This brought a tear to my eye

Hi Mark, I have just read your recent blog on the Peak District and the National Trust, and I am afraid it has made me cry. I think they are partly tears of sorrow and partly of hope against hope that what you write about could be true. I love the Peak District. It is…

Bit of a round up

I’ll be at Housmans bookshop this evening at 7pm Fineshade Wood features in this week’s Private Eye the NFU voted to be pro Remain in the EU referendum the Defra Press Office has not got back to me with an answer on whether ministers sign off responses to e-petitions my MP has not yet got…

See you at Rainham Marshes on 6 August

RSPB will be hosting a Hen Harrier Day event at their Rainham Marshes nature reserve on Saturday 6 August (time TBC) organised by Birders Against Wildlife Crime and Mark Avery. Chris Packham will be speaking. Check back on the BAWC Hen Harrier Day website for more details from mid-May and on social media #HHDay2016. The…

Country strife from HoT

We all know that Philip Merricks loves the Hen Harrier as he has been photographed in London cuddling up to one, and so it comes as no surprise that he descibes the bird as ‘magnificent’ in his article in Country Life praising the feckless Defra Hen Harrier non-plan (Is this the glorious solution? 2 March,…

2015 – the Hen Harrier year in pictures

The conflict between driven grouse shooting and Hen Harriers like Henry (or rather, not very like Henry) is a real one.  Hen Harriers eat enough grouse seriously to reduce grouse bags when they are shot for fun.  Grouse shooting interests illegally kill enough Hen Harriers in the UK to reduce their population to c6-800 pairs…