Banning driven grouse shooting – a case example (or two?)

Today our e-petition passed 4600 signatures – thank you! On Friday the RSPB in Scotland issued this to the media: RSPB Scotland is calling for more sporting estates to take action to protect the country’s hen harriers during the breeding season. The conservation charity says grouse moor managers and gamekeepers must do more to prevent…

Oscar Dewhurst – gulls

Oscar writes: I’ve just got back to London after spending three weeks staying at RSPB Minsmere in Suffolk. It’s probably my favourite nature reserve in the UK so I was very pleased to be able to spend three weeks there, photographing almost every day. As I’m sure plenty of you will have seen on Springwatch,…

Is this pretty?

Heather burning is vitally important to grouse shooting.  Burning the heather on a rotational basis, every few years, creates a pattern of young and older heather.  The younger heather produces green vegetation that is eaten by Red Grouse whereas older heather provides more nesting cover.   This image from talented wildlife photographer Peter Cairns shows…

BBS second visit

I’m really quite fond of my Breeding Bird Survey square (I have two but there is one that I think of as ‘mine’ more than the other). It really doesn’t photograph that well – being a bog-standard bit of arable farmland – but still, I am fond of it. On Sunday morning I made my…

Everyone loves the Hen Harrier – don’t they?

The science suggests that there should be a lot more Hen Harriers in the UK uplands than there are at the moment. Let’s just take Scotland for the moment.  The science says there should be c1650 pairs (I have taken the central point of an estimate and then rounded it) in Scotland on the basis…