Blogger: Laura White, PA to Public Affairs Team Manager
Today we had a terrible thing happen in the office. It was mid afternoon, the time when the blood sugar is falling and inspiration gets up and heads for the door. Around this time we usually put the kettle on and head for the biscuit tin. We have two biscuit tins in the public affairs office and they are kept stocked with a wide assortment of goodies. Today our goodies were a brand new box of double chocolate biscuit fingers. The box was opened at lunch and a couple of biscuits removed, (but this was a quality control exercise carried out by the more senior members of the team) but it was still pretty full. So, it was while the kettle was on and the tea bags were in their mugs waiting for their shower of hot water that the terrible thing happened! Somebody had eaten all of the chocolate fingers!
I say eaten but I really mean stolen and eaten!
We know the culprit and we have eye witness accounts of his crime so I'm sure that justice will prevail and he will replace the biscuits he stole or else he will remain banned from our tuck to watch forever as the rest of us enjoy sharing the next pack of double chocolate fingers!
This did make me wonder though, we had waited approximately ninety minutes for our biscuits and we were so disappointed when we went to the tin and they weren't there. To be honest though, there was a substantial amount of much healthier food around if we had really needed to eat. But, what about those lovely migrant birds which are arriving or leaving our shores, do they find themselves in the same predicament?
Some of our beautiful visitors to the UK are facing the same terrible shortage we did. Whether our winter visitors like the pink footed geese or our summer visitors like the swifts or swallows - food is critical. For instance, the turtle dove travels from the Sahelain region in Africa and travels thousands of kilometres to get here. How sad it is that we no longer provide for them as nice a breeding destination as we used to. Which could be a contribution to the shocking statistic that turtle doves have declined by 93% since the 1970s. We need a plan, and we have one. A small group of 'heroes' are helping to find out what's happening to our turtle doves and creating habitats especially to support birds such as the turtle dove as well as insects and mammals. But they can only do this with your support and you can help for further information please go to the Operation Turtle Dove website.
For more information visit: http://operationturtledove.org/the-project