Dear Marc Bolland Just a recap really in case you are thinking of selling red grouse meat in your shops this year. Some things that have happened since your excellent decision not to see red grouse meat in your shops last year: I started shopping at M&S again governments, including the EU (and including the…
Category: BAN DRIVEN GROUSE SHOOTING
Access to information is missing
Sometimes I’m busy, and sometimes I let things slip, but I usually come back to them with terrier-like tenacity. Using the hopeless GOV.UK site I found it impossible to understand how I could discover whether open access land, such as that depicted on this sign in the Peak District, would be closed or open a…
Occupy the butts!
Henry and I were having a chat in a grouse butt in Perthshire the other day…as you do. A few minutes after this photograph was taken a lady passed us in a car with a Scottish Gamekeepers’ Association sticker on it. That reminds me – we must call in on them soon. But Henry and…
The media coverage of the Hen Harrier today
As predicted in my morning blog, the plight of the Hen Harrier has been given plenty of publicity in the coverage of the results of the national bird vote (won by the Robin). These are two examples that were easy to find – there will be others, no doubt. The Guardian quotes David Lindo and…
A great victory for the Hen Harrier
The Hen Harrier came a glorious ninth in the poll for our national bird – left fluttering in the wake of the Robin and a host of other species, but edging ahead of the Puffin (which must be gutted!). It’s enough to set us all off on a sky-dance! It was remarkable that the Hen…
What next?
There’s been an outpouring of frustration mixed with anger on social media, and in my head, over the fifth disappearance of a male Hen Harrier from the English uplands this year. Yesterday I was quite distracted whilst doing a BBS visit – I had to keep telling myself to concentrate and count the Carrion Crows!…
Mayhem
The fifth ‘disappearance’ of a male Hen Harrier from an active nest in England marks 2015 as ‘May mayhem’ year (see here and here). If five male Blackbirds disappeared from a small number of monitored nests it would be pretty odd, and Hen Harriers are designed to live a good deal longer than Blackbirds. A…
Being open
Members of the ‘Sodden 570’ at last year’s Hen Harrier Day event in the Upper Derwent Valley will recognise this area – we were getting soaked just off the left hand (western) side of the map on 10 August last year. The Countryside and Rights of Way Act provided open access to open ground (in…
Back soon? Not soon enough!
It’s now a month after the general election (remember the general election?), parliament has reassembled, and the Tory government hasn’t yet reopened the e-petition website. Maybe they’ve decided not to bother with them any more? Or maybe they are just incompetent. I’m quite keen to launch an e-petition to ban driven grouse shooting (with a…
Natural England bleats
Natural England roused itself from slumber yesterday, perhaps after reading this blog (you never know – they do, you know!), and uttered a few weak words on the disappearance of a male Hen Harrier from Geltsdale in Cumbria. It’s good to know that Natural England is ‘very concerned’ about the state of a species on…