We might as well call it the International Bird Fair – I spent a very large part of today talking to friends and colleagues from Spain and the USA. It was good to meet friends from the BirdLife International partner in Spain, SEO, again and other birders from various parts of Spain too. And the…
Tag: RSPB
Captive audience at RSPB Arne
Today I’ll be at the Bird Fair (come up and say hello – and perhaps buy a copy of Blogging for Nature from me) but last Thursday I was still on holiday in Dorset having not seen white-beaked dolphin and not seen Adonis blue butterfly. What would I not see next? Arne had already provided…
Quotas – has their time come?
Driven grouse shooting is not without its benefits to the economy and ecology of the uplands although we could argue for years (and have done!) over exactly what are those benefits. The trouble with it is that it is based on the illegal killing of several protected raptor species (most notably, but not exclusively, golden…
Coping with grouse shooting and coping with hen harriers
Given the scale of illegal killing of raptors associated with driven grouse shooting it would be fair enough, in my opinion, for conservation organisations to campaign for the abolition of grouse shooting – but none of them yet does. Instead, conservationists are putting their members’ money into trying to find a legal way out for…
Mad Max again
Good to see that the RSPB has had a response to Max Hastings’s article of last week published in the Financial Times, a rather moderately worded response given the poor nature of the original article. It is always a bit of a lottery whether newspapers publish responses or not. It’s frustrating if errors go unchallenged…
A slightly dull report
Yesterday’s blog considered an interesting report by gamekeepers about the state of the countryside and today’s blog is about a slightly dull report by the BTO, RSPB and the JNCC about the state of breeding bird populations in the countryside. Yesterday’s report was based on a questionnaire survey whereas this one is based on tens…
An interesting report
At the Game Fair – I said those couple of days could keep this blog going for ages – I picked up a report by the National Gamekeepers Organisation considering the state of nature on commercial shoots. It’s an interesting read. With the snappy title ‘Gamekeepers and Wildlife’ this report compiles information from a postal…
Something for the weekend sir?
I love farmers. Well, admittedly not all of them, but then I don’t love all birdwatchers, all RSPB members or all of anything – maybe all hen harriers? But I do love the fact that some farmers are doing a fantastic job with the help of my taxpayer’s money on their farms. We have come…
Brooks and badgers
Thinking about next week’s Game Fair at Blenheim, I remember a few years ago sitting next to the Telegraph columnist Charlie Brooks at lunch on the Friday. Mr Brooks had just recently written a piece slagging off the RSPB so we had a few things to chat about and the conversation roamed over the usual…
The raptor haters – Simon Jenkins
The raptor haters is an occasional series of articles on people who slag off birds of prey. Sir Simon Jenkins is an amazingly gifted writer and obviously a very clever man. I love the way he writes and I read his articles for pleasure as well as for education. Back in May 2008, when the…