Sick as a parrot

Lord Botham is prepared to ruffle the RSPB’s feathers over its approach to the countryside. Good, says Robin Scott, who has his own beef with the charity about the culling of parakeets

- Robin Scott

Lord ‘Beefy’ Botham is a long-term adversary of the RSPB, never slow in pointing out what he perceives as its faults and failings. So it came as no real surprise to discover that the Society was again on his mind when his maiden speech to Parliament’s upper house was outlined recently in a national newspaper.

This time the legendary cricketer and charity fundraiser accused the RSPB of gravely endangering the countryside way of life and fragile infrastructure with its ‘woke’ principles on habitat management and shooting. He said the Society and continuing failures with its own upland nature reserves represented a very real and serious threat to rural communities, wildlife and shooting. Because of this he promised to fight such misguided thinking at every opportunity and to champion the countryside cause.

Numbers problem

Woke thinking? I wonder then what his lordship makes of the Society’s latest pronouncement on bird welfare – this time what to do about the burgeoning UK population of invasive ring-necked parakeets.

Back in 2011, there were thought to be about 30,000 birds in London and the Home Counties, but they’ve now spread north and into parts of Scotland. According to Defra (which describes the parakeet as the ‘grey squirrel of the sky’) the only way to halt and control them is by shooting them in newly colonised areas.