Former RSPB conservation director Mark Avery evidently enjoys a bit of scrap.
Mark, who was guest at last year's AGM of Lincolnshire Bird Club, is using his blog (
http://markavery.info/blog/ ) to help in a campaign which is encouraging restaurants and others to boycott the presence of grouse on the menu.
His rationale is that predators such as endangered hen harriers are continuing to fall victim to moorland gamekeepers who are over-zealous in their determination to safeguard grouse stocks.
If grouse was no longer in demand for the dinner table, there would be less reason for wealthy syndicates to shoot them.
But are the campaigners right? Grouse are surely shot just as much for sport as for their meat, so the shooting would coninue - along with the persecution of hen harriers.
Incidentally, Mark's new book,
A Message From Martha. (about how the passenger pigeon became extinct) can be ordered via his blog page.