The best things in life are free so they say. And many of them are. One of the best is the true experience of spring in a setting as close to wild and natural as can be found. In the morning with the sun low in the sky and no evidence around of man’s activities the energy being released by natural seasonal change can fairly be called spring fever.
Simple pleasures! How much better if life were simpler and we could trust things to be what they seem to be. Or if people actually said what we think they said. Most people love songbirds and would do a lot to ensure that they are protected and able to give us pleasure in a world where the forces of exploitation are hard to resist. All that intensive farming with all those chemicals and grubbing up the hedgerows. They must be responsible we think for the decline in numbers that we keep hearing about.
So what about contributing to a charity that seeks to protect our wonderful songbirds? Such a one might be the charity Songbird Survival. But we should be wary. It's now commonplace for those that go in for things that the public don't really like to associate themselves with more innocent things. Songbird Survival is trying to tune in to people's love for singing blackbirds and skylarks while promoting shooting. Their major focus is on trapping and killing birds of prey and members of the crow family while at the same time raising game birds so they can be shot. The people behind Songbird Survival are nearly all landed gentry and shooting estate owners. What they really want to do is maximise their production of game birds for shooting by eliminating predators. Their interest in songbirds is minimal. What is it about our countryside that it produces such duplicitous behaviour?
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