Otmoor looking and sounding good!

I visited the RSPB nature reserve at Otmoor yesterday.  It was great! As we parked, we could hear lots of Whitethroats singing, some of them performing song flights over the car park, and Cuckoos singing in the distance too.  This was a promising start and the promise was kept. We were hardly out of earshot…

Guest blog – A very RSPB protest by Danny Heptinstall

  Danny Heptinstall is a 24 year old birder, naturalist and aspiring conservationist currently researching Red Kites at the University of Aberdeen (and recent Guest Blogger here). He attended the public protest in Inverness on Saturday afternoon about the recent poisoning incident in Ross-shire. You will already have read here (and here and here) about the…

Why isn’t this even bigger news?

The poisoning of 12 Red Kites and four buzzards in Ross-shire is shocking. See here, here, here, here and here. How long do we have to put up with this type of carnage? Red Kites by Don Macauley via wikimedia commons Buzzard by Andreas Trepte via wikimedia commons

Busy day

Yesterday was a busy day in a busy week. A consequence of giving a talk to the Hampshire Ornithological Society on 29 March is that, if you are me, over 300 people sing Happy Birthday! to you – which was highly embarrassing and very sweet of them. I had stayed with friends and I took…

Red Kites are normal now

Yesterday I took the train into London to meet the publishers of ‘A Message from Martha‘ for a chat. I added Great Spotted Woodpecker to my Wellingborough Station list but looked in vain for Red Kites.  It was a dull day but they are usually mooching around the valley in which Wellingborough Station and the…