Blogs

Flaming June, high summer, a time of long days, singing birds and sweet hedgerow scents. Fortunately, one of these scents can be bottled for the rest of the year: the elderflower.

Don't miss your chance to win a drive on 4 outstanding shoots in Essex for a team of 9 guns.

Although we are no longer tagging new woodcock as part of the Woodcock Watch project, some of the existing tagged birds continue to transmit. One such woodcock is Fonthill Abbie II who was caught in Wiltshire in 2016.

We respond to a recent piece in the Yorkshire Post  describing the efforts being made to save water voles in the North York Moors National Park.

For a fruit and vegetable gardener like me, grey squirrels are not welcome, and I do not much care for them pinching my bird nuts either. Fortunately, grey squirrels are pretty easy to trap, at this time of year, when natural food is scarce.

We respond to a recent piece in The Guardian, in which the RSPB claim to have been flooded with reports of wildlife crime since the lockdown began.

The Uplands team are pleased to deliver some new research. Please see below abstracts from two of our published papers from this year.

Following government advice issued this week, coronavirus restrictions for England have been eased somewhat from 13 May.

The woodcock breeding season will now be well underway. Male woodcock will be roding all across the country and most females will be incubating. Some females will already have chicks, especially given the relatively mild start to the spring. Normally, by mid-April, we are busy with spring fieldwork but under current coronavirus restrictions, none of our usual work can continue.

Curlew Country, which launches its webcam programme once again this week, has done an amazing job in getting boots on the ground – practical, hands-on working with farmers and land managers – to recover these much-loved birds that have almost disappeared from our countryside.