(and to National Trust members, come to that)

Britain’s birds are under threat from every side: habitat loss, urban sprawl, agricultural policies, domestic cats, and so on.  So I commend you, as an RSPB member, for your commitment to conserving and supporting bird populations.  Your concern does you credit.  And equally, I commend members of the National Trust for their efforts to preserve our heritage and our wonderful country houses.

I’m sure you’ll be aware of the threat posed to birds by wind turbines, as I am.  But recently, reading Matt Ridley’s wonderful essay on shale gas, I was shocked to read about the scale of the damage that turbines do to birds.  Of course it’s difficult to get accurate figures, but an academic from Oxford, Clive Hambler, has done a study showing that in Spain alone, millions of birds and bats are killed every year by turbines. …