So, the final week of the parliamentary term starts now.  Some MPs, including the Biodiversity Minister Richard Benyon MP will celebrate the start of their summer break by going to the Game Fair later this week.  The RSPB will be there, as always, and this year we'll be celebrating our work with the wet bits of the natural world - apt given the weekend we have just had.

With the media still dominating the media, it is good to be able to report another good week for RSPB press coverage.

Last week kicked off with the relaunch of the Our River campaign – a joint endeavour alongside our friends at the WWF, the Angling Trust and the Salmon and Trout Association. This year we are asking people to tell us about their local river in an online survey and the story was featured on ITV’s Daybreak on Monday as well as in the pages of the Daily Telegraph. There is still plenty of time to let us know which wildlife species you’ve seen from your favourite riverbank at – www.ourrivers.org.uk


photo credit: Sally Arnold

Then on Tuesday it was an owl that hit the headlines – but not before it had hit a window. The amazing image of an owl perfectly preserved in a pane of glass was originally sent to the RSPB by a member of the public and proved to be a popular talking point on Daybreak and BBC Breakfast as well as making it into print in the Mirror, the Telegraph, BBC News Online and Metro.

Last week saw the unveiled proposals for reformed Common Fisheries Policy. The CFP was something most people were probably blissfully unaware of a year ago, but after Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall’s excellent Fish Fight campaign it has become an issue of great public interest.  The RSPB signed up to a joint coalition of environmental groups calling for more sustainable management of Europe’s fisheries, as reported in the Guardian, and our head of Marine Policy Euan Dunn was interviewed by the Independent.

We get called on to comment on all kinds of bird stories at the RSPB, but one we’ve never had before was the tale of a man in Wales who, rather shockingly, had his eye pecked out by a gannet.

“This is an extremely rare, one off event,” our expert told the Mirror

I am therefore relieved that the gannets behaved themselves while I was sailing off Bempton for the On the Road with programme.  I did force myself to watch it over the weekend.  And, as expected, the birds were the stars of the show.