Month: May 2015

Henry is visiting Lartington, a small village in Teesdale in the northern Pennines.

To understand the significance of this location, please see Mark Avery’s blog here.

Mark has written to several London restaurants, all believed to sell grouse, to ask them about the provenance of the red grouse they serve and also what measures they’ve taken to ensure ‘their’ red grouse are from a sustainable source.

We’ve written to ten Scottish restaurants, three of which are Michelin-starred, all believed to sell grouse, to ask them the same questions.

We’ll publish their responses (or lack of) here in due course.

Henry made it up on to the Snilesworth Estate – miles and miles of open moorland ‘managed’ for driven grouse shooting.

Amazingly, he didn’t find any female hen harriers.

In fact he didn’t see a single raptor during his visit.

He did see a lot of grouse shooting butts though so he went over for a closer look:

He staged a mini ‘occupy the butts’ protest and wondered if this idea might take off – lots of people visiting grouse butts to have their photo taken. Perhaps a webpage will appear in the run up to this year’s Hen Harrier Day (Sunday 9th August) where all the photos could be displayed.

Before he left the moor, Henry and his minder left a present on top of the grouse butt for the local gamekeepers:

Wonder where he’ll be next week.

#HaveYouSeenHenry