Christine's walking & birds blog

We parked on Walbury Hill and wandered along a lane, across an extremely muddy field, through a small wood we'd never been in before and along the ridge back to the car park.

It was a short walk but it blew the cobwebs away, and the peregrine falcon was my first of the year.

And on the Isle of Mull it's certainly too early - confirmed by the website forargyll.com. Too early for the photo of the golden eagle taking a lamb (BBC website and several newspapers) to be this year's; so you have to wonder where and why the picture has been languishing since last spring.

I'd thought the bird was a white-tailed, but I suppose I can see now that it's a golden eagle. The photo and the sensationalised (and sometimes inaccurate) writing in the original article are a couple more nails in the raptor's coffin.

Instead of using our money to finance stupid re-introduction schemes in East Anglia, perhaps the RSPB should set up a fund to reimburse farmers who lose significant numbers of lambs to golden eagles. That way the species (of native stock, unlike the white-tailed) may survive, although it would still have to take its chances with the owners of grouse moors and their gamekeepers.