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.