With the grouse shooting season underway, David Lintern takes a look at the controversies surrounding the intensive management of grouse moors. About a week ago, on August 12th, the grouse season shooting started. Aside from the odd news piece and an article by campaigner Dr. Mark Avery a year ago, I don’t think it’s had much coverage on Walkhighlands, so I thought it might be timely (well, within about a week or so of being timely) to recap the issue. I’ll confess I’m late to the table on the subject. I’m not a birder, just a hillgoer. To be honest,…

Flying the nest is a big deal. It’s surely among the most momentous events in our lives. I remember doing it myself with a sense of both excitement and trepidation, wondering whether I would experience, as Edina in Absolutely Fabulous described it, ‘umbilical whiplash’ and catapult back home to my mum at the first sign of trouble. I didn’t, as it turned out, probably because I did it gradually at my own speed and I knew that I could, having fledged, return to the nest if I wanted to. Indeed I did just that for months at a time during…