Well it rained a bit and the crowds seemed thinner than the previous two days but the RSPB stand was very busy. And I recovered my blackberry too!
Lots of people signed our bird of prey pledge - I think we are over 500 for the three days which is much better than last year's Game Fair at Blenheim.
One man shot himself, only metaphorically, in the foot when we asked him whether he would like to sign the pledge and he said 'No, I'm a gamekeeper!' and still was unable to bring himself to sign a pledge against the illegal killing of birds of prey after we pointed out that the National Gamekeepers' Organisation had signed already. This example, a rare one, but a real one, shows that amongst a few people in the shooting community hatred of birds of prey is deeply entrenched. But I would like to stress that we received a warm, polite although occasionally challenging welcome at the Game Fair over the three days.
A colleague and I visited the (rather swanky) marquee of Bettws Hall estates to touch base with them on the events at their Shropshire Kempton Estate last year (see my blog post of 14 June on buzzards). We were given a warm and polite reception and they signed up to our bird of prey pledge.
I have a few other thoughts coming out of the last three days but the next few hours are my weekend so they'll have to wait!
And the final Game Fair bingo scores (see blog post of Friday morning)? Well, 16 out of my 20 suggestions did come up (one man who didn't like us very much trotted out quite a few of them today!) - I wasn't shouted at, I wasn't sworn at, nobody said that our staff on the ground are good but the senior staff are hopeless and nobody said we are too anti-windfarm. All the others did, and they make up a mixed bag of praise and criticism - that's fair enough, and to have those discussions is one of the reasons why we attend the Game Fair. Another reason is to meet lots and lots of RSPB members and potential members who want to talk to us about how much they enjoy wildlife and how much they care about it.
A love of the natural world demonstrates that a person is a cultured inhabitant of planet Earth.