Yesterday morning I saw two sand martins at my local patch of Stanwick Lakes in east Northants - so it feels to me as though spring has properly arrived!
Last week another four MPs signed up to the Early Day Motion on birds of prey, bringing the total to 152, and making it the equal 30th most supported EDM of this parliamentary session. They were: Norman Lamb (LibDem), Brian Binley (Con), Tony Lloyd (Lab) and Brooks Newmark (Con).
The Guardian website has a long piece on the white-tailed eagle debate written by Patrick Barkham. It's worth reading and a fair enough piece - in that it gives both sides of the argument some space. It also makes the point that there is a silent majority in favour of the project - a point often missed when the minority make a lot of noise. And note that Songbird Survival, as reported here, do not appear to be taking any notice of the research that they funded and which was published in the week in which they and we talked to Mr Barkham - they are still talking about raptors driving down farmland bird numbers.
Our Letter to the Future campaign has reached an amazing 165,000 signatures! If you have signed up (you have - haven't you?) then please ask a friend to do so - or two! The more signatures we have at the time of the General Election the more politicians will take note of nature.
I know that for quite a while the Community part of our website was not allowing new registrations - there was a good reason for this but it would take a lot of words to explain! However, now you should be able to register which means that you can also leave comments on this and others' blogs if you wish - please do!
Chew valley lake heaving with sand martins despite a turn in the weather to a bitter, strong west wind followed by driving rain (well it drove me off, anyway !)
Thinking about the Sea Eagles, maybe we should update 'crying wolf' to 'crying Sea Eagles' -every time there is something new in the countryside there are doom laden predictions of the end of life as we know it - CROW access, Red Kites, the Hunting Ban and now Sea Eagles and Beavers - the end never comes, the issue drifts into obscurity only to be followed by equally dire predictions for the next one.