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…

Bring in the bunting…

In amidst all that buzzard-bothering nonsense of the last couple of weeks an important restatement of the absolutely obvious was made: farmland birds have declined steeply and there is no obvious redemption in sight. The most recent science on the subject was a report produced from national bird monitoring schemes across Europe, including the UK,…

Fair enough Minister

On Monday I did an interview for the BBC Farming Today programme, with the NFU’s Guy Smith.  If you want to listen to that interview you can but you won’t learn anything new from it as the NFU is still in denial over the loss of farmland wildlife and the role that farming has played…

Casual but calculated anti-environmentalism

‘Government should switch its focus from bio-diversity and concentrate on farm productivity if it wants to make the most of British agriculture’s potential as an engine for growth‘  Peter Kendall, the President of the NFU,  said on Wednesday. Kendall continued with this most callous, calculated and casual statement ‘The point is we haven’t got a…

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…