Pay up, Countryside Alliance!

I have permission to use this image of a Red Grouse by Tim Melling.  The Countryside Alliance does not. Tim Melling is wondering where he should send his invoice please? He tells me that £500 would be an appropriate sum and that he’d like it to be a donation to Birders Against Wildlife Crime, perhaps…

Seriously rattled – and rightly

In a long rant the Countryside Alliance shows just how rattled it is by the challenges to driven grouse shooting.  It’s all the usual stuff, in fact it’s quite a useful refresher course in the Alliance’s lack of solid arguments on the subject. But it’s interesting to think about why the grouse shooting folk have…

Dara and Tweet of the Day

  Here is Dara McAnulty (centre) pictured with his brother Lorcan and sister Blathnaid, and some bloke off the telly. I’ve been watching Dara’s blog for months now, and I look at it every week for sure. And I follow him on Twitter too (@naturalistdara). This morning Dara was making his second appearance on Tweet…

Isle of Man Hen Harriers

Yesterday we learned that the UK Hen Harrier population in 2016 was lower than in the previous two comparable surveys (2004 and 2010) but slightly higher than in 1998 and 1988/89. In the Isle of Man, a self-governing Crown Dependency (which is not a part of the UK, nor subject to the Common Agricultural Policy…