Busy Busy!

Well its nearly the end of June and I haven't had chance to sit down and write on the blog although I have been keeping my finger on the raptor pulse, mainly out in the field. June is when all the young birds of prey are growing up and getting active so I've been very busy helping friends with monitoring and ringing young.

But whats going on around the world with birds of prey, well I have been reading some fantastic interviews from the African raptor web page including a fascinating in depth interview with Simon Thomsett about his extenxsive studies covering the Crowned Eagle its so meaty its in 3 sections but well worth a read. I read part one and many of Simons views and opinions rang several bell's for the future of raptor conservation and human impacts. Check out part one below

  http://www.africanraptors.org/simon-thomsett-on-the-african-crowned-eagle-part-1/

Sadly I have also read that the oldest breeding Osprey found in Scotland has failed to hatch any young this year, questions have been linked  to the birds age as to why the eggs were infertile but we must not forget that we have had some extremely harsh weather during the breeding season and Roy Dennis a well known Osprey expert has also commented on the hard weather Ospreys have had in Scotland with nest's even being blown out of tree's.

I have a couple of new web pages that I have come across, they might not be new to some readers but I will add them to the Web site links page. The first one is a South African based vulture conservation group working towards raising awareness about the struggle African vultures are currently facing, it has several fantastic downloads including information posters and childrens activitties take a look at http://www.vultureconservation.co.za/
The second website is another page that interest me as it relates to the the illegal trade in wildlife and animals, I have always been interested to find out more about the illegal trapping and trading of birds of prey around the world and whether anything is done about it. I have several pictures that have been sent to me showing birds being sold on the side of streets and in markets they make grim viewing but what is being done about it? The website is http://www.traffic.org/.

I have just started looking into the IUCN Red List in conjunction with Birdlife International on the state of birds of prey in the world. I'm interested to find out how upto date these status's are and what is being done to find out about the status of our more unheard of species, I have already learnt some species I had never really come across and one thing has become clear that if your an endemic species you are usually in trouble. I will publish a table in due course and anything else I manage to find out through this blog page.