David Rye has let us know that BBC1′s “Countryfile” on Sunday contained a snippet of Cygnet and a little more about Snape Maltings.  He says it was in the first 20 minutes.

(Photo – Dave Brooks)

A BBC Panorama investigation of being over the hill in the employment market at the age of 50. I removed the part about ‘immigrants’ taking all the British jobs because I believe this is just another government ‘distraction’ tactic to remove the blame from themselves and plant it on immigrants. 

• The worst ageism within the public sector is with the under 25s
• Over 90% of all County and London borough councils have less than 7% of their workforce represented by this age group.
• Many councils didn’t have the category of just under 25 but had the category of 20-29, which makes it impossible to know how many under 25s there are.
• The majority of people employed in council’s fit into the 25-49 category
• The over 50s are predominantly better represented in the councils than the national average of the total population employed that are 50+
• We don’t know how many people over 50 are recruited each year as opposed to being recruited
• There is no national standardisation

Recommendations

• Every public body should follow a standard of age categorisation of their workforce
• An age audit must be conducted to have a benchmark figure to see if age diversity is improving or getting worse. Until then it is impossible to say.
• An age audit should be carried out annually
• Included in the age audit should be the recruitment statistics of the age categories i.e. how many over 50s have been recruited so that we might be able to tell whether the policy of recruitment is ageist or otherwise and not just people getting older within the organisation.
• Local media and politicians and members of the Houses of Parliament request stats on work force in their area for under 25s and over 50s who are being recruited.

Report Source: Ageism in the Public Sector work force – Wise Owls Age audit of County & London borough council’s

Ageism still a problem – Jobsite

The Public and Private Sector: Is Ageism Old Hat? 

“We were pioneers for everything, the first teenagers to really enjoy life. Yet we’re facing discrimination because we’re older and we’ve got such a lot to offer.” (Female 60, retired though ill health).

Presented by Helen Walker – Liverpool John Moores University

The Guardian:  Miriam O’Reilly, the former Countryfile presenter who won her age discrimination case against the BBC last month, will tonight present an ITV investigation into whether television is ageist.

Lynn Elizabeth Cullimore is 59 which she cannot believe, was born in Birmingham and has always lived in this country – either South Birmingham or currently in Worcestershire. She worked at the BBC Birmingham for nearly 26 years making television programmes such as Countryfile and Top Gear etc. She now runs a business with her husband and business partner, Graham. They are an Internet Solutions Company named pinkdylan – named after Bob Dylan. They offer services such as Web Hosting, Web Design, Search Engine Optimisation – in fact, anything to do with the Internet. She has been married twice – once in 1976 for fourteen years (together for 12 years) and she has now been currently married for 20 years. She has never had any children. She is very outgoing, loves people, and, she hopes, young for her age. “Inside my mind I am only 21 and still miss my mum. I go out a lot socially and take an interest in Politics and whats going on in the world. I love meeting people of different cultures too”.

When were you happiest? – The day i got married the first time and when i got my job at the BBC.

What is your greatest fear? – Dying

What was your most embarrassing moment? –  Going to visit a friend whom i had not seen in a long time. She told me where her house was, colour of her car in the drive, colour of her front door etc. The door was opened by a little boy (i knew she had a little boy but had not seen him in ages). Told to sit down, take my coat off and my friend and her husband would be down. When they came down, i was in the wrong house!!!

What is your most treasured possession? I had my mums engagement ring stolen when we had burglars and she died in a car crash so i treasured it and it was irreplaceable.  But i guess now, my e-book. I just love it and would hate to lose it.

Where would you like to live? I like living here – Kinnersley

What do you most dislike about your appearance? – My face

If you could bring something extinct back to life what would you choose? My Mother – not sure that counts but to me she is “extinct” as she was unique.

What is your favourite smell? I love perfume – my favourite Diorrissimo by Dior.

Is it better to give or receive? – To give

How do you relax? – Theatre, Music, Reading, Dining Out, Meeting friends, Crosswords, TV, Travel – often long haul.

What is your guiltiest pleasure? – Reading in bed

To whom would you most like to say sorry, and why? – To a little boy many years ago that I teased when i was very wrong. I joined in with some elder children and have regretted it ever since. I was only about 8 at the time. If i knew his name and he would be grown up and only a bit younger than me now, i would get in touch and apologise.

