Every time I open a Tetra Pak I hope I am helping eagles. Coignafearn is an unusual Scottish estate, set at the end of the road west of Tomatin (Tom-aaaahhh-tin) and owned by the Tetra Pak heiress Sigrid Rausing. Her aim is to restore the ecology of the estate and she has a passion for…
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A Turtle Dove called Titan
Funnily enough, I saw my first Turtle Dove of the year yesterday morning, somewhere (I was lost actually) in deepest Suffolk. I was driving along a B-road (which, because this was Suffolk, felt like a C-road) and I was thinking about Turtle Doves and regretting the fact that I hadn’t seen one, when a Turtle…
Which way Henry? Which way?
Which way to go? Tomatin, which I had always thought was Tom-a-tin but is actually Tom-aaahhh-tin (according to Henry), has an excellent burger van by the A9 which does the very best bacon rolls. It’s called TasteBuds and the guy who runs it is very chatty – as well as providing very good bacon rolls….
Urban birding for the BTO
I took a leaf out of David Lindo’s book and went urban birding. Well, actually, it was the BTO House Martin survey and I had volunteered to visit lots of houses in Corby. Blackbird Road (off Dunnock Road) and near Robin Road, and with Jackdaw, Flycatcher, Fieldfare, Thrush, Nuthatch, Lapwing, Siskin, Magpie and Lark closes…
Looking forward to…
…speaking to the Surrey Bird Club on Friday evening at their meeting which starts at 1945 in East Horsley Village Hall. There will be copies of A Message from Martha …and even of Fighting for Birds and much…
Robert Gillmor MBE
I had missed this news until I saw it on Twitter just now – thanks to @StephenMoss_TV. Great news! There is nothing else that needs to be said.
New Chair of EAC
Huw Irranca-Davies, former Defra Minister and former shadow minister, was today elected as chair of the Environmental Audit Committee (following the stepping down at the last general election of the excellent Joan Walley). Huw, once voted 48th sexiest man in Wales (nowhere near as sexy as the Hen Harrier of course) follows a class act…
A place called Invercauld
Henry parked in a layby somewhere between the River Dee and the River Don – I believe that this may be part of the Invercauld Estate. This area seemed to have very few birds and the usual large rectangular patches were burned into the hills. It wasn’t very pretty and Henry looks a bit unimpressed…
African vultures plummet in numbers – new study shows
In a paper published today in the scientific journal Conservation Letters, scientists say African vultures are likely to qualify as ‘Critically Endangered’ under the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s global threat criteria. The study indicates that Africa’s vultures are declining at rates of between 70% and 97% over three generations; a time interval used…
Thirteen years old
I wrote a Guest Blog for my young friend Findlay Wilde – have a look at it. This is me at the age of thirteen holding a trophy that I and a companion had won in the Under -14 (but Over-12) age category in a schools competition run by WWT at Slimbridge. I was handed…