Standing up for Nature
Day 2 is usually my favourite day but I’m not sure that will be the case this year. The ‘big’ race, the Champion Chase, doesn’t quicken the pulse in its usual manner this year. It’s not because Sprinter Sacre, the reigning champion is missing through injury (if that’s the right thing to call a heart…
The whole purpose of the Monday of Cheltenham week is to free one’s mind from real life and to concentrate on the total irrelevance of horses running around in circles (in the case of Cheltenham, anti-clockwise circles). So with this in mind I went for a walk early on Monday morning to relax and let…
I’m off to Cheltenham tomorrow for the first of four days racing at the Cheltenham Festival. Despite the deluges of much of the winter the ground has been drying out, as it always does these days at Cheltenham, and the going will probably be just on the soft side of good. But we’ll see how…
This interview with the Chief Executive of Natural England is interesting in a way. It illustrates the tensions of pleasing one’s current political masters and living up to the mission that NE has had handed down by Parliament. Which direction to face? What would you have liked to hear him say? Here are some questions…
Oscar writes: While in France last summer I spent a day at a nature reserve on the Somme Estuary. From one of the hides this Little Egret was fishing. It took a few attempts to get the right timing with the end, but eventually I got there. Nikon D300s, Nikon 600mm f4 AFS-II Mark…
Yet another county avifauna piggybacking on the back of the BTO/BWI/SOC Atlas? Of course, and how lucky we are to be deluged with such a large number of these excellent works. Some chap writes at the front of this book ‘Everyone, who has contributed to this splendid work, deserves the highest praise.’ and he is…
And this is a passage from Chapter 7 of ‘A Message from Martha‘: ‘If we continue laying waste to the diversity of life and the natural beauty of the planet then we are like vandals going through an art gallery with spray paint and Stanley knives. When we come out the other side, or…
This is the fourth blog today on the subject of burning of blanket bog (see here, here, and here). These were sparked (!) by the RSPB releasing data on the scale of the issue and calling for an end to the burning of blanket bog. There has been a little media coverage of this –…
The scale of burning of English blanket bogs revealed by the latest RSPB work is scary. There are 127 separate consents (mostly through HLS agreements – ie we taxpayers are paying for it too) for burning on blanket bogs. These affect these seven Special Areas of Conservation (SACs)(Border Mires, Kielder-Butterburn; Ingleborough Complex; Moor House –…
Following my blog ‘first’ thing this morning here is some more information on the damage that burning does to blanket bogs. Martin Harper’s blog today expands on the RSPB’s thinking about burning of blanket bog. More details of the RSPB’s complaint to the EU over the management (they clearly regard it as mis-management, as did…