I READ a short news item on Ceefax today in which the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, together with the British Ornithological Trust, published a suggestion from "new research" that modern farming methods, for example '...frequent grass cutting for use as silage...' may be responsible for the decline of the skylark and the yellowhammer songbirds. It went on to say that 'organic farming' procedures '... could also be harmful ...'

My first action was to confirm that the date was not April 1. My second was to look in a little book co-authored by a senior member of the British Ornithological Trust about birds of Great Britain and western Europe. The skylark is found in open country, grassland, heaths, moors, alpine meadow and farmland; similarly the Yellowhammer inhabits hedgerows, scrub, forest clearings and edges and farmland. What kind of farmland it does not state. This accords with my own experience of living in various parts of England over the past 60 years.

Several facts have impressed themselves upon me during that time. Wild animals keep out of the way of humans; birds do not nest in fields where agricultural activity takes place, crops or livestock. Farming was always "organic" until the ascendance of the mineralised petro-chemical fertiliser-cum-pest control era. Which begs the question: if organic farming may be hazardous to these songbirds; how did they manage to survive the last few thousand years?

It also makes me wonder if these organisations really know much about the natural habit of these birds. Those who tramp about the countryside will never see any wildlife, but they may rest assured that the wildlife will have seen them.

D M LOXLEY

Hartoft

Updated: 15:14 Monday, January 22, 2001