Red-flanked Bluetail – a good bird for your local patch (although I’d quite like to see the 500 Corn Buntings). Golden Eagle poisoning from Raptor Persecution Scotland. Was it a Squacco? It’s a birdie – a dead one.
BLOG POSTS
Saturday cartoon by Ralph Underhill
January 2014 – very dry in NW Scotland – v wet everywhere else – Met Office. Dredging – would it have helped?
What is this nest?
I’m rubbish on nests. I have been asked what species of bird made this nest and I haven’t really got a clue! Please help me out so I can look clever… It’s about 8cm in diameter (just over 3″ in old money).
A ‘vile act of wanton vandalism’ by Labour councillors in Derby
The Derby City Council planning committee voted yesterday evening by a very narrow margin to approve its own application to destroy the Sanctuary Local Nature Reserve – a proposal that Chris Packham, rightly, described as a ‘vile act of wanton vandalism’. The voting was: Absent – 1 Labour councillor In favour – 5 Labour and…
2030 vision for the Somerset Levels
A ‘Vision’ of what the Somerset Levels and Moors might look like in 2030, intended to guide water and land management policies over the years ahead, has been agreed by a Task Force set up last year to address the area’s problems. The Task Force includes representatives of farming, conservation, local authorities and Government agencies. …
Breaking News: No Sanctuary for urban wildlife
This evening, the Planning Committee of Derby City Council voted 6:5 in favour of the planning application that is a ‘vile act of wanton vandalism’ despite 1009 responses of opposition and 642 in favour. See previous blogs here, here, here and here. I’d be interested to know the political allegiances of those voting each way….
Worst job in the world?
It used to be said that Home Secretary was the worst Ministerial job to have because you were so at the mercy of events. If someone breaks into Buck House and has a chat with the Queen one night then it’s your fault. Surely, the mantle has long since passed to the Sec of State…
Deselection
If I were looking for a couple of Tory MPs to deselect ahead of the next general election then Tim Yeo and Anne Mcintosh would not feature anywhere near the top of the list. Maybe I ought to come up with that list some time. It’s a bit of a coincidence, and a bit of…
Sanctuary LNR – tomorrow the council decides
Tomorrow evening Derby City Council’s Planning Committee will consider the planning application to destroy the Sanctuary Local Nature Reserve. The cyclists ran out of puff and amassed 642 responses in favour of the ‘vile act of wanton vandalism’ (in the words of Chris Packham) compared with 995 responses against the plan. Thank you to readers…
Forests one year on.
You must remember all that fuss about forests? We all fought to keep our forests didn’t we? Here is an update from FC England on the implementation plan. It’s not a document to quicken the pulse. When you eventually get to the bits about wildlife then Commitment 22 has an unhealthy obsession with pesky deer…