I entered three poems for the Rialto/RSPB poetry competition but, not surprisingly, none of them won a prize. I’ve always liked Shelley, red Shelley, for his lyricism but also for being a campaigner and an angry one at that. If he were back with us he might (or might not) write this: Not so…
Category: FARMING
Benefits
‘Tory MPs press Osborne on benefits‘ was a headline on the FT website on Tuesday evening, referring to the wish of some Conservative MPs to cut benefits in order to reduce government spending. Apparently the linking of benefits to inflation could be changed to a link to earningsbut only over the Liberal Democrats’ bodies –…
More hope from Hope
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Back to skylarks and Hope
I wrote a little about skylarks here recently – and how numbers had quadrupled at the RSPB’s Hope Farm over the last 12 years, increasing from 10 pairs in 2000 to the low 40s in recent years). The story of how skylarks increased is quite well known – it’s done by leaving small bare patches…
BBS 2011
The latest Breeding Bird Survey report is now available – an everyday story of declining farmland birds? Of the 19 species in the Farmland Bird Index, nine increased (grey partridge, stock dove, jackdaw, whitethroat, tree sparrow, yellow wagtail, linnet, goldfinch, yellowhammer) and nine decreased (kestrel, lapwing, wood pigeon, turtle dove, rook, skylark, starling, greenfinch, reed…
Nice farmers – make your choice
It’s time to vote in the Nature of Farming award which is the UK’s biggest farm wildlife award. Last year 22,000 of us voted to choose the winner from four finalists chosen by experts. The award is sponsored by the Daily Telegraph and the EU Life+ Programme and is a partnership between the RSPB, Plantlife…
The milk of human kindness
There’s been a lot in the news about the price of milk recently because of the low prices that some farmers are receiving for their produce (see here, here and here for example). I still have a milkman who delivers (quite expensive) milk to the door several times a week but I am glad to…
What a lark
On Saturday morning I was listening to Saturday Live on Radio 4 and a piece about punting in Cambridge. Now I’ve done my share of punting, in the rather distant past, but the sound of the skylark was not a common accompaniment to those trips though it did feature in the radio programme’s soundtrack. It…
Bring in the bunting…
In amidst all that buzzard-bothering nonsense of the last couple of weeks an important restatement of the absolutely obvious was made: farmland birds have declined steeply and there is no obvious redemption in sight. The most recent science on the subject was a report produced from national bird monitoring schemes across Europe, including the UK,…
A song for Guy
Guy Smith, NFU environment spokesperson asked for the details of species I saw on my BBS visit. I wonder why. I’ll do better than that Guy, I’ll list the species seen on my visit last Saturday and compare them with those seen on my first visit to this BBS square almost exactly seven years ago…