This weekend, I plan to forget all about the triennial review of government agencies, wildlife crime, the fate of European environment legislation and funding for wildlife friendly farming. I'm not even going to worry about climate change.
I'm going to grab a coffee, get a couple of chairs and sit with my kids for an hour looking out of a window into our garden.
And then we'll wait and wait and wait...
...and with a bit of luck some birds will turn up.
I'll test the kids of their bird ID and we'll count how many of each species appear. They might get distracted by lego or need a biscuit every now and then, but that's ok.
We'll end up filling in a form (in the girl's best handwriting) to recrod the largest number of each species we see at any one time.
We'll do this for an hour.
And it will be brilliant.
We'll be doing this because...
...it's Big Garden Birdwatch Weekend.
If you're doing it this weekend, have a great hour. It's time well spent. And if you're not, why not?
P.S. If at any point during your hour, the birds disappear and your mind wanders a bit, you might want to ask yourself this question - what on earth was the European Parliament Agriculture Committee thinking this week? Read this to understand why this has been a bad week for European wildlife.
Sooty - if you did not manage to hear it, I recommend listening to Friday's Farming Today. A very good assessment of both sides of the argument. You can hear the Secretary of State's perspective as well as from the Agriculture Committee chair. You can listen again here. www.bbc.co.uk/.../b01q02sg. And then you can make your own mind up.
Taffy - although cats kill perhaps millions of birds each year, there is no evidence that they are causing any bird species to decline in the UK. However, the RSPB does promote measures to reduce the vulnerability of garden birds to predation by cats. I am genuinely sorry that you found the ad offensive.
I agree with Taffy 2 in fact I am calling for a cull. We should get MAFF sorry DEFRA to implement it; there are clearly worries about all sort of health risks to the human population from these pests. It's worse than the Serengeti out there ! The garden bird ecosystem is distorted by any number of semi wild felines with clear sadistic tendencies to the feathered population who deposit their findings thoughtlessly around the garden. I am on my allotment so will be filling in the Birdwatch form up there; stoats, buzzard sparrowhawk deer problem slow worms various forms of "titmouses" and my neighbours, robin magpies etc etc.
Martin ---lots of confusion as your link just takes me it appears to think it is Jenny Haggerty's thoughts and it seems rather the usual everything is wrong with it as it does not fit what she would like.Really it seems to me that nothing the EU and farmers do will please some at the RSPB.
I would appreciate it if instead of a personal opinion facts were put on here for us to see the bad points.
In the meantime I found what appeared to be approximately 28 of the European Parliament Agriculture Committees proposals and to my utter astonishment considering what Jenny had written every one seemed really good(of course whether they have the will to implement them is a different matter)
Will be very interested in knowing everything that is wrong with these proposals then we can make our own decisions.
Martin, you ask the reason why anyone is not doing BGBW, so I'll tell you! I spend a lot of time and effort trying to keep felines out of my garden; it is totally for wildlife of all kinds, including, when they had a chance, slow worms. I have no objection whatsoever to anyone keeping hundeds of cats if they so wish.... just within their own property. Now, the reason I don't do the survey. The RSPB advertise it, in various media, using a cat. It may be shown to be indoors, but the whole ethos of the advert deeply upsets me, and I believe it to be contrary to the RSPBs 'raison d'etre'. Why not do the advert showing a Sparrowhawk, a completely natural predator? No, you would have even more, illogical, complaints and the RSPB only pander to the majority opinion in this case. I would be pleased to hear your views, and those of others.