You have been warned…

Today, until midnight, is the last chance to buy the new Bird Atlas of Britain and Ireland at a reduced price.  I’m looking forward to my copy and will review it here some time – but you will definitely want your own copy because it will be a fascinating read.  Click here to avail yourself…

Wuthering Moors 31

Blogs entitled ‘Wuthering Moors’ form a series of articles about the Walshaw Moor Estate and its relationship with Natural England and Defra. Regular readers of this blog may remember that I submitted a request for information to Defra about their response to the RSPB complaint to Europe over the Walshaw Moor affair. I received no…

Read me

The April edition of Wild Travel (with a cute tree frog on the cover) will soon be replaced by the May one (with the rhinos (one of which is quite cute) on the cover).  I really enjoy writing for Wild Travel as I get to write about biology without any politics in it, and, I…

Round up – but not Monsanto’s

Big beach clean up – the Marine Conservation Society are having a Big Beach Clean Up next week.  I’ll be fighting litter on the beaches of Northants,  don’t you worry! Pond conservation – I’ve heard lots of people saying that the cold weather has affected the laying of frogs and toads in their ponds.  I…

Well done Hawk and Owl Trust!

The Hawk and Owl Trust are throwing their support behind the e-petition on the licensing of grouse moors and gamekeepers.  Well done! Let’s see what other bird conservation organisations do… But you can sign up here – it’s going well, so far.

Raptors

1.  The Bowland Betty story from the BBC – well worth a look. Nice to see Tim Melling, Jude Lane, Stephen Murphy, Paul Irving, Des Thompson and others being so sensible. Martin Gillibrand, on the other hand, speaking for the Moorland Association, just looks foolish – have a look.  It is difficult to see why…

National Trust High Peak consultation

Rumour has it that the NT are under considerable pressure from shooting interests to back down from their much-welcomed and much-heralded proposed position on grouse shooting, heather burning and raptor persecution in the High Peak. I hope the rumours are wrong – they often are. The National Trust doesn’t currently have much to shout about…

Why raptor persecution is different

There has been a little burst of correspondence in The Independent over gamekeepers (and raptor persecution)(here, here, here).  I note that one of the correspondents, Reece Fowler, crops up in quite a lot of places (including this blog) saying how nice gamekeepers are and how misunderstood (see here, here, here). I thought that Mr Fowler’s…