My local football team, the mighty Rushden and Diamonds is currently 8th in the Blue Square Premier League - that's 8th out of 24 teams.
Seeing your performance in the context of others is always informative and sometimes really useful.
So did you know that the UK is 4th place in the EU (out of 27) for the highest rate of income tax? and 12th, out of 15, EU countries in the proportion of our energy coming from renewable sources? and top of the EU cocaine using league? and top of the EU asthma suffering league? and we were 8th in the EU days lost to strikes league table back in 2006. This gets a bit addictive!
In terms of farmland bird population changes, the UK is 11th worst out of 40 European countries over the period 1990-2000. And we were even closer to the bottom, as I remember it, in a previous analysis which covered the period 1980-1990.
Farmland birds declined in most European countries (but increased in just a few) and I wonder what we can learn, maybe nothing, in terms of how the league leaders, Austria, practise their farming? In Austria, farmland birds did pretty well apparently. And Austria is top of the league, it seems, and if you ignore Liechtenstein (which we all do!), in terms of organic agriculture. It can't be that simple can it?
A love of the natural world demonstrates that a person is a cultured inhabitant of planet Earth.
Bob - you understand at least! Thank you!
Farmers are putting back many hedges that were ripped out back inthe 60s and 70s but it will, unfortunately, take quite a whole before in arable regions the hedge infrastructure has recovered completely and that means that linnets and yellowhammers may not be able to revcover very quickly - at Hope Farm hedge management has helped them to spread to new nesting areas on the farm.
The move away from mixed farming is one of the important aspects of intensification and is unlikely to be reversed very quickly.
But Hope Farm shows that if farmers do the right things, and grants to do these things are available through agri-environment schemes, then impressive increases in bird numbers are possible on arable farms with reduced hedgerows. The RSPB's success at Hope farm shows what can be done and we have a network of advisors who work with keen farmers so that they can do similar things on their farms.