Research focuses on rare New Forest woodcock

Volunteers examining the behaviour of rare woodcocks in the New Forest have been awarded grants of more than £12,000 from the park’s sustainable development fund to undertake research.

The New Forest Woodcock Group aims to increase understanding of the species and explore the reasons behind its national decline.

Glorious Twelfth opens British game season

Probably the most important date in the shooting man’s diary is 12 August. The date – known as the Glorious Twelfth in sporting circles – marks the beginning of the game season in Britain.

Across the country, sporting estates buzz with excitement as shooters, keepers, beaters and dogs prepare for the big day.

With luck, the moors and uplands will be looking their best, with heather flowering in its full purple glory and skylarks in full song under a blue, high summer sky.

Holland: below the waterline in Flevoland

They’ve got sea eagles down there now,’ says pilot Joop Peek, indicating a patch of rough grassland and trees adjoining Holland’s Markermeer lake, near Amsterdam.

‘You wouldn’t want one of those to hit the aircraft,’ he adds, jovially, ‘they’re the size of a door. And they can easily fly up as high as we are now.’

We’re looking down, slightly nervously now in my case, on the nature reserve of Oostvaardersplassen. From 400 metres, we can see a group of wild Konik ponies moving en masse across a patch of mottled green grass – providing a brief glimpse of ancient Europe on one of its newest expanses of land.

Five minutes earlier we had taken off from the airfield at Lelystad, from which you climb for 13 metres before reaching sea level. This whole region, Flevoland, was reclaimed from the sea in the 1950s and 1960s.