You are going to participate in Big Garden Birdwatch this weekend aren't you?
Fisheries and almost-everything-else Minister, Richard Benyon, is coming under pressure from fellow fishermen to allow culling of cormorants in their breeding season. We work closely with fishermen on a range of issues such as the Severn Barrage, river pollution and the Water Framework Directive but some of them are a bit bonkers. No you don't need extra powers to cull cormorants - you have plenty of unnecessary scope already. We hope that in his busy job, Mr Benyon has time to be sensible on this issue.
Forests - we'll hear soon of the government's actual plans on this subject. We will be scrutinising the consultation paper carefully and then making our views known. The timing of this article in the Independent cannot be accidental.
Waxwings - look out for colour-ringed birds. I see that some of the local Northamptonshire birds are carrying colour-rings clamped onto them by the Grampian Ringing Group earlier in the winter.
I'm looking forward to talking at the Sussex Ornithological Society Conference this weekend - but the other speakers on the programme are excellent so I'm looking forward to listening too.
A love of the natural world demonstrates that a person is a cultured inhabitant of planet Earth.
Cormorant is more a problem of fishing lakes and inland waterways.Seems there are licenses to cull some but probably difficult to get and for sure there are now so many that they are damaging fish numbers at wildlife places which must affect other birds and otters at local places like the Somerset levels and Langford Lakes.We used to see odd ones but now suspect you could count 50 which is far too many.Fact is we are 30 miles inland and in about 1978 the first one locally made news and now they are everywhere.