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Brian sits, puffed up with his own importance, glowering at me through the kitchen window. He wants to come in and occasionally lunges at the window to make his point. I’m not even sure what he is grumpy about – it’s a great week for Brian. Because blue tit sightings (sorry, did I mention Brian is a blue tit, or Cyanistes caeruleus as he’d put it on his LinkedIn?) in gardens were up almost 10% on the previous year in the RSPB 2024 Big Garden Birdwatch. Meanwhile, Cosmopolitan magazine insists sky blue is the “must-have hue” for spring.
Maybe Brian is crotchety because, despite his beauty and soprano trill, he remains in the No 2 slot of most-spotted birds, another year trailing to the frankly rather drab house sparrow. Or maybe he’s in a flap because all media attention has focused on the collapse in starling numbers – the lowest since counting began in 1979.
I’ve tried explaining to Brian that we journalists are trained to focus on bad news – and that starlings being on a red list of endangered bird species is just that. But I sense he has a certain scorn for the groupthink mindset of starlings and their murmurating. Like a Channel swimmer’s disdain for a synchronised swim squad.
Overall, there is little good news in the annual bird survey. In the five years to 2023, bird populations have declined by 2% across the UK, and by 7% in England due to climate crisis, loss of natural habitats and bird flu.
The RSPB suggests we make small changes in our gardens, such as leaving grass uncut and avoiding pesticides to help survival rates. But maybe there is an even easier first step – to make friends with our feathered visitors.
Brian and I met on the avian equivalent of Tinder, an online app called ChirpOMatic, which identifies birdsong and markings and has alerted me to so many birds stopping for a breather in my patch of garden. If only we could find time to truly appreciate the beauty and friendship of birds, even we naturally destructive humans might instinctively become their protectors…
Pastry pilfering
The Sun newspaper undertook an excellent investigation last week – monitoring dozens of people going into branches of Greggs and wandering out without paying for bakes, biscuits and doughnuts.
We’ve been reading about the shoplifting epidemic for years. What we are dealing with is very occasionally incidents of people in real need acting out of desperation, and more often people who no longer wish to play by the rules, such as paying for their steak bake.
There is a host of reasons why people may feel so disengaged from society that they no longer want to shell out for a sausage roll, all the way from rampant inequality, lack of trust in politics and big business, to atomisation and polarisation due to social media algorithms. But the moral argument – which the right is so much more effective at making – is that it’s simply bang out of order.
The Greggs investigation is so impactful because the bakery chain lies at the heart of British life. A survey last year showed it was the UK’s most popular “dining brand”. And for every shoplifter, there are a dozen lowish-paid Greggs workers and customers forced to witness this sneering at the rules. Those are the people who need to see police officers in town centres, as announced by the home secretary last week. If they don’t, they’ll be voting for whoever convinces them they will. It’s time to get tough on pastry pilfering – and the causes of pastry pilfering.
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Full of Easter promise
Easter has become the new Christmas. But better. Shops are stuffed with Easter-themed paraphernalia, from door wreaths to egg cups. Instead of cranberry sauce and sprouts, there is roast lamb and asparagus. Instead of stuffed dates and jellied oranges, there is chocolate, chocolate and chocolate. Instead of Baileys and mulled wine, there is light, sparkling English wine. Instead of red and green baubles, everything is pastel shades and adorned with chicks and bunnies. And instead of to-do lists and shopping missions and parties you can’t get out of, there is… nothing. Just the warmth of spring sunshine.