What or who is the greatest love of your life? – my dog dylan

What was the best kiss of your life? – a long time ago by an old boyfriend

Have you ever said I love you and not meant it? Yes

Who would you like to invite to your dream dinner party? Bob Dylan

Which words or phrases do you most overuse? “Darling” and diddly squat – like “it means diddly squat to me!” Also “munchies” which is what i call children.

Which living person do most admire, and why? – Bob Dylan. Love his words and music.

What do you like most about Worcester? The fact that it has everything – river, restaurants, shops, cinema, cathedral etc.

What is the worst job you’ve done? I once worked in a library – deadly boring and you had to be quiet – no good for me.

What has been your biggest disappointment? I have never had children.

If you could go back in time, where would you go? I would still be here but do things differently, but i would like to know what i know now!

What is the closest you’ve come to death? In a car with my husband in the lake district, on ice and car sliding towards a precipice!

How would you like to be remembered? She was memorable and i love her

For further information visit Lynn’s website: http://www.pinkdylan.co.uk

My time off is continuing much the same way as before, with the “Maybe tomorrow” philosophy of work still prevailing. I’ve watched the entirety of Life on Mars – which I loved – and finished another book, but the kanji is still being woefully neglected. Maybe tomorrow indeed. Instead I’m sitting back and relaxing with a bit of countryfile, glass of wine in hand; admittedly most of the posts I write whilst at home are written with a glass of wine in hand – I’m not sure what that says about me…

Still, there’s nothing wrong with the occasional glass of wine! I maintain that if I wrote all of my essays whilst drinking one they’d probably be better than those I write without! I could probably do better in exams as well, but somehow it seems like a risky theory to test.

Today I’ve been contemplating Year Abroad things, namely the clash of the airport weight restriction and the weight of my laptop. It’s a hard conundrum to solve! Do I get a netbook and rely on that as my main computer for a year, or do I take the great big heavy beast of a thing that I’m currently typing on? It’s a hard one, and one which I’ve yet to decide ( and on that note, if anyone has any suggestions or advice, please feel free to share!)

Other Year Abroad things which still have to be finished include the completion of the Year Abroad form, which I should probably get sent back to Sheffield by the end of next week at the latest. I probably should have got it sorted sooner, but I’m nothing if not a procrastinator! (Procrastinator could be my middle name! And if it were then maybe I could blame my inability to get things done on the idea of the Self-fulfilling Prophecy rather than just me being rubbish…)

On that note I shall leave you in order to return to my wine and my countryfile, and maybe to return to that form if I’m feeling particularly productive! Let’s not keep our hopes up though…

The canal

Just how love is blind, so is hostility. My initial resentment towards moving away from Starbucks shoved a duvet over Staffordshire’s rolling and vivid landscape, its nature, the canals; and it certainly muffled out the sound of those blue tits my mother is always going on about.

Recently, I have embraced the slower pace of living so I thought I would share a few of my new movements with yew.

Bear in mind that the following are home and context dependent. I realise that for many people home has always been where the heart is but I am just consecrating these thoughts for those who need to search a little harder for their tranquillity.

Benefits of being at home:

• Every day is brunch day. Coffee is never out and there are usually fresh barn eggs from the farm up the road.
• Laundry is done at regular intervals
• Meals are consistent, free and you are more likely to have pheasant rather than fish fingers.
• There is a TV

Brilliant so far although I really am not trying to imply a couch potato sedentary lifestyle here as there is a slight pitfall otherwise known as rules.

Rules according to the OED :

I. Senses relating to regulations or principles.

1. a. Also with capital initial. The code of discipline or body of regulations observed by a religious order or congregation; the order or congregation itself.

Funnily enough these both potentially apply in my household as the man of the house is the Vicar of Hixon.

Basically you need to do the washing up and probably tidy your bedroom.

So for the first time I will suggest otherwise to Carrie Bradshaw when she says that moving back in with the fam, ‘it’s like having servants, which you don’t pay for’. You see generally speaking, parents slash people prefer to not act or be treated as ones slave.

Despite these social norms there are other perks…

Reading, can be done to the hum of the birds rather than to that of a bus.

Breathing is easier with full on access to fresh air and maybe the occasional breeze of manure if you’re lucky.

