OIL-COVERED birds continue to be a problem at the Torrey Canyon quarry, the GSPCA has said.

THE GSPCA has asked islanders to be vigilant after 18 sick gulls were brought in over the weekend suffering from a mystery illness.

OIL will finish being cleared from the surface of the Torrey Canyon Quarry by this winter, the Public Services Department has announced.

POLICE have been called in to help the GSPCA after a man hanging dead magpies outside his house ordered the animal welfare staff off his land yesterday morning.

AFTER numerous complaints from islanders about dead magpies hanging from trees at a Castel property, the GSPCA plans to do all it can to investigate.

THE hoopoe is one of the most exciting spring visitors to the islands.Stunning lookers, easy to identify and with a preference for well-cropped grass, their appearance in March and April always gets my telephone ringing.

It has a bus driven by a puffin, an upside-down lighthouse, 80,000 guillemots and a colony of golden hares that refuse to conform. Tim Earl takes us to Rathlin, the island where even Prince Edward found that the rules are a bit different…

THE Bailiwick’s most famous bird has been reunited with his owner.

PANDEMONIUM is not a word normally associated with cemeteries but one we visited in Estonia was certainly a place of ‘wild and noisy disorder’.

A SONG thrush is singing despite the heavy frost which has coated fields around the upper parishes as I write this feature.