River – a female Hen Harrier fledged in Bowland in 2018. Photo: RSPB The loss of yet another Hen Harrier is another nail in driven grouse shooting’s coffin. We don’t know much about River except she went to Yorkshire and disappeared on a driven grouse moor in the Nidderdale AONB. She was tagged in Bowland…
Tag: grouse moor
Another Hen Harrier disappears – River
RSPB press release: Hen harrier ‘River’ disappears in suspicious circumstances This is the ninth bird tagged last summer to vanish in similar circumstances Last transmission showed the bird on a driven grouse moor in North Yorkshire Police and the RSPB are concerned that the bird may have been illegally killed The police and the…
Guest blog – Progress in the Peak by Bob Berzins
Bob writes: I have a life long passion for the outdoors through rock climbing and fell running. A cancer scare in my thirties made me appreciate many things I simply hadn’t noticed before, from the smallest plants to the gap in the sky from a missing raptor. It’s all worth fighting for and that’s what…
At last!
Hooray! I’ve finally caught up with my local male Hen Harrier at Stanwick Lakes. Not even a tiny step for mankind, one giant leap for one bloke. Such a lot of fuss over a bird will seem pretty odd to many normal people, but perhaps less odd to many regular readers of this blog. Why…
Letchworth
There were nearly 60 people in the audience of the Hitchin and Letchworth RSPB group on Friday evening – and they were a very friendly and jolly lot. And some of them went away with signed copies of my books too. It’s often the questions that are the most interesting thing for me – because…
Wuthering Moors 79 – are these some new grouse butts?
Photo: taken on 31 December 2018 I hear that there is a lot of activity on Walshaw Moor these days – and also these nights. Locals have heard that there are some more grouse butts going in to the moor. No doubt Natural England would be aware and would have consented this activity if it…
2019 will be another bad year for driven grouse shooting.
2019 will be another bad year for driven grouse shooting. Here are some of the reasons: the long, long, long-awaited analysis of the NE Hen Harrier tagging data should be published soon. Getting these data published clearly hasn’t been as straightforward as the authors had hoped as back in mid-August they were hoping that the…
2018 – another terrible year for grouse shooters
Grouse shooting is still with us but its supporters must be counting the years. The ratchet of progress is irresistible and driven grouse shooting is doomed. 2018 brought its demise a bit closer and so will 2019. I’m looking forward to 2019. 2018 was the year when: there were very few Red Grouse available for…
Guest blog – The worst of times or the best of times? by Ian Parsons
These can be depressing times for wildlife lovers. Many of our wild bird and mammal populations are declining at an alarming rate, our Raptors are being systematically disappeared from parts of the countryside, our politicians don’t seem to care, the statutory bodies (overseen by those politicians) that are supposed to be protecting and enhancing our…
Back to that excellent RSPB raptor report
The report on raptor persecution in Scotland published by the RSPB last week deserves a wide readership. I’ve been looking at it again over the weekend. There is a good, and new, piece of interpretation on satellite-tagged Hen Harriers (p12). Of the 18 Hen Harriers that died, or which disappeared under mysterious circumstances (ie their…