A bountiful array of winding and mindful walks where everyone says hello to you and most of the dogs are friendly.

Runs are even more exhilarating and potentially more beneficial than any indoor gym treadmill. What with the invariable gradients off the beaten track and fresh rather than conditioned air from the great outdoors will give your legs and lungs some lovin’.

Let’s not forget about country fashion which is fleece permitting and a bare face is the most beautiful. Accessory wise, the only ones I have carried are a sketch pad and pencils.

The scenery is pretty buff too. It’s not every day that you manage to fit a cow, a castle and a hot air balloon all onto one photo.

Appreciate! This and the fact that I took it whilst holding the best lolly in the world. Twister lollies entail an unbeatable and original deliciousness as well as a bucketful of childhood memories which I won’t go into – they scream Spring for me like Magnums scream Summer for others so one by the canal was picture perfect.

Enjoy your Easter break! Silent noise, ci vuole.

Firstly it focussed on Pigs and the use of farrowing crates; “The farrowing crate is a small metal cage in which pregnant sows are imprisoned for weeks on end, usually from a week before giving birth until their piglets are weaned three to four weeks later. The metal frame of the crate is just centimetres bigger than the sow’s body and severely restricts her movements. She is completely unable to turn around, can scarcely take a step forward or backward and frequently rubs against the bars when standing up and lying down. Beside her cage is a “creep” area – usually around 50-100cm x 2m in size – for her piglets. The flooring is hard concrete and some form of heating, either mats or more commonly heatlamps, is used as a substitute for the warmth of their mother’s body. The piglets are free to reach the sow’s teats to suckle but she is prevented from moving close to them and cleaning them by the bars of the cage.” DEFRA, 2004A.

These Farrowing Crates are ALLOWED by the “Red Tractor” label and currently also allowed by “Freedom Foods RSPCA monitored” the latter will be phasing them out by the end of the year (RSPCA?! Isnt this charity all about the welfare of animals, how could they allow such a cruel existence in the first place?). The “Organic Soil Association” quite rightly have a ban on Farrowing Crates.

The “Red Tractor” label do not insist that straw is provided for the pigs bedding (the other two labels do) – What kind of welfare standards is this – No bedding to keep the pigs dry and warm??!

When it came to chickens I was also shocked; The “Red Tractor” label allows a maximum of 19 chickens per square meter, “Freedom Foods” maximum of 15 chickens per square meter and “Organic Soil Association” is a maximum of 11.

The “Freedom Foods” label insists that chickens must have natural light, straw bales and objects to peck on, “Organic Soil association also insist on this as well as access to pasture “Red Label” require NONE of the above?!

The “Organic Soil Association” also allows its chickens to be reared more naturally, their chickens live two and a half times longer than most chickens reared for meat.

The “Red Tractor” Label is set up to meet the minimum government guidelines, the other two labels aim to provide better welfare for the animals and  go beyond government guidelines.

I for one will be looking into this more as I always assumed the above labels ment that the meat had been reared to high welfare standards; What I have seen on Countryfile is far from that. I would like to encourage you all to do the same but also, when possible, to buy locally from smallholdings or local farmers markets where you can physically see the welfare standards. Eggs from someones backyard hens are some of the best you can get, meat from a smallholder who has open fields and outdoor raised animals, raised in a natural way – yes you may pay a few pennies more but the animals will have lived a truly happy life.

For those out there who can’t understand how someone can raise pigs as pets but also other breeds of pigs for meat, I beg you to google “Farrowing crates” or “Factory Pig Farms”, then in comparison take a look at my website www.petpig.webs.com and look at our outdoor setup – the two ways of rearing pigs for meat are just incomparable. I would far rather know that the pigs had led a happy life with grass to graze and root in, warm straw in their beds and the warm sun on their backs than stuck inside in a crate where they cannot more, turn around and sometimes not even lye down to sleep.

It is therefore grossly unjust that the three female presenters of  Rip Off Britain – Gloria Hunniford, Angela Rippon and Julia Somerville – only receive £1,000 each per episode, amounting to £20,000 a year, compared to Match of the Day presenters Alan Hansen, Gary Lineker and Alan Shearer who are paid astronomical amounts for their efforts on the programme. According to yesterday’s Sunday Times Hansen currently gets £1.5 million a year (to be cut to £1 million next season), Lineker, the show’s anchor-man receives about £2 million a year and poor old Alan Shearer a mere £400,000 a year or £10,000 per show. The lowest paid of this particular football trio receives ten times more than each of the three Rip Off Britain presenters.

