UK Hen Harrier Survey results

2016 saw a UK-wide Hen Harrier survey and the results are now out. The 2016 estimate of the Hen Harrier population for the UK is 545 pairs which is quite a lot less than the 2010 survey’s estimate (633 pairs) and an awful lot less than that for 2004 (749 pairs). However, it is worth…

Remarkable Birds – a new review

A review of Remarkable Birds, by Michael McCarthy, from Resurgence and Ecologist. Some extracts: I was particularly entranced by a moody, haunting vision of rooks rebuilding their nests in spring by the Russian 19th-century landscape artist Alexander Savrasov, and by the bold-faced osprey of his British contemporary Prideaux John Selby. Remarkable Birds goes beyond the…

Bee-eaters in Notts

It doesn’t look like a particularly interesting part of the world – but it is now! A gang of at least seven Bee-eaters have been found in rural Nottinghamshire, and the RSPB and CEMEX have set up, very rapidly, a viewing scheme. Good for them. I was the second viewer there this morning just after…

Donana fire

I spent c12 days in the Doñana area in late April/early May, with Ruth Miller, and we were researching a potential book – which we are now writing. And so it was even more interest and concern than usual that I have watched the news of the massive fire that has consumed large areas of…