Storms come galloping

The storms came tearing across the bog to the west and fling themselves against the house, writes Dick Warner. 

They reduce the incentive to venture outdoors and much of my interaction with the natural world has been reduced to watching garden birds through the kitchen window.

Every year gardens become more important to birds, and to other forms of wildlife too. The open countryside is shrinking. It disappears under motorways and housing developments, bogs are milled, hedgerows are uprooted, wetlands are drained and farmland becomes less hospitable to biodiversity. And when I look at the Government’s plans to increase agricultural output over the coming decade I have to believe that this trend will continue for some time to come.