Methinks I smell an insidious rat which is all to do with age and gender. Hunniford, Rippon and Somerville are all women of a certain age – 71, 67 and 64 respectively. The three of them feel strongly that they receive so very much less than equivalent male presenters simply because they are women who are no longer in the first flush of youth. Their pitiful remuneration is obviously not based on viewing figures as their programme consistently beats Match of the Day.

The Rip Off Britain case is another example in the saga of the way the BBC treats its older women presenters, Countryfile presenter Miriam O’Reilly has already won an age discrimination case against the Corporation. Perhaps the outspoken anger of Hunniford, Rippon and Somerville will ensure than when the show returns next season not only these three excellent presenters but all other women at the BBC will get a fair deal.

Meanwhile, there is very bad news for women in Spain. The country’s new conservative rulers want to overturn the changes the previous socialist government made to the law relating to abortion. Justice Minister Alberto Ruiz Gallardon, one of the rising stars of the ruling party, has announced that he hopes to bring back a law from 1985 that allowed abortions only if the women’s mental or physical health was in danger or if she had been raped. The current law allows abortions on the national health service without the patient having to provide any justification if she is no more than 14 weeks pregnant. Moreover, 16-year olds can have abortions without their parents’ permission.

Abortion campaigners in Spain are appalled, stating that going back to the old restrictive law will lead to an increase in back-street abortions and a consequent rise in termination-related deaths. Dr Santiago Barambio who risked imprisonment for carrying out abortions under Franco told the Sunday Times, “They [the conservative government] want to take us back to the Franco days. They’re going to put moral concepts into laws so that we can all go to heaven.”    

Women across Europe obviously still face discrimination and have to overcome obstacles throughout their lives. These two examples at either end of the spectrum – older women television presenters receiving far less money than their male counterparts and abortion rights being threatened in Spain -  aptly demonstrate just how far we have yet to go.   

But just weeks after former White House aide Peter Rinfret lost his claim in the High Court that Melissa had abducted their son, the heartbroken former star of BBC’s Countryfile has learned he is now issuing similar proceedings in the U.S.

Melissa, who met financier Rinfret on a blind date in London — he was then married to U.S. interior designer Cindy Rinfret, whom he has since divorced — is exhausted and fearful over her former lover’s new court action.

It comes after she successfully fought off his abduction claim in the High Court and won an interim custody order.

The businessman claims that Cheshire-born Melissa, 39, abducted Pierce by bringing  him back to Britain to live with her in London.

However, to begin with Melissa believed that Peter wanted to move with her.

Barbara has written a memoir (Bedpans and Bobby Socks by Barbara Fox and Gwenda Gofton) of her Mum Gwenda Gofton’s trip to the USA in the late 1950s to take up a nursing post in Cleveland. The story unfolds in Cleveland during a one year nursing placement and then subsequently with four nursing friends taking off around the USA, Canada, Mexico and Cuba in an old Ford car on the trip of a lifetime (lasting 18 months). Definite similarities with Call the Midwife in the period and subject matter and also in the camaraderie of the nurses albeit in a more glamorous US setting. The book is already published in the UK by Little, Brown (available on Amazon and in all good bookshops) and is due for release in the US in May, when the wider audience will hopefully kick-start some more interest in filming this great story.

As for Vera, I do find the main character annoying but some fantastic Northumberland locations and it was the setting for last week’s episode that interested our family and it again is due to my wife’s writing. She is co-writing a book called “One Girl and her Dogs: Life, Love & Lambing in the Middle of nowhere”, with Emma Gray a young sheep farmer, dog trainer and duck troupe conductor (until a fox ate them!) from the wilds of Northumberland. We have visited Emma at her remote farm in the Harwood Forest in Northumberland (you may also have seen her on “Countryfile” on BBC 1 a few weeks ago?).

