Capercaillie numbers have been falling for decades and despite repeated attempts to boost the population it can now only be found in the Highlands. Experts from the Game & Wildlife Conservation Trust (GWCT) said that when surveys started in 1991, capercaillie numbered approximately 2,200 birds, spread from Argyll and Perthshire to the south and west […]
Tag: Carrion Crow
Guess who’s coming to dinner? Roadkill placed on ‘sky tables’ to lure rare birds of prey
When a bearded vulture last year graced the UK with its presence, awed birdwatchers from across the country gathered in the Derbyshire moors in the hope of catching a glance. Now conservationists are hoping to make sightings of these magnificent birds more frequent by adding raw nature back into the countryside. No one wants to […]
Scientists Studying Crows Get Big Surprise –They’re So Smart They Understand the Concept of Zero
Building on substantial evidence of crow consciousness, a German university has proven some crows can learn to recognize ‘zero’ as a counting unit. While that sounds ridiculous, zero is not nothing, rather it’s one of the most complex mathematical concepts devised—that something can and should represent nothing, not only as the base value, but as […]
Rook at this mess: French park trains crows to pick up litter
Six crows trained to pick up cigarette ends and rubbish will be put to work next week at a French historical theme park, according to its president. “The goal is not just to clear up, because the visitors are generally careful to keep things clean” but also to show that “nature itself can teach us […]
Winter Birds
We really don’t have too much snow down here on the Devon/Cornwall border, so a covering of the white stuff was a bit of a novelty on two separate weeks in March. I could have panicked and ran around with my long lens and end up photographing nothing at all or just stay in the […]
RSPB accused of hypocrisy for killing hundreds of birds on its reserves
The RSPB has admitted killing hundreds of birds on its reserves, prompting an accusation of “extraordinary hypocrisy” from the Countryside Alliance. The RSPB recently criticised the licenced destruction of buzzard eggs and nests to protect a pheasant shoot and said a cull of lesser black-backed gulls should be halted. But on Thursday the charity revealed […]