Whoever is behind the ill-conceived attack on the RSPB fronted by a silent and absent ex-cricketer, a silent baronet and a silent ex-nature conservationist, and carried into the pages of the Mail on Sunday (did you know that the Daily Mail’s editor, Paul Dacre, owns a grouse moor?), I believe they have miscalculated. They have misconstrued…
Tag: RSPB
More vegetables please and less Beefy
I’m vegetarian four days a week and so I get a bit annoyed if I have beefy rammed down my throat all the time. It’s a bit unclear what the beef is that Ian Botham has with the RSPB except for the fact that they exist. He thinks they should tell the world that they…
Saturday
This is the first time for years and years the RSPB AGM has been held away from London (and it’s back in London next year). The ICC in Birmingham was a short walk from New Street station and a perfectly good venue. As I arrived I remembered that I had been here before – for…
Hen Harriers in the RSPB magazine
I was beginning to wonder whether my ‘A magazine formerly known as BIRDS‘ had gone astray. My mum had received hers, my daughter had hers, the lady in the Post Office mentioned that she had had hers too. I know the RSPB was founded by a group of women but I don’t remember the magazine…
Hope continues to rise
Every picture tells a story – and this one tells a big story. This graph shows the farmland bird index at the RSPB’s Hope Farm and in England as a whole. It shows a slow, steady decline in England altogether (blue line) but a massive overall rise (red line) at Hope Farm. Read more about…
Visit to Aberdeen
It was great fun talking to a packed lecture theatre in the Zoology Department in Aberdeen about Passenger Pigeons and Hen Harriers on Tuesday evening. We also all had the opportunity to look at a stuffed Passenger Pigeon in the adjacent museum – which I always find is a rather poignant experience. I was talking…
Vote for Bob (again)
Some people are being a bit sniffy about Bob the squirrel – being so open-minded I can see why, and I can see why they are wrong (in my humble opinion – as people say when they are anything but humble). The RSPB is using Bob to stand for nature and will simply use the…
In flight
I’m getting on a plane today for the first time since June 2013. I’m heading up to Aberdeen to give a talk about Passenger Pigeons (and a little bit about Hen Harriers) to the Aberdeen RSPB Group on their 40th anniversary. I’m looking forward to seeing Aberdeen again. It must be almost exactly 34 years…
More Crex than ever – well, for 45 years.
The Corncrake is not the most charismatic bird in the world – a Moorhen-like bird that lives in long grass, has a rasping ‘song’ (crex! crex!) which it mostly sings at night and looks like it finds getting airborne difficult, but which flies to the other side of the Sahara every year (and back of…
Wuthering Moors 47
Walshaw Moor Estate has had its planning application refused. The reasons are quite interesting given the history of the site. I see that the Bronte Society and the RSPB objected – clearly successfully – good for them in my opinion! in fact there were 41 objections and one letter of support. Where were Natural England…