Anyway, while on a recent visit Emma took us to a nearby uninhabited and semi derelict farm-house on her property (National Trust land) and we thought it strange that despite the state of the house with holes in the roof, there was fresh but dated wallpaper on one wall of each room. As Emma then explained the property had been used for the episode of “Vera” shown last week on TV, and the film company had just dressed up one wall to shoot against with a few suitable pieces of furniture in place.

I think Emma’s story (an attractive mid 20′s woman farming in a desolate but beautiful Northumberland forest with 18 dogs and some sheep, and her travails as a dog trainer, sheepdog trialist, duck trainer and contract shepherdess) is a sure-fire winner of a TV series itself, but before then keep an eye out for the book when it is published in April by Little,Brown.

Below are a picture of Bedpans and Bobby Socks covers (just being reprinted after selling out its initial run so may look slightly different), and some pictures of Emma’s farm and fantastic location (Barbara in the red, Thomas and Joseph Fox with Emma last summer).

While I was photographing the first of my chosen views, a dog walker stopped to say hello and mentioned that they were showing the canal on Countryfile on BBC1 later that evening. We chatted for a while, with him stating that he hadn’t seen them filming, but I thought it was slightly ironic, that I’d chosen that evening to photograph the canal.

I can vouch for the disappearance of the small birds from gardens. Apart from the occasional blackbird and blue tit  (and a jay last week – the first one I’ve ever seen in my garden!) very few birds are availing themselves of my feeders. If this is happening in your garden the best thing to do is to keep your feeders clean and put a small amount of feed in so any passing birds recognise your garden as a source of food and can stop to refill if they need to. But it looks as thought the cold weather is starting to arrive here in Cambridgeshire so garden bird numbers may well increase in the near future.

So last weekend I ventured to the fields on the edge of Histon to see if they are still in residence. The hedges and fields were well populated with goldfinch (Carduelis carduelis, Dansk: stillits) and chaffinch (Fringilla coelebs, Dansk: bogfinke), great tit (Parus major, Dansk: musvit) and long tailed tit (Aegithalos caudatus, Dansk: halemejse) and green woodpeckers were abundant too. I don’t know if the numbers of green woodpecker (Picus viridis, Dansk: grønspætte) I see are representative of national trends but they seem to be numerous here in Histon, also where I work on Cambridge Science Park and today I was at the RSPB reserve at Fen Drayton near St Ives and there were good numbers there too. Two birds that I haven’t seen recently in the numbers I’d expect are dunnock and greenfinch – I hope that’s because they’re out in the countryside and it doesn’t reflect a decline in overall numbers.

I talked in my post a couple of weeks ago, Forests and Fungi, about how I’ve been inspired to look for other ways of photographing nature rather than simply taking traditional portrait shots. Rowleys Meadow which is on the edge of Histon, has mature ash trees (Fraxinus excelsior) on the periphery which are laden with ash keys and as a result there are thousands of young ash saplings:

Brown grass stems merge with the taller, thicker, silver stems of the ash saplings

And this presented a good opportunity to capture some abstract nature images. I like the way the low, bright sunlight creates a vertical pattern of silver and shadow as it illuminates hundreds of young ash trees

Back to birds, as well as our regular winter residents migrants from Scandinavia are much in evidence, redwing (Turdus iliacus, Dansk: vindrossel), and fieldfare (Turdus pilaris, Dansk: sjagger):

A lone fieldfare perched in a tree after gorging on a blackthorn bush laden with sloe berries

Small flocks of fieldfare can be seen and heard making there distinctive and diagnostic call, and the flocks will get bigger if the weather does turn wintry. Last winter, which was brutally cold here and in Scandinavia, huge numbers of waxwing (Bombycilla garrulus, Dansk: silkehale) arrived in the UK from Norway, but due to the much warmer weather I don’t think we’ll see them here in quite such abundance this year, which is a real shame because they are indeed spectacular:

Waxwing – it’s around the size of a starling and the colours are amazing

Histon has a resident rook colony (Corvus frugilegus, Dansk: sibirisk allike) who have their rookery in the tall trees adjacent to the church and are a constant source of aerial entertainment. They were feeding in a field along Guns Lane, which runs from Histon to Ely, as I wandered along it and this one took exception to my presence and flew over squawking at me as it went,

I took the hint and moved on, heading home. But a little further along Guns Lane I paused when I heard the quiet and delicate song of a flock of long tailed tits. So I stood still and they went about their routine in trees about 10m away. I really like these diminutive, gregarious, birds and I love trying to photograph them, which can be challenging as they are very small and they never settle in any one place for very long. But I managed to get this series of shots which I’m rather pleased with:

Even though the weather is pleasantly mild at the moment, I prefer winter when it’s cold, so I’m hoping it will start to behave as it should and these delightful little birds come back to feed in my garden!

