May 5, 2022
Hawks, 1956. Written / illustrated by Chuck Ripper.
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Hawks, 1956. Written / illustrated by Chuck Ripper.
Here's one of the main characters!
Name: Tempest
Gender: Male
Alignment: Quill
Rank: Hunter
Lineage: Hawk
Bird half: Hen harrier (marsh hawk)
Cat half: Solid grey
Eye colour: Yellow
Description: Tempest is a forest griffin from the clan Quill. He has sleek, medium-length silver fur that is longer on his throat, tail and cheeks. He has yellow bird-legs and paw pads, and a yellow beak tipped with dark grey. He has curved black talons and the tips of his wings are a darker grey than the rest of his body.
He is unsure of himself and sometimes doubts his own judgement. He tries to be a skilled hunter, as he wants to impress his clan and family. He is good friends with Quetzal and Dill.
DeviantArt:
https://www.deviantart.com/skycatcherchris/gallery
Sunday August 12th is the ‘Glorious Twelfth’, the start of the grouse shooting season. But who are the landowners who own England’s vast grouse moors?
As Who Owns England has previously exposed, grouse moor estates cover an area of England the size of Greater London – some 550,000 acres – and are propped up by millions of pounds in public farm subsidies.
Now, for the first time, we’ve mapped the owners of around 100 grouse moor estates across England.
Even the Spectator calls owning a grouse moor “screamingly elitist” – and surprise, surprise, around half of England’s grouse moor estates turn out to be owned by the aristocracy and gentry, whilst the other half are owned by wealthy businessmen and women, City bankers, hedge fund managers, and Saudi princes.
Here’s the ten largest grouse moors by area, with their owners, and the farm subsidies their estates received from the taxpayer in 2016. They take up an area of 184,643 acres, received at least £3,229,407 [I personally think this is an underestimate], and are owned by 3 dukes, an earl, a lord, 4 capitalists, and the Sheikh of Dubai.
The fact that a tiny elite owns England’s grouse moor estates matters, because of the disproportionately large environmental impact of managing grouse moors. Grouse moor gamekeepers are responsible for the illegal persecution of hen harriers (we should have 300 pairs in the English uplands – it fell to 4 pairs in 2017), and for wiping out huge numbers of foxes, stoats and other natural predators of grouse.
Moreover, the slash-and-burn practices used to maintain grouse moors – burning heather, often on rare blanket bog – have been shown to dry out and degrade peat soils. This releases soil carbon, adding to global warming, and reducing the resilience of our uplands to the impacts of climate change: desiccated bogs mean worse wildfires when it’s hot (like Saddleworth Moor) and more flooding when it rains (like the flash floods that washed off Walshaw Moor in winter 2015, deluging Hebden Bridge).
Over Christmastime I’ve been reading Inglorious, which is a very good book about grouse moors by former RSPB conservation director Mark Avery. Not only are the grouse moors owned by the rich and powerful, their patrons are also the rich and powerful. Only around 10,000 people take part in driven grouse shooting every year, and they pay around £40 per bird they shoot. A party of 8 shooters on the Glorious 12th can pay around £35,000 to a grouse moor for a day’s shooting. A grouse moor can make around £120 on every brace (2 birds) shot by rich pricks. This makes concentrating unnaturally high numbers of grouse a requirement for gamekeepers, and has turned the Peak District into a deadzone for birds of prey.
A joint study between the RSPB and Game and Wildlife Conservation Trust (the ironically named gamekeepers’ association) at the Lindholm estate over the course of the 1990s found that the presence of birds of prey such as Hen Harriers and Peregrines made grouse hunting economically unviable. That’s not to say that these birds decimated the grouse population - they kept the population at a stable, more natural level and took the ‘shootable surplus’ that gamekeepers intended for their patrons.
Gamekeepers derived from that study that their actions against birds of prey were a necessary and rational business measure. What should be derived from that is driven grouse shooting is incompatible with the legal protections on birds of prey that have been in place since the 1950s and the maintenance of a healthy ecosystem of which birds of prey are a key part. What is a bigger priority? The right of 10,000 rich people to dominate half a million acres of upland countryside to shoot half a million grouse, for which the illegal killing of birds of prey is a necessary part? Or actually following the law and putting an end to the persecution of birds of prey?
HEN HARRIERS could become extinct in Ireland within 25 years shocking new figures have revealed....
HEN HARRIERS could become extinct in Ireland within 25 years shocking new figures have revealed. The results of a fifth national survey of the birds, which was undertaken in 2022, were released this week, showing a maximum of just 106 breeding pairs remain in the country. That represents a decline in their numbers of one-third in just seven years since the last national survey. “The report provides a stark warning that under the current rate of decline, Hen Harriers may be extinct within 25 years and that urgent interventions are now needed if we are to stand any chance of saving Ireland’s Skydancer,” Birdwatch Ireland have said in a statement. One of Ireland’s rarest birds of prey, hen harriers are known as ‘skydancers’ for their impressive aerial acrobatics. Their ‘sky dance’ is a courtship display in which the male bird shows off extraordinary agility to a potential female partner. “It is one of the most magical natural spectacles in the Irish countryside, where the male rises to dizzying heights before suddenly plummeting towards the ground in a series of impressive twists, tumbles and turns while calling to the female, before pulling up just before impact with ground,” Birdwatch Ireland states. Their mid-air food pass is another example of the breed’s remarkable flexibility. “The male arrives to the nesting area with prey while calling to the female,” Birdwatch Ireland explained. “She flies up to meet the male and summersaults upside-down to collect the prey from him in mid-air.”
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Fortunately, they are doing well in the rest of their Eurasian territory.
Plans to take eggs from hen harrier nests to keep them safe from gamekeepers have been condemned by the RSPB as a callous nonsense that would accelerate the destruction of England’s precious uplands.
I think watching Tarka the Otter as a kid was the first weakening of the walls. I'm not sure I could watch it, now, having experienced otters at least three times in the last few months, and knowing they're bouncing back all over the country. It was a heart breaking film, truly shocking in its emotional intensity and it is seared on my memory sticks. The sound of the slavering hounds, the hunting trumpet... Watching a badger die in front of me about a year ago was the final knocking down of those walls, and now I find the contemplation of the suffering we inflict, as a species, on the other residents of our spinning rock almost unbearable. Sometimes I can't even read news stories about it, though I do try and force myself to do so to keep informed. Hopefully a story about hen harriers written with the same intensity as Tarka will help that species, too. Will affect a human or two in the same way Tarka did me. Will help us halt those humans who seem to have built their walls the highest. Who poison and shoot and destroy for the sake of cold hard cash.
Hen harrier breeding season most successful for 5 years
Hen harrier breeding season most successful for 5 years #raptors #birds #wildlife #conservation
Figures from the 2015 hen harrier breeding season show it is on track to be the most successful year since 2010.
Despite poor weather throughout the breeding season, there are 6 successful harrier nests fledging 18 new chicks. An additional seventh nest – which was close to fledging young – unfortunately failed late in the season, due to natural causes.
Hen harriers remain the most endangered…
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Five hen harriers have now disappeared from northern England
Article posted by Natural England:
The loss of another male hen harrier in the last few days, brings the total to 5 within recent weeks.
Natural England’s Hen Harrier Recovery Programme has been running for more than 10 years, and although we have recorded the disappearance of male birds in previous years, the loss of 5 within such a short period is unprecedented.
Whilst all 5 nests were on land…
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