Talking naturally

I really enjoyed being interviewed by Charlie Moores in the garden of a Luton pub, and I really enjoyed listening to the interview again now it is online. We discussed farmers, grouse moors, the BTO, how I got into the RSPB and how I got out of it and I was asked to disclose the identity of…

3.6 million reds under the bed!

I’m sure we all share the sentiments of Bob Neill, the CLG Minister, who attacked the National Trust for being a den of lefties. It has long been a worry to me that the National Trust has been such an anarchic and, frankly, revolutionary body, always championing underdogs, speaking out loudly on environmental issues and…

Raptor haters – an update

A reader of this blog contacted the Chair of the National Trust, Sir Simon Jenkins, over his apparent views on raptors as referred to in my blog on 9 July. And having been in contact with Sir Simon myself he writes ‘The piece was written before I had any link to the National Trust and certainly now…

Mad Max again

Good to see that the RSPB has had a response to Max Hastings’s article of last week published in the Financial Times, a rather moderately worded response given the poor nature of the original article.  It is always a bit of a lottery whether newspapers publish responses or not. It’s frustrating if errors go unchallenged…

Reach for the round up!

Sparrow Survival, a wholly mythical NGO, reacted calmly to the news revealed in the erudite Sun ‘newspaper’ that one whole blue tit was eaten by a carnivorous plant, with the following statement: ‘We love plants but they’ll all have to die.  This is proof-positive that plants are the cause of all songbird declines and they’ll just…