The disappearance of Hen Harrier ‘Highlander’ off the airwaves may be due to tag failure, though this isn’t yet certain, but a tagged adult female answering to the description of Highlander (brown with a white rump but with an aerial that kinks left) has been spotted in some of her earlier haunts. Good news! I…
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A303 to go underground – bring on the aurochs!
Today, the day after a proposal to ‘re-wild’ the landscape around Stonehenge was posted on this blog, the government finally announces its plan to place the A303 at Stonehenge in a tunnel. This announcement – if followed through – greatly increases the scope for large-scale habitat creation – and megafauna re-introductions – at the Stonehenge…
Time for tidal in the Severn Estuary?
The Hendry review is due to be published tomorrow and is expected to recommend the go-ahead for a tidal lagoon project in Swansea Bay. This has been the subject of a variety of posts on this blog: Guest blog – Time for tidal power by Sian John, 15 July 2016; NGO reaction to Swansea Bay…
Nature schooling
When Keith Betton interviewed the late, great Phil Hollom in Behind the Binoculars, Hollom said that when he was at school at Cockfosters in the 1920s he had looked out of the window during a school exam and seen a Red-backed Shrike. This would have been regarded as a mere distraction, though a pleasant one,…
Yellowstone
I visited Yellowstone NP in 2011 after I left the RSPB and headed off on a mind-cleansing road trip across the USA where I did a lot of thinking. But it wasn’t just thinking, it was an opportunity to see a lot of fabulous landscapes, meet some great people and see nature that I had…
Peregrina EnChantica and more
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If you came to the Rainham Marshes Hen Harrier Day you will certainly remember the choral delight of Peregrina EnChantica. Well they are performing again two weeks today, on 20 January, but they’ve got some less musically skilled accompanists in the shapes of David Lindo, Charlie Moores and myself – at least the music…
An interesting afternoon
I spent yesterday afternoon in a room with 13 others judging the Bird Photographer of the Year entries. Our wise decisions will be partly revealed at the end of this month and then fully revealed at the Bird Fair. I felt a bit of a fraud being on the panel as a ‘I don’t know…
Environmental Audit Committee report
This report is important and challenging to government. Brexit may mean Brexit but what does it mean for agriculture and environmental protection? Just as government did not have a plan for Brexit (somewhat understandable because government wasn’t in favour of it), Defra still does not have a plan for Brexit. The Secretary of State was…
Don’t panic, don’t panic!
The Hawk and Owl Trust is looking for a Crisis Management Strategist! The successful applicant will have a ball and chain which they can fit to the leg of the current Chair and a gag of an appropriate size. In between putting out fires that were started by the organisation’s Chair they will update their…
Nature in the media
Did you go back to work yesterday? Or maybe today? One of the aspects of being self-employed is that there is less of a hard line between work and play and so I was working over some of the mid-winter break and did a little bit of ‘work’ on almost every day of the last…