From February 18:

“A beautiful, if somewhat crisp at the start, day in the foothills of the Cairngorms. There wasn’t much bird activity but the Glens are like that. I wonder if they were any better when they had trees?

“Anyway the end of the road up Glen Isla does provide a few Scots pines and a small plantation of other conifers. These held most of the day’s birds, the most notable being one brambling in amongst the numerous chaffinches. It’s always nice to see mistle thrushes too and even better to hear them sing – a rather more melancholy tune than a blackbird’s, I think.

“A few ravens cronked overhead and bothered the lone buzzard. No eagles, of course. And no red grouse this time. However, that other gamekeeper’s favourite, the magpie, did surprisingly appear – only my second sighting for Angus.”

Secret Santa (Ta, Jimmy)

Here’s what I want for Christmas (next Christmas will also do) in no particular order:

• rent-free accommodation
• the next species to go extinct in the regulation 4 years
• a $500 win at poker
• negative population growth
• 400 visitors a month to this website
• not a single raptor shot, poisoned or snared
• a sale of Let the Time Come
• Southampton to be in the Premier League
• my shares to be back at the level I bought them
• all creatures safely off the critically endangered list
• ooh, let’s say £10,000 on the Premium Bonds
• more trees
• some interest in any of my books
• no litter
• a holiday
• our reconnection with the planet
• my front tooth straightened (a variation on that old saw)

and I’m sure that’s not all.

Thank you.

It’s been a good few weeks for this species: first, one up in East Yorkshire; then near Martin Mere; now, not quite on the National Trust estate but by the road down to Marshfield, which is their local stronghold. Another bunting, a yellowhammer also showed, for only the third time this year – a far cry from my Angus days when they filled the fields round Auchmithie. In fact, they even came to my feeders there.

I was in South Gloucestershire to check for quail, which I’ve only ever managed once, just outside Winchester. This discounts the poor trapped bastards that the fiendish Maltese use to lure innocent birds within range of their guns. That’ll all be starting up again soon. The most we can hope is that the loathsome, slimy Mediterraneans don’t shoot our birds, especially our marsh harriers.

And all to prove that they’re “men”. I don’t know: why can’t they just toss off to girlie mags, like the rest of the world.

No buntings on Malta either but that’s a whole other horror story of trapping and caging. I still can’t imagine why the non-brain-dead would want to holiday there. Better to go to Gloucestershire, which is civilised.

Nor anywhere near me so far but some are back: both Bristol and Clevedon message boards have reported them. Some birds have to run the gamut of Malta, of course, but Spain seems generous enough to offer others safe passage.

The Collins Bird Guide and the IOC place hirundines after larks but similarities in the order stop there, largely because the IOC has promoted crows and tits way up before the larks. (Rising before the lark? Hm, is that possible?) And warblers now come directly after swallows and martins. I’m beginning to piece all this together!

Being such a grim swallow-free day, it made sense to shelter in the National Trust house. It was all private last time I was in the Bristol area but now the Trust have taken on its renovation and, boy, does it need it. These rambling old piles, were it not for their historic interest, would be way less effort to pull down. And I think we do need some reminder of just how greedy their creators, the old captains of industry were.

The Trust are big on the philanthropy of these moguls but a house, and its extensive grounds, like Tyntesfield show that the good ole boys took more than their lion’s share before doling out the charitable scraps. (Rather ashamed that this lot bear the Gibbs surname.) For instance, tucked away almost as an afterthought, is a Rembrandt and a Salvator Rosa – probably both minor works but, hey, I wouldn’t pass on them.

The sun’s out now. Shall I go swallow-hunting? Nah, they’ll turn up some time.

Year bird 108, two of them actually, not quarter of a mile fae the hoose in the bit of the residential development earmarked for a nature reserve. This means somewhere for dog-owners to let their pooches have a crap and generally run wild. Will this change when (if?) Avon Wildlife Trust takes over managing the site? I can find no Web reference to such a move, save that the reserve is officially called Ashlands.

Ashlands, it is from now on then.

Back to the stonechats, or rather their close cousin, the whinchat. Early results from the BTO’s Bird Atlas suggest that the species is struggling big-time. This is hardly news: so many birds are going tits up, but not tits themselves. In this case it seems that the stonechat is a good baseline from which to judge matters. It shares much behaviour with whinchat, but not migration, which is a common attribute for declining species.

Is the problem climate? Habitat loss along the route? Mediterranean bastards shooting and liming them? Who can say? Who cares? Or rather, do enough people care?