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It’s now safe for all to subscribe to Birdwatch magazine – the best birders’ magazine in the UK – as I have written my last regular column after an unbroken 10-year stint. No longer might you turn the page and see my smiling and slightly sweaty face (from a photo taken at the Bird Fair…

Dear Mr Pursglove May I sincerely congratulate you on your appointment as a Parliamentary under Secretary of State to be shared between the Home Office and the Ministry of Justice. I guess you will spend quite a bit of time walking between the very ugly building in Petty France (it’s hideous from the outside isn’t…

It is difficult to feel very worked up about the reshuffle. It is a reshuffle of a pack of knaves and jokers. At DEFRA, George Eustice remains – I feel more favourable to Mr Eustice than do many. It’s not as though I can imagine myself ever voting for him but he has served a…

The partridge shooting season opened on 1 September for both our native Grey Partridge and the non-native Red-legged Partridge. Nearly 12 million RLPs are released normally for recreational shooting puposes which is a phenomenal number and would attract far more attention if it weren’t a figure swamped and dwarfed by the 51 million Pheasants that…

I like a good Guillemot and there are lots of reports of high numbers of them being seen close onshore along the east coast this year. There are concerns that there is something amiss with these birds. Last weekend, on the Ythan Estuary north of Aberdeen, there were lots of Guillemots in the estuary itself…