Coldwell Rocks at Symonds Yat taken by Linda Wright

We are not a boastful lot in the Wye Valley. We are used to people waxing lyrical about the landscape, the river, the views, the history, the fine food and the welcome to be found in the Wye Valley Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONB) and we have earned a fair number of accolades throughout 2011.

These included the Best River in England and Wales, the Nation’s Favourite Park for The Old Station Tintern and top restaurant in Wales for the Crown at Whitebrook to name but a few.

We were however delighted to hear that the Wye Valley Walk has earned third place behind Hadrian’s Wall and the West Highland Way in the Countryfile Magazine Awards for the Britain’s Greatest Walking Trails.

The awards were launched in the April issue of Countryfile Magazine and featured 10 categories, from conservation projects and food heroes to walks and trails and our finest nature reserves. In each of the ten categories, a panel of experts drew up a shortlist of candidates. The awards were then voted for by readers of the magazine and members of the public via post, email and on the Countryfile Magazine website,

The Wye Valley Walk, a 136 mile walk from Chepstow to Plynlimon through some of the finest river lndscapes in the British Isles, is managed by a partnership from the Wye Valley AONB, Monmouthshire, Gloucestershire, Herefordshire and Powys  County Councils and have redcently brought out a new amended official guide to this Walk through the well known trail guide
publishers Cicerone.

The magpie – villain of the piece – apparently

The interviewee from the GWCT, Dr Jeremy Stoate, justified the cull on scientific grounds suggesting that increased predator numbers result in significant reductions of prey populations and the species they identified as being largely responsible was the magpie.

Magpies are bold, brassy, ubiquitous, and are generally percieved as being a tad raffish. They undoubtedly predate songbird nests, but I struggled to understand how this could justify slaughtering them. Numerous other species of bird and mammal such as sparrowhawk, kestrel, owls, great spotted woodpeckers, rats, stoats and probably the biggest killer of small birds, domestic cats, all predate songbirds and some raid nests to poach eggs and chicks.

So why was it only magpies that were to be exterminated?

The action was being justified on a scientific basis, and whilst I’m no ecologist, I am a scientist, and the whole thing seemed unscientific, so I decided to do a little research of my own on the subject. Interestingly, since I did my initial research in June, it appears that references to the study on the GWCT website have been taken down. At least, I couldn’t find any.

However, what I did find out was that the study was commissioned and financed by another ‘conservation’ organisation called Songbird Survival. Whilst I believe that GWCT do have a genuine interest in the countryside as a whole, the same cannot be said for Songbird Survival. It is a registered UK charity whose statement of activities on UK Charity Commission website is this:

THE PRINCIPAL OBJECTIVE OF THE CHARITY IS TO IMPROVE, PROTECT AND PRESERVE FOR THE BENEFIT OF THE PUBLIC THE POPULATION OF SONG AND OTHER SMALL BIRDS BY THE CONSERVATION AND RECREATION OF HABITATS, BY SUITABLE EDUCATION OF THE PUBLIC AND LOBBYING MP’S AND THE HOUSE OF LORDS, TO EFFECT CHANGES IN THE LAW WHERE WE FEEL IT IS NECESSARY.

However, the details on the Charity Commission website also list the trustees, and that makes interesting reading too…

LORD COKE, MR CLIVE PATRICK SHERWOOD, MR FRED VALENTINE INGRAMS, MR JOHN RICHARD PUGH, LORD MICHAEL RICHARD RANKEILLOUR, MR ROBERT JOHN MIDDLEDITCH, MR DAVID GRIFFITH, MR NICK FORDE, LORD JOHN HADDINGTON, MR HUGH VAN CUTSEM, MR COLIN STRANG STEEL

All of these trustees are big landowners, or relatives of landowners, some with shooting estates, and they all support hunting and shooting. Lord Coke is the owner of Holkham Hall in Norfolk and he and several of his gamekeepers have been prosecuted for killing birds of prey by shooting and poisoning. So I’m struggling to believe that these people really have the best interests of songbirds at heart when they are funding ‘scientific’ destruction of a single predator species which has been implicated in taking gamebirds. And via the titled gentlemen listed as trustees they would be ideally placed to carry out their stated aim of ‘lobbying MP’s and the House of Lords‘.

