There was a time when I'd mumble "I work for the RSPB", in that awkward moment after someone's asked, "what do you do...?"
I was self consciously worried I'd be labelled a bird nerd and immediately deemed boring, as that's the common conception, or should I say, mis-conception.
These days, I gush out that I work for the most fantastic conservation charity in Europe. We give freedom to refugees, futures to excluded school students, introduce young people to the dangers and excitement of playing with water or scrambling over trees and grassy banks and holding frogs. Oh. And inbetween that and saving the world, I give people in positions of authority a hard time about how they can join us all in making the world a better place.
Most people are supportive, but far too many find the challenge of saving nature too daunting. make their excuses and leave. This is the moment where I holler: "Hold on. Don't be overwhelmed. Yes we're currently losing two thirds of the UK's wildlife and yes there isn't a magic bullet to make everything better. But doing nothing will let the other third slip away too. Give us a hand."
The things you do or don't do have an impact. There are harsh realities too, like which species to save. All you can do is make the best decision possible based on the evidence at that specific time and place. Next week the evidence may suggest a different course of action. But both decisions will have been right at the time they were made.
Like all my colleagues working and volunteering for, or those supporting, the RSPB, I have a single task; giving nature a home. Can you imagine a world with no nature?
What we eat. What we throw away. How long we run a tap. Whether we concrete over a lawn. All these things have consequences. So does leaving some grass to grow long and turn to seed. Planting a hedge instead of putting up a impenetrable fence in an urban garden will help prevent London's hedgehogs becoming extinct. The hedge allows them free access to roam. The hedge will also provide food and shelter for lots of wildlife too. Water is life, so a garden pond becomes a garden womb; continously pouring forth life; even midges and mosquitoes, but don't panic. There are pippistrelle bats in your eaves that hoover up some 3000 flying bugs every night. When the bats sleep the day shift of swifts takes over to keep the world in balance.
If you do one thing for nature this week, make sure others know about it. If every Londoner followed your example, that would be almost eight million actions. You can see how it mounts up. This past fortnight, the RSPB has reintroduced short-haired bumblebees to Dungeness. We've started building a major new wetalnd reserve and flood protection site at Wallasea Island in Essex using soil excavated from London's Crossrail tunnels. We've handed in a third of a million signatures to Downing Street calling for Marine Conservation Zones. We've instigated a criminal investigation into the felling of a tree where rare white tailed eagles had made their first nest.
We are the RSPB, join us in Giving Nature a Home.