May

Our fencing trial started in 2016. In 2015 and 2016, Curlew Country monitored over 30 nests, and no chicks fledged from any of them. Each year only three nests got beyond egg stage to hatch chicks.

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.

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.

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

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.

Countryside Correspondent Harry Shukman failed to mention that the scientific paper he was referring to actually found that any pressure to illegally kill predators was both rare and resisted by gamekeepers.