Back to the science though. I recently attended a lecture in which Dr Mike Toms of the British Trust for Ornithology (BTO) talked about garden birds and how gardens are becoming an increasingly important sanctuary for increasing numbers of songbirds, and therefore predators, such as magpies, great spotted woodpeckers and sparrowhawks. In the course of his lecture Dr Toms talked about the decrease in songbird numbers and how magpies were being blamed but said that magpie predation was not the cause of the decline in numbers but habitat destruction and current agricultural practices were the primary reasons. I emailed Dr Toms and he was kind enough to send me several links to published work by the BTO into bird predation. This list included this publication: ‘Population changes of avian predators and grey squirrels in England: is there evidence for an impact on avian prey populations? Journal of Applied Ecology 47: 244- 252‘ describing a collaborative study between the BTO, GWCT and the University of St Andrews in which the impact of 2 groups of predators, those which predate adult birds and fledglings and those which predate nests (including the magpie) were analysed for 29 prey populations. Quoting directly from this paper:

‘For 22 avian prey species, there is no evidence that increases in common avian predators and grey squirrels are associated with large-scale depression of prey abundance or population declines‘.

Then:

‘Unexpected was a large number of positive (my italics) associations between predators and prey, particularly for native avian nest predators, which largely exonerates these predators as driving declines in passerine numbers‘

And:

‘Analyses of large-scale and extensive national monitoring data provide little underlying evidence for large-scale impacts of widespread avian predators and grey squirrels on avian prey populations…‘

The paper also describes negative correlations between the remaining seven prey species and predator numbers, and accepts that some of these may be causally related. Although e.g. the relationship between sparrowhawk and tree sparrow is probably significant, that between buzzard and goldfinch almost certainly isn’t. However, in an email from Dr Toms to me he indicates that the GWCT study showed negative causal relations on  a local level but, crucially, not at a population level.

This last point is key to the argument. In a study of population dynamics, if conclusions are to be drawn about overall depletion of numbers in response to a specific influence small local studies cannot be extrapolated to enable conclusions for the population as a whole, and to do so is erroneous at best, misleading at worst.

Incidentally, I also found a publication on the website of Songbird Survival entitled ‘Detecting an impact of predation on bird populations depends on the methods used to assess the predators’, (Methods in Ecology and Evolution (2010),1,300-310, Nicoll M., Norris K.). This is an interesting paper because rather than analysing actual population data it investigates the methods used to analyse the data. And in the summary the last point recommends: ‘…the findings for studies which use opportunistic data, for a limited number of predator species, should be treated with caution and that future studies employ bespoke census techniques to monitor predator abundance for an appropriate suite of predators.’

This is interesting because it argues that the methods used to analyse opportunistic, observational data must be carefully optimised to ensure that conclusions drawn from the data adequately reflect the observations.

None of the publications suggest that slaughtering the predators is a rational scientific way to assess the negative impact on prey species. And I’m inclined to think that culling is poor science, particularly as the latest evidence suggests predator numbers don’t reflect negatively on songbird populations and in some instances there is actually a positive correlation between predator and prey, presumably because the predators remove the sick and the slow before they can add their DNA to the genepool.

I think the notion that predators destroy prey populations is bizarre because I was taught, and importantly, I believe it to be the case, that prey abundance determines predator numbers, not vice versa. If prey numbers decline then shortly afterwards so do predator numbers. Taking the reverse of this theory to it’s logical conclusion, if predator numbers determine prey numbers, all prey species would eventually become extinct and then the predators would also become extinct and the balance of nature which has prevailed for the last few billion years would be turned on its head. Which is absurd.

So population studies which are centred around the slaughter of predators seem to me to fly in the face of all current theory and are therefore morally indefensible aswell as being scientifically unsound, especially when commissioned and financed by such obvious vested interests as Songbird Survival.

