GARDENINGGARDENS are fantastic places for birds.
Even postage stamp town patches are little oases, as my chum, Jane Clarke, knows so very well, putting so much effort to attract feathered friends and protect them from the town cats.
Bad news, then, from the RSPB that has assessed populations of the UK’s 246 regularly occurring birds and concluded 52 are now of the highest conservation concern and have been placed on the so-called red list
The revised red list sees more familiar Island birds, including the cuckoo, lapwing and yellow wagtail, join other widespread species such as the turtle dove, grey partridge, house sparrow and starling.
Cuckoos continue to be widespread summer visitors but their numbers are rapidly declining. Their addition to the red list highlights the concern that many long-distance migratory birds nesting in Europe and wintering in Africa are increasingly in trouble.
Continued decline of widespread farmland, woodland and garden birds is a theme that has developed since the compilation of the last list in 2002.
Lapwing, still found breeding at Brading Marshes where the RSPB has its reserve, now joins the red list in the latest assessment.
The reserve, in the lower River Yar valley, also supports breeding yellow wagtail, another addition to the list.
Dr Mark Avery, the RSPB’s conservation director, said: "An increasing number of charismatic, widespread and familiar birds are joining the list of those species most in need of help; this is scandalous. When the RSPB was formed 120 years ago, few would have been concerned about the cuckoo, lapwing, starling or house sparrow. Now these birds are some of our greatest conservation priorities.
Most shocking is the more recently observed and drastic decline of summer-visiting birds, typified by the cuckoo.
But there is a glimmer of good news too.
Six species have been removed from the 2002 red list, largely because of a recovery in their numbers or range, or a better understanding of their populations.
The bullfinch, one of my personal favourites and which nests in woods and thick hedges, has been placed on the amber list following modest recoveries in its population.
I won’t miss the aggressive, noisy, herring gull, though, especially after one emptied its fishiness on my head from dizzying height…