BLOG POSTS
Most unfairly ignored UK bird?
What is the UK’s most unfairly ignored bird? Well according to you, and your votes, it is the Stock Dove (and I agree with you)! This wasn’t the most popular poll on this blog, but nearly 150 of you responded and this was the result: Stock Dove – 33% Little Grebe – 21% Reed…
Guest Blog – No country for birds? by Peter Rafferty
Peter Rafferty is a poet and sometime geomorphologist, and possibly for something done in a past life, a Carlisle United season ticket holder who has even stood, well sat, in the away end at Nene Park. He is also one of the translators for the LIPU UK English newsletter. E L’upupa piano…
Death toll rises in Ross-shire case
That’s right – 14 Red Kites. This case shows the power of poisons and the vulnerability of raptors that will feed on carrion. You don’t need many people to be putting poisons out in the countryside to make a hole in raptor populations. I saw…
Wuthering Moors 45
This is NE’s response to my FoI/EIR request of 10 March. The answer to Qu4a confirms the ongoing scale of the burning of blanket bog in the English uplands and the fact that it has been consented by NE. The answer to Qu 5 seems rather evasive to me. Qu10 – that’s a lot of…
If song were solid…
It was the snails that got me thinking… On my walks at Stanwick Lakes, at least on those fairly early in the morning, I am sometimes struck by the trails of snails, and the occasional slug, across the gritty tracks. Although almost all the molluscs are departed one can see where they have been on…
But me no buts
I haven’t seen many butterflies yet this year – a few Peacocks, lots of lovely Brimstones and some very welcome Small Tortoiseshells. But I am keeping my fingers crossed for a sunny, warm summer with lots of butterflies on the wing. Last year, do you remember?, consisted of a grotty spring and then a fine…
Spring – time for the British to kill some raptors
As well as those dozen dead Red Kites and four Buzzards in Ross-shire there has been a poisoned Peregrine found in southern Scotland and a Buzzard trapped in the Peak District. What is it with some land managers in this country? It’s spring, time to kill off some wildlife. At least these examples have come…
Malmesbury revisited
The last time I was in Malmesbury there was a Fieldfare looking over the building site; this time there was a Chiffchaff. Whether the Chiffchaff’s song was celebrating the activity on the site of what will be a new Waitrose store is difficult to know, but there was certainly a lot going on with around…
FoI request to Defra
Dear Defra Did a Minister see and approve the Defra response to John Armitage’s e-petition on the licensing of grouse moors? If so, which Minister?