The July Birdwatch magazine

  The July Birdwatch magazine is now in the shops. My column is about lead ammunition and how Liz Truss’s last action as Environment Secretary was to slip out the government’s response to the lead ammunition report at the very moment that David Cameron was leaving Downing Street. Elsewhere in the magazine is an article…

St Aidan’s nature reserve

  I remember visiting St Aidan’s about 10 years ago – when it was a big hole in the ground which I was told would at some time in the future be full of birds. Well, I was keen to go and see whether this promise has been fulfilled – and it has! What an…

Wrong again!

  Should we repeal the Wildlife and Countryside Act? A great opportunity for Michael Gove to say ‘No way’ as he is sure to be invited to the limping-on Game Fair. He might want to point out that the WCA is a broad piece of legislation that covered a wide range of conservation and rural…

Spoonbills breeding in Yorkshire

Yesterday I visited Fairburn Ings and St Aidan’s (of which, more tomorrow) nature reserves in the Aire Valley. Where’s the Aire Valley? If you go up the A1, it’s on your left just after that clutch of cooling towers at Ferrybridge. Fairburn Ings is perhaps not the most promising sounding of locations with its Coal…