We are within days of the summer solstice and I haven’t had my spring yet! There’s plenty of time for there to be a baking hot summer but I am not necessarily expecting it. And it’s turning out to be a funny old spring/summer.
For a start, England have played two games of football and drawn with France and beaten Sweden! Amazing! This is a sunnier outcome than we have come to expect in recent tournaments.
Summer is already over as Chris is heading back to Africa. Who’s Chris? Come on, please try to keep up with the BTO cuckoo tracking study! This study may redefine the old ditty to: ‘Chris doesn’t come in April, in fact he comes in May, no change of tune in the middle of June he’s already flown away.‘. The version of this that I learned as a child was ‘Cuckoo comes in April, sings his song in May, changes tune in the middle of June and then he flies away‘ but I see that there are other slightly different versions (see here, here, here, here).
It has taken me a week to get over the shock of the front page headline of last week’s Sunday Express, written by the tabloid twitcher himself, Stuart Winter. ‘Queen saves countryside’ seemed about as shocking as ‘Queen saves penalty in Euro Final’. The Queen has a strong interest in declining songbirds.
I smiled at the link made here by the RSPB between harming and farming – where have you heard that before…..?
What can we expect next in this strange season? England lose to Ukraine – three own goals from Rooney? Prince Philip gives up pheasant shooting as an unsustainable country sport? The NFU come out against biofuels? Cuckoos demand overwinter accommodation at Thetford as their cut of the action? World leaders go cuckoo in Rio and put world on road to sustainability?
[registration_form]
There is something we could do in the Queen’s name for the Diamond Jubilee that would be on a completely and radical;ly different scale: there is still time, as Martin Harper of RSPB put it so well to ‘ rededicate our National Forests to the nation’ – simply to confirm, legally, that the Forestry Commission forests belong to all of us, forever, not to a Secretary of State who thinks they can sell them whenever they feel like. 600,000 acres of England’s countryside which has improved dramatically for wildlife and for people over the past 20 years – and should go on to deliver so much more from heathland to carbon reduction for the forward looking, imaginative and optimistic nation we should be celebrating in Jubilee year. The Independent Panel, of which Mike Clarke is a member, reports on 4th July. I very much hope all the major conservation bodies will have come out clearly for the National Forests, as the RSPB and Ramblers have done, well before that date and that the Government will move swiftly to ensure the future in puiblic ownership of the forests before the end of Jubilee year.
Always seems strange but very disappointing to see you connect as you put it harming and farming when you could have been positive and connected it by saying about the massive number of farmers doing what is required in the agri-schemes they enter.However not many conservationists see that as newsworthy.Although the results are not what we would like at least these farmers ignore the carping and are trying whereas the conservationists are just trying in a different description of the word.
Dennis, I don’t read into this the same as you do. No-one has made the link between Farming and Harming and this is simply a debate involving the RSPB, NFU and others.
All debates should start with a contentious subject in my opinion and this is no more than that. As a result on this occasion I also disagree with Mark’s interpretation as well.