘The red grouse is the only…
BBC Wildlife – I have a small grouse
BBC Wildlife is a pretty good magazine, but I have a bit of a grouse with them. In the current issue (May – a lion on the cover) there is an article on Hen Harriers (to which I shall return more fully later today) in which I am quoted (as is Tim Baynes of Scottish…
Wales
I’ve been in Wales for a few days on a ‘secret mission’. If this post appears it means I haven’t had time to write a second blog for today. I hope I have seen some Hen Harriers… …and some Pied Flys, Redstarts and Wood Warblers. But mostly Hen Harriers…
EU elections here I come – voting Green
It’s two weeks until the EU elections take place in the UK (and in the rest of the EU over the next few days). Will you vote Lib Dem, Labour, Conservative, UKIP or the Greens? The EU manifestos are a bit of a laugh – clearly none of the political parties is taking us, the…
A new video on vultures and diclofenac
I’ve touched on the vulture/diclofenac story here before – and asked you to express your opinion that this veterinary drug needs to be banned from use in the EU anywhere it might kill vultures. Here is a new video from the Vulture Conservation Foundation and BirdLife International. Once you get past the very irritating American…
The call of the other BBS
I inherited my ‘other’ BBS square a couple of years ago. I hope that choice of word wasn’t in bad taste as I don’t know whether the previous observer died, moved or gave up. But this is the third year I have counted birds here. It doesn’t feel like ‘my’ square – it feels like…
Failed twitch
You won’t catch me chasing after rare birds very often. I got that out of my system years ago. For me to leap in the car to see a bird it has to meet some strict criteria: not too far away, a bird I really want to see, and a bird I will enjoy seeing…
The call of the BBS
I survey two squares for the BTO/JNCC/RSPB Breeding Bird Survey, and for my own interest, and for you. I made the first visit to each of them for 2014 over the weekend. The first of ‘my’ squares is one that I have surveyed for the past nine years. It’s a one-kilometre square of farmland near…