We’re back in Scotland! I’m fairly sure Lanarkshire is in Scotland but I don’t know much about it. And it seems that Henry will be safe and sound – as far as driving is concerned anyway. There’s a bit of grouse moor in the background. Henry may have to go and have a look over…
Tag: grouse shooting
Did you just try to post a ‘two names’ comment here?
Comments Off on Did you just try to post a ‘two names’ comment here?
A little while ago (this evening) someone tried to post a very interesting comment on this blog. He named a couple of grouse moor managers and said a lot of interesting things. The comment might have been libellous – but a light edit might have made it non-libellous. I contacted the author of the comment…
What next?
There’s been an outpouring of frustration mixed with anger on social media, and in my head, over the fifth disappearance of a male Hen Harrier from the English uplands this year. Yesterday I was quite distracted whilst doing a BBS visit – I had to keep telling myself to concentrate and count the Carrion Crows!…
Mayhem
The fifth ‘disappearance’ of a male Hen Harrier from an active nest in England marks 2015 as ‘May mayhem’ year (see here and here). If five male Blackbirds disappeared from a small number of monitored nests it would be pretty odd, and Hen Harriers are designed to live a good deal longer than Blackbirds. A…
Being open
Members of the ‘Sodden 570’ at last year’s Hen Harrier Day event in the Upper Derwent Valley will recognise this area – we were getting soaked just off the left hand (western) side of the map on 10 August last year. The Countryside and Rights of Way Act provided open access to open ground (in…
Natural England bleats
Natural England roused itself from slumber yesterday, perhaps after reading this blog (you never know – they do, you know!), and uttered a few weak words on the disappearance of a male Hen Harrier from Geltsdale in Cumbria. It’s good to know that Natural England is ‘very concerned’ about the state of a species on…
Scottish Ornithologists (with an apostrophe)
Having drawn a blank with SLE we tried SOC – but they weren’t in either. Never mind, Henry likes the SOC very much. I was a bit worried about missing apostrophes but Henry said that missing ringtails were much more important. Why aren’t there more Hen Harriers on Scottish grouse moors? Well, I think we…
Henry visits SLE
Scottish Land and Estates is the equivalent of the Scotttish CLA. Henry went to visit them to ask whether they could put him in touch with any ringtails, but there was no-one in. Henry doesn’t really get weekends. So Henry had a look through the window but he couldn’t see any signs of life….
It’s good to be in Scotland
An advantage of being in Scotland is that the Torygraph up here didn’t have this non-story in it. The disadvantage was that it had some quotes by the Scottish Gamekeepers’ Association instead. I didn’t seem to have missed much. Apparently being an ex England captain is now an ecological qualification. At least Botham is described…
Crime and the Countryside Alliance
The Countryside Alliance is carrying out a survey of crime in the countryside. As you work through the survey you will eventually come to a section where they are particularly interested in wildlife crime, which I took to include illegal use of lead shot in killing wildfowl in England and Wales and loss of Hen…