And so The Times says farewell to Simon Barnes

Today sees the last of Simon Barnes’s pieces in The Times – a subject about which readers of this blog have expressed their opinions forcefully (see here and here). Simon writes two wildlife pieces today (and there is some sport going on in Glasgow apparently) – one about the wonders of Sea Eagles on Mull…

And now from AA to RSPB

No, not those nice people who fix your car by the side of the road, not those nice people who help you give up the booze, but those people, who sent me thousands of postcards disapproving, in no uncertain terms, of the RSPB’s position on culling Ruddy Ducks many years ago – Animal Aid. Animal…

Hen Harrier Day update

Not a great deal of news this week. We are ‘good to go’ for the event at Fairholmes Visitor Centre at 10am on 10 August.  This event is FULL – the car park is likely to be full to overflowing and there is no chance of extra capacity.  If you can come by bus, or…

Join the Hen Harrier ‘thunderclap’

‘Thunderclaps’ occur when lots of people sign up to the same message on social media and it is then automatically sent out to all their followers (on Twitter), friends (on Facebook) and ‘whatevers’ (on tumblr – sorry, I don’t have a clue about tumblr). The message for Hen Harrier Day is simply ‘We’re missing our…

A good week for the friends of the Hen Harrier

It’s difficult to keep up – there’s so much going on:   Severn Trent say ‘yes’ to Hen Harrier Day in Peak District. Hen Harrier Day in Peak District reaches capacity – any more attendees will jam the car parks… August Birdwatch has ‘Stop killing our Harriers’ on cover. M&S shelve plans to sell Red…

Does driven grouse shooting rely on criminal activity?

There are many reasons to be opposed to the intensive management of our uplands to provide high-cost days shooting.  But let us set aside the arguments on water quality, destruction of blanket blogs, carbon loss and the scale of legal killing of wildlife, and think only of the illegal killing of birds of prey –…

I felt I’d been lax

To cut a long story short I’ve just joined the League Against Cruel Sports as a member.  This is largely because they have supported Hen Harrier Day and our e-petition so helpfully. But there are some other reasons, too. First, I have got such a lot of abuse from people on Twitter over this e-petition…

What they say 10:

Bob Elliot, Head of Investigations at the RSPB, is the latest to be interviewed ahead of Hen Harrier Day.  His interview is available to hear on the BAWC soundcloud   ‘Without doubt there is widespread illegal persecution of Hen Harriers’ ‘If someone’s intent on killing them, then the chances of us being in the right…

This blog – 2 landmarks (of a sort)

The first post on this blog was on 21 April 2011, a few days before I left the RSPB. Today saw the 1500th blog post here, and, by chance, the 20,000th comment on that blog too. Early on, I told you what this blog would do, and I’m glad to see that I have held…