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.
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.