Last week I was, kind of, on holiday in mostly sunny Yorkshire. It was good fun. It started with the film premiere in Hebden Bridge which was very enjoyable (I know how to let my hair down when on holiday!). Sunday – a boat trip out from Bridlington on the Yorkshire Belle – Arctic, Great…
Tag: hen harrier
Moorland Imbalance (6)
I’ve enjoyed the response of the GWCT to my criticisms of their little booklet: The Moorland Balance, Moorland Imbalance (1), Moorland Imbalance (2), Moorland Imbalance (3), Moorland Imbalance (4) and Moorland Imbalance (5). Their little booklet would be better entitled the Bluffer’s Guide to Moorland Imbalance. And I’m sure we will hear some of the…
Those NE Hen Harrier data
Even with the minimal amount of data disclosed by NE on their Hen Harrier study, it’s possible to start making some initial explorations of the data. Here are some initial thoughts which must be accompanied by the massive caveat that this is based on a few minutes playing around, and away from my home computer,…
Guest blog – Can Lebanon control Illegal Hunting? by James Hogg
James (@JWTHogg) writes: I grew up on a farm on the edge of the North York Moors and have always been interested by nature and always wanted to be able to put a name to everything. Over the years this has grown to a love of birds and luckily circumstances have allowed me to travel…
The Moorland Imbalance (5)
In their little booklet, the GWCT address five areas that they say are commonly-heard criticisms of driven grouse shooting. This week I’ll deal with each of them. GWCT say that a commonly-heard criticism is that ‘Heather burning on grouse moors increases flooding’ and attempt to sidestep this in the same way that they attempted to…
Another amazing Hen Harrier image from Gordon Yates
Just superb! A superb image of superb birds. Who’d want to kill these? And it reminded me of ‘Ginger Rogers did everything Fred Astaire did, except backwards and in high heels.’.
The Moorland Imbalance (3)
In their little booklet, the GWCT address five areas that they say are commonly-heard criticisms of driven grouse shooting. This week I’ll deal with each of them. The GWCT correctly identify this as an area of criticism ‘There is illegal persecution of raptors by grouse moor keepers‘ but go on to use the ‘few bad…
Book review – The Moorland Balance by GWCT
I bought this slim volume to see whether there was anything new in it. It’s a fascinating read, as much for what it neglects as for what it says. For £8.95 (+P&P) you don’t get many words – 56 pages including lots of decent photographs, a list of references, an advert for the GWCT…
Captions?
Michael Gove: the Hen Harrier badge? Someone called Amanda gave it to me. She said they keep falling out of the sky outside her kitchen window. Seemed a bit crazy to me. Michael: will you stop going on about Hen Harriers? Michael: I never mentioned them actually.
Meanwhile in Scotland…
DEFRA is in denial over the ills of driven grouse shooting – they haven’t even made it to base camp yet and admitted that wildlife crime is out of control on English grouse moors. Without accepting the problem, and without accepting it as their problem, we can’t expect any action from the grouse shooter’s moll…