When you next go to Bank Ground Farm you must stand outside and imagine the sight of two red London Route Master buses making their way down the drive.  They swayed from side to side.  We thought it comic. I still can’t work out how they managed to avoid how bringing down the dry stone walls. While sheep grazed around us outside in the rain, we made ourselves comfortable at the Formica tables in our school bus and got down to our lessons. I am sure it was good for us to be kept busy.

Bank Ground Farm above Coniston Water in Cumbria

Meanwhile Ian Whittaker, the Set Dresser, and Simon Holland, the Art Director, transformed two of Mrs Batty’s upstairs rooms into the Walker children’s  bedrooms of 1929. I changed in the cold and was rushed through the rain with a coat over my nightie to the magical atmosphere of the set, warmed by the lights with everyone’s focus on what was just in front of the camera; me reading a beautiful edition of Daniel Defoe’s classic. Claude needed to establish that Robinson Crusoe was Titty’s hero. I can remember having to hold the book in special way so the cover could be seen clearly. I described this as ‘a bed scene’, which might amuse some actors, especailly those who are not at all keen on doing bed-scenes (every actor I know). The beds themselves are probably still at the farm.

Sophie Neville, Virginia McKenna and Simon West on the cover of the ‘Swallows and Amazons’ LP, which is still available on Amazon.co.uk

I expect they shot the scene where John is learning Morse Code in bed before my scene. Simon West had to be made very brown indeed, the Make-up Designer dabbing away with a tiny sponge, for the uneasy sequence, much later in the story, when he came to explain himself to his mother. This was shot with Virginia McKenna sitting at a writing desk in the square bay window, with the view of Coniston Water beyond. I sat there myself when I was making Swallow’s flag.

Virginia McKenna and Lucy Batty at Bank Ground Farm on 15th May 1973

Mrs Batty later explained to me that the bay window leaked terribly and she was glad to get rid of it. She now has a lounge area there, which is dedicated as a Swallows and Amazons room.  I was chatting to her back in 2002 when we were waiting for Ben Fogel and the BBC crew of Countryfile to return from looking for other locations used in the film before interviewing Suzanna Hamilton and myself at the farm. The problem was that Suzanna’s train was terribly delayed. We waited and waited and waited. It got later and later. When her taxi finally arrived I was so excited to see her I grabbed her and made her run down to the lake to see Amazon, the dinghy we had sailed together, which was there at the time. The poor director must have been at her wit’s end. Ben Fogel had to come down to fetch us. My excuse was that Suzanna must have needed a stretch after such a long journey. The Westmorland Gazette captured the three of us plodding back up the field before we sat on the grass for our interview.

Ben Fogel, Sophie Neville, Suzanna Hamilton and the BBC crew recording Countryfile at Bank Ground Farm in October 2002

I did the whole interview holding a bottle of grog, which the Arthur Ransome fans who were staying at the farm gave me. You can see it in the photographs if you look closely.  I don’t think Ben knew what it was.

It was into this interview that my father’s 16mm footage of the making of Swallows and Amazons was cut, with such success that the documentary was re-shown as Big Screen Britain. What I didn’t know was that Ben Fogel was born in 1973 after we had made the movie. It was only once the crew had disappeared that Suzanna and I really began to talk.

You can keep it – this isn’t a power struggle.  But can you rewind please, ‘cos you missed Autumn!

Last week was summer, good and proper.  The news was full of deck-chairs & ice creams, broken records (temperature ones) and the shops had to dig out their summer stock again – SOooo last season!

I was looking forward to the whole ‘Autumn’ thing – cardis, socks & slippers, homemade soup, , blankets, strolling through crisp russet-coloured leaves, admiring cobwebs jewelled with dew and the whole of that magical journey into Winter.   But I seem to have missed all that – did I do a sudden hibernation and sleep through it?

This morning was chilly – to say the least – winter appeared to have arrived already.  I waddled off down the garden and Flora and I waddled back up again together, me wishing I’d popped a coat on and Flora all of a feather-fluster – busy and quick-smart-waddling in the cold!

So, if you find the remote could you do a bit of a rewind please.  Just to the beginning of last week, when summer was here and then play back on normal so that I can enjoy the Autumn in all it’s glory!

Alton tomorrow and Blackmoor Apple Day on Sunday – busy weekend ahead!  Pop by and say ‘Hello’ if you’re in the area.

Adaliza x