Chris Murphy has lived in Northern Ireland since arriving on the ferry from Liverpool in 1984 as the RSPB’s first, and last, Assistant Regional Officer. Together with his German wife, Doris, he’s known to shout HALT! when special places are threatened like the Belfast Harbour Pools and the Bog Meadows – once zoned for development,…
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A phenomenon – Stuart Housden
Stuart Housden (above, 9th from the left and sixth from the right) retires from the RSPB and I was glad to attend his farewell do in Edinburgh last week. I thought I was at the RSPB for quite a long time, 25 years, but Stuart was there for 10 years before I breezed in and…
Dr Coffey – do the right thing
Dr Therese Coffey is the junior minister in Defra and some time fairly soon will be asked to sign off a government response to Gavin Gamble’s e-petition to ban driven grouse shooting assuming that it passes 10,000 signatures (which it will). Dr Coffey closed the debate on grouse shooting almost a year ago in a…
How are we doing?
It’s less than two full weeks since Gavin Gamble launched his e-petition to ban driven grouse shooting. It’s doing pretty well and I’ve slipped back into checking the progress of an e-petition every few hours (or even more frequently!). 123,077 signatures, our last total, seems a very, very long way away – but then it…
Paul Leyland – Hairy-footed Flower Bee
Paul writes: One of my favourite signs of spring is the appearance of Anthophora plumipes, or the Hairy-footed Flower Bee to give it its friendlier English name. This is a solitary bee which nests in walls or chimney stacks, In Hunmanby, on the north east edge of the Yorkshire Wolds, they usually appear at…