In the June issue of British Birds – which has a lovely, vicious sparrowhawk on its cover, I was struck by the juxtaposition of two papers. One was about lesser-spotted woodpeckers and the other about Dartford warblers in the Thames Basin heathlands of Surrey. Each was an interesting and valuable record of what we know,…
Tag: buzzard
Let’s hear it for the buzzard – and the osprey
I fled Scotland a day early and am now back home – the weather drove me away. I did consider turning up at the Scottish Game Fair on Friday, but standing around in the rain, in a soggy field full of people moaning about buzzards didn’t really appeal to me. I see they will get…
Late bits
Apologies, to the two three people who might notice, that this blog is ‘late’ this morning – I went out to listen for corncrakes at the Nene Washes yesterday evening and so was home late – no corncrakes. In a week when the government made a welcome U-turn on buzzard control (which was even mentioned…
Buzzards – where next?
Yesterday Defra did a U-turn on their proposals to investigate buzzard control for the benefit of pheasants. It’s not easy for governments to do U-turns, although this one is getting the hang of it, and we should thank Defra Minister, Richard Benyon for his re-think. Thank you! The RSPB did a good job, after being…
Ramblings
It was my birthday on Thursday and I was in my car for much of the day so it reminded me of the USA trip to which I was looking forward (rightly) this time last year. Driving through southern England is a bit different from driving on the open roads of much of the USA…