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…
Tag: red kite
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…
Gardening leave
I don’t get out much these days – I spend much of the day sitting at a computer and writing. I’m not complaining – it’s what I want to do, but I am a bit deskbound. The other day I heard a bird call come through the window that was closed to keep the heat…
Every picture tells a story
I recently reviewed the magnum opus by Tim Sands (Wildlife in Trust) which chronicles the first 100 years of the Wildlife Trusts for BBC Wildlife magazine. I picked the book up again recently (which in itself is something of an achievement as it is very heavy) and made a rough note of the species illustrated…
Early Day Motion 603 – please help protect the National Wildlife Crime Unit
Red kites are ‘eating up lots of larks’ according to ‘real countryman’ Clive Aslet and our species has to intervene. But at least the Countryside Alliance admits, when faced with the evidence of an almost complete lack of breeding hen harriers in England, and Bowland Betty’s shooting in northern England, that the odd case of…
To do
This morning’s blog has attracted lots of comments – as raptor-related blogs almost always do. If you feel strongly about this issue then why not write to your MP about it. There is an excellent letter in the comments to this morning’s blog (by MK) to his (her? I suspect his) MP Alistair Burt (who…
Sunshine
On Monday the sun was shining and I suddenly thought – why not go and enjoy it? So I did. Summer sun means butterflies and I headed to Fermyn Woods to see if it might be third time lucky in looking for purple emperors. The long line of cars parked by the road on a…
Gone twitching – not really
At the weekend I went on a twitch, looking for a rare bird – except it is just a rarer bird rather than a really rare one. I realised that I didn’t see a spotted flycatcher last year, partly because I was looking at mountain bluebirds instead, and I hadn’t seen one yet this year…