There's been a flurry of publicity for Songbird Survival over the last week - mostly in The Times. This organisation, which I always think as being more anti-predator than pro-songbird, and anti-raptor in particular (but maybe I have got them wrong), may be funding the Game and Wildlife Conservation Trust to cull some crows and see whether songbirds flourish. Good luck to them - but I hope they take more notice of this research than they did of the research that they commissioned from the BTO which went some way to exonerate predators from being the cause of songbird declines. That study doesn't seem to have altered Songbird Survival's views at all.
The Chair of Songbird Survival is Lord Coke. Lord Coke hails from Holkham Hall. The head gamekeeper at Holkham Hall was charged with several offences, including some under the Wildlife and Countryside Act, last week. This has led to some interesting comments in some places (see here for example). Lord Coke's father, the Earl of Leicester, is not the biggest fan of birds of prey, nor indeed of the RSPB. As I say, interesting.
The article in the Independent makes the link between the head 'keeper being charged and the fate of the Holkham National Nature reserve. That's an interesting point too.
A love of the natural world demonstrates that a person is a cultured inhabitant of planet Earth.
Very much agree with Stackyard Green, especially the last paragraph. But I'd add that some urban gardens, such as adjoining where I live, still support good populations of songbirds in spite of cats, magpies and jays (the latter nest in tall conifers). The only notable reduction in the last 25 years was when one of the long mature gardens was sold off for building - bearing out what Stackyard is saying. The tangled mass of ivy growing over the fence and the old thick box hedges is doubtless a factor in nest survival. But sparser gardens seem to do less well. When magpies moved into the London suburbs in the 60s many people noticed a drop in songbirds but over time the populations seemed to have stabilised. I know of several cases where the introduction of Larsson traps has caused a songbird revival but a better strategy is to look after the habitat and food sources. If a species is in real trouble - such as the spotted flycatcher, predation may just finish them off in a location. But that doesn't necessarily mean that we should wipe out the predators - other factors: summer food and migration conditions were probably the main cause of decline and made the species more vulnerable to nest predation due to reduced numbers and longer trips away hunting for food. But of course the very visible predator gets the blame.