You can imagine how I felt seeing this cover of Birdwatch magazine – it’s a Linnet, and one of those very ugly males at that.
Time to turn the pages quickly. Luckily, there are more attractive images inside the magazine.
For one thing, there is a spread of ‘local heroes’. Maggie Wilcox was the worthy winner of the overall award for her highlighting of the plight of Sand Martins on the north Norfolk coast who returned from Africa to find their nesting holes netted over. But another of the local heroes is Bob Berzins (see his guest blogs here) who greatly deserves this, and more, recognition.
There’s an interesting interview with Tony Juniper, the chair of Natural England, as he approaches the end of his first year in the hot seat. My Wild Justice colleagues Ruth Tingay and Chris Packham aren’t convinced that he has got off to a great start…
That was probably a bit political, but if one turns to the letters page then there is quite a lot of evidence that that is what readers want as part of the rich Birdwatch mix. That’s a relief as the writer of the ‘political birder’ column. This balances things up as I’ve seen quite a few letters criticising my column, the political birder column, for being too political! Sometimes I’m asked to respond to these complaints and I usually have to check what I wrote because it sounds pretty awful from the letter sent in, and without exception what I want to reply is ‘You clearly haven’t read the thing properly!’. In fact, I’d question the reliability of some of these people’s bird records if they are as accurate as their reading of my column.
But my column this month might disappoint – it’s a lot more ‘birder’ and not so ‘political’. Although the suggestion that some grumpy old birders might need to be nicer to young birders might be a bit controversial. I write about Titchwell RSPB nature reserve in the 1970s and 2020s.
There’s a surprisingly interesting article on moult, and a surprisingly interesting article on gull identification (although Dominic Mitchell always writes in an interesting way – even on dull subjects), but there are too many images of Linnets. Too many Linnets! Although read my Linnet account in the Red Sixty Seven book to find out what Linnets needs so that there really are more Linnets.
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Let’s hope that we don’t all have to go back to the Birdwatch cover in years to come to see what they looked like.
For me, I love seeing them and wish there were more.
The world would be a far sadder place without them. ( and daffs)!!!!!!
Exclamation marks just for you Mark, stop you being grumpy!!!:)
I like Linnets too and proper Wild Daffodils, however like Mark and allegedly many others I detest garden Daffs planted pm countryside verges or anywhere else outside gardens!
Don’t the daffodils feed a few early-venturing insects, or are they sterile?
If they are garden varieties fair chance not much good for pollinators. Dandelions are probably much better for them and can bring splashes of glorious early season yellow too, but for some reason they get regarded as a weed and are often sprayed. I’m trying to visualise councils planting out dandelions?
Thanks, Les.
I like dandelions too, they are very under-rated.
Yes I loath daffs outside a garden too – not helped by an older gentleman who was as profoundly pro daff as he was rabidly anti dead wood and did his best to replace the latter with the former in what was supposed to be a wildlife area I worked in. When people plant out daffs it says real nature isn’t good enough we’ve got to ‘ornament’ it.
Must bring you to order sir. Mr Avery hasn’t yet fired the starting gun on this season’s daft daff debate. Unlike the season for teasing him which is open season!!!!!!!
I wonder what he hates more, Linnets, daffs or exclamation marks?
!!!!
My apologies sir!!! He also doesn’t favour CAPITALISATION I believe or the splitting of the infinitive. Hopefully he never noticed I once spelled licence as license!!!
And plenty of promotion of high carbon holidays in the midst of a climate emergency.