An Oxford-led academic study has claimed a staggering 260,000 animals are killed in Scotland every year to protect the grouse population for shooting on country estates. They said the practice of using traps to cull predators on Scottish moors causes “tremendous, unjustifiable suffering” to creatures and must be fully banned. Animals targeted include foxes, weasels, […]
Tag: Meadow Pipit
‘Landscape of fear’: what a mass of rotting reindeer carcasses taught scientists
In August 2016, a park ranger stumbled upon 323 dead wild tundra reindeer in Norway’s remote Hardangervidda plateau. They had been killed in a freak lightning event. But instead of removing the carcasses, the park decided to leave them where they were, allowing nature to take its course – and scientists to study this island […]
Spoonbills at Cley
We headed to Cley this morning quickly ticking the five Temminck’s Stints before moving on to the Eastbank where we found another year tick with nine Little Terns sitting on Arnold’s Marsh. A Little Stint was reported but we failed to find it. Back in the car and we noticed four Spoonbill flying over Walsey […]
Pennington Marsh – 29th February
On a beautiful spring like morning, I dropped Tobias off for his last day at school before the Easter holidays and spent a couple of hours at Pennington Marsh. At the corner of Lower Pennington Lane I had a coffee and watched the Lapwing displaying and listened to the Sky Lark but other than small […]
Still waiting
Despite afternoon temperatures reaching +6C, overnight frosts and thick snow and ice means that there are very few signs of spring. Apart from a couple of scouts, finches and thrushes have yet to arrive and that is no surprise as there would be no food for them to find. It is still a long way […]
Quiet morning at Minsmere
At the crack of dawn we’re walking the north bushes at Minsmere only to find a few Brambling and a Bullfinch for our effort. An Otter and four Red Deer showed as we walked the north wall and lot’s of Beardies pinged all around but despite the calm didn’t show that well. On the wader […]
Dunlin
I’ve seen a few pictures recently on Facebook of Bluethroats in gardens so concluded that the passage is peaking and set off to Fornebu this morning with high hopes of gaining good views (and my first sighting this autumn) of one of my favourite birds. My hopes were not to be fulfilled with there continuing […]
Europe faces ‘biodiversity oblivion’ after collapse in French birds, experts warn
The “catastrophic” decline in French farmland birds signals a wider biodiversity crisis in Europe which ultimately imperils all humans, leading scientists have told the Guardian. A dramatic fall in farmland birds such as skylarks, whitethroats and ortolan bunting in France was revealed by two studies this week, with the spread of neonicotinoid pesticides – and […]