One of our supporters has drawn our attention to this superb piece of writing by American novelist and columnist Jonathan Franzen. It’s about why birds matter and although many of the references are to New World species, the sentiments are universal.

Scott Marshall has written some notes from the field detailing some of his experiences during surveying early in the breeding season. Click here to read (Word doc).

Thanks to Sam Crofts for this overview of the work he’s been doing with Little Owls in the county… Being a keen birder and ringer when the opportunity to study Little Owls for my MSc thesis presented itself I jumped at the chance. Little Owls are a species exhibiting dramatic…

July 25, 1984 The air is heavy and still. It needs a thunderstorm. We pass by some old derelict farmhouse outbuildings and cut across two fields going over barely negotiable stiles. The track narrows and Coppett Hill ridge closes hard against the river Wye at this point. A herd of…

An update from Nat… On Sunday 7th January I headed out for a morning in the field with GRMG’s very own Yoda; Rob – as well as a few others involved in local raptor/bird monitoring. We arrived for 11.00 and watched through until around 14.00 – prime time for watching raptors…

GRMG are pleased to announce our next hosted talk. This is a ticketed event as usual, but on this occasion, tickets are FREE OF CHARGE. Guy Shorrock will be giving his talk “On the trail of Raptor Killers”. Guy has worked for the RSPB’s Investigations Team for 26 years and is…

Peregrine Falcons are fantastic birds and we are lucky in this county to be able to see them sometimes at close quarters. Cheltenham and Gloucester both have pairs right in the city and they can be seen easily.  Those birds are used to disturbance because life just goes on around them;  I…

Our spring 2017 newsletter has been sent out to subscribers. In this issue we have an update on wildlife crime in the county, information on sightings and surveys, a guest article about Ravens this breeding season and information about our exciting Goshawk colour-ringing project. You can download a copy here and…

As a monitoring group from time to time we, unfortunately, find ourselves dealing with persecution & disturbance of our birds of prey. As you may well know, the GRMG has a very close working relationship with Gloucestershire Police, the RSPB investigations team & Natural England. We are very pleased we…

Dave Pearce has extended his 5 year summary of the Peregrines at Christ Church to include the last two years i.e it now covers 7 years.  It also includes a few extra observations, details of ring letters and egg laying/hatching dates and additional prey items e.g. Sandwich Tern! You can download…