Mrs D and I have just returned home from a week in the Scottish highlands joining up with son Dan and his good wife Mary and their two young children Martha and Theo. We were based in Nethybridge which is in easy reach of all the wildlife hotspots. Although more of a family holiday I […]
It was mid-September in the western Corridor of the Serengeti. A bit early for most of the migrants, but there were a few early arrivals. The resident avian population in the Serengeti at this time of the year is diverse and would gladden any bird lover’s heart. There was also a wide variety of habitats […]
I am posting some images from recent trips to Leighton Moss and into Bowland. My main objective was to photograph purple heron and red grouse. My efforts were shown in earlier postings. At Leighton Moss whilst waiting for the heron to show a trip down to the Eric Morecambe hide was good for snipe. Four […]
On one of our evening game drives at the Amboseli National Park, we spotted a couple of Lion cubs sitting close to the road. There was not a single Lioness in sight. I guess most of them were on a hunt. The cubs looked hungry and listless, so we left them to mind their business […]
Recently I made a couple of trips into Bowland looking for some opportunities to photograph Red Grouse in amongst the purple heather. It didn’t quite work out as there was much activity from grouse shooters with guns and dogs. The large estates in Bowland are very busy at this time of the year with shooting […]
A purple heron has been present at Leighton Moss for a couple of weeks or so and as I had never seen one I was keen to add some images to my portfolio. Mike and I arrived at the Grizedale Hide where the heron had been showing well. We did see it but all too […]
After 150 years of being treated as a quaint rural pastime, grouse shooting is now under the microscope – unless it reforms it is doomed, and it may drag other country sports down with it. On Saturday, the start of the grouse shooting season, the social media hashtag #inglorious12th was trending, and a social media […]
Grouse moors are to blame for persecuting endangered birds of prey in the Scottish Highlands and Uplands, according to a wildlife crime expert. Ian Thomson, the head of investigations at the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds Scotland, said data from 77 birds of prey that had been satellite-tagged showed a direct correlation between […]
We had a very peaceful nights sleep in our tents beside Kholboolj Lake (45°20’12” N 100°49’36” E) and awoke to the sounds of Pallas’s Sandgrouse commuting to the lake for their morning watering. After breakfast beside the lake watching Pallas’s Sandgrouse come and go plus two Pallas’s Gull fly-by we packed the Land Cruiser’s and […]
Today was mainly a driving day 570km south from Ulaanbaatar to Dalanzadgad passing through the Gobi Desert with a few stops, mainly at lakes, en-route. The landscape was vast, stark and barren, mainly flat with a few rocky outcrops and dominated by gravel plains with sparse grass. The common birds here were Horned Lark, Asian […]
More than a quarter of UK birds, including the puffin, nightingale and curlew, require urgent conservation efforts to ensure their survival, according to a new report on the state of the UK’s birds. Since the last review in 2009, an additional 15 species of bird have been placed on the “red list”, a category that […]
Britain’s golden eagle population has soared to new heights, according to a new survey released on Wednesday. There are now more than 500 breeding pairs in the UK, up 15% and passing the threshold at which bird’s long-term future is thought viable. The huge raptors, which have a wingspan of 2m, have benefitted from fewer […]
England’s vast grouse shooting estates receive millions of pounds in public subsidies according to an investigation by Friends of the Earth. Thirty of the estates received £4m of taxpayer’s money between them in 2014, the year examined by the pressure group, including one owned by the Duke of Westminster, the richest landowner in Britain with […]
