I'm a 'looking forwards' kind of guy, but the end of the year is a time to take stock too.
January is when the Big Garden Birdwatch takes place and last January it followed a prolonged cold spell (click here, here, here, here and here).
In February we handed in a massive 210,567 person petition to the government asking for birds of prey to retain their legal protection.
March - I am still thanking Alberta's Run for a big win at Cheltenham but this is a time when we are looking for sand martins and other spring migrants.
April - quite a lot about lead and why the RSPB is phasing out its use on our nature reserves (click here, here, here, here, here and here).
May - now what happened in May? Oh yes, there was a General Election and we received the gift of a coalition government intending to be the 'greenest government ever' whilst the evidence (here, here, here) showed that biodiversity was still being lost from our lives and the cuts began.
June saw the purple herons nesting at the RSPB nature reserve at Dungeness fledging some young - great news!
July was dominated by farmland birds with great results from Hope Farm, discussion of turtle doves (here and here) , the depressing latest BBS results (here, here, here, here,here), cirl bunting success, and talk of the CAP.
August brings the Bird Fair (here, here, here, here) every year but this year we were also campaigning for government cuts not to harm the countryside (here, here, here and here).
September saw the publication of Professor Sir John Lawton's review which should influence government action on nature conservation for decades ahead.
October saw the results of the Comprehensive Spending Review and, as expected, big cuts (here, here, here) which will affect the natural environment for years ahead. But our Letter to the Future campaign led to an increase in funding for environmentally friendly farming in England. And there was good news from Nagoya with Caroline Spelman playing an important role.
November confirmed the promise of late October that 2010/11 would be a significant waxwing winter (here, here, here and here) but it took me until Christmas Eve to see some.
December had us dancing in the snow to Bird is the Word as a bit of Christmas fun.
A love of the natural world demonstrates that a person is a cultured inhabitant of planet Earth.
Just noticed this that must give hope,farmers in Scotland praised for some with help from RSPB sowing wild bird seeds on plots upto 2 hectares and in Angus one farm counted13,000 birds inc 5,000 Skylark
2,500 Bramblings
105 Corn Buntings
1,700 Yellowhammers
700 Reed Buntings
4,000 Wood Pidgeons
10 Lapland Buntings
200 Linnet
2,250 Pink Footed Geese
and smaller numbers of several other species.Wow what a result,if we can get more of these then intensive farming will not do large amount of damage.
Happy new year Mark and all your readers,think 2010 quite good overall as the thing for me is that more people seem to be getting more wildlife friendly and in particular the children so hope for the future,lots of good news such as rivers best improving decade since industrial revolution,still some way to go but at least not going backwards.HLS to get quite a bit more money for beetle banks and nectar rich margins.
Hope that in 2011 farmers get the message to be more wildlife friendly,think it is a case of somehow getting the information where they can see it easy,think part of that problem is that a generation of farmers were asked to farm at maximum productivity and hard to break habits.
Not too bad a year after all? One always hopes for better, but it might have been a good deal worst. At least Mark saw his waxwings that was a great relief!! Here is to 2011.
redkite