Bellingen birding
The latest State of the UK’s Birds report, published yesterday is a tale of disaster.
The situation is better here. On Sunday’s trip around Raleigh and Urunga we saw over a hundred species including including Peregrine Falcon, Brown Goshawk, Square-tailed Kite, Brolgas and a young Beach Stone-curlew with its parents.



But there is no cause for complacency, many of our birds migrate, and all suffer from climate change, habitat loss, chemical pollution and feral animals. Silent Spring is coming to too many parts of the world.
Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring (1962) shocked Americans with the truth – the chemical industry was destroying natural environments. Serialised in The New Yorker that summer, it helped kick start the environmental movement in the USA. The chemical giants tried to sue her, the New Yorker and her publisher, Houghton Mifflin. This failed so they launched a $250,000 publicity campaign to discredit her and her science.
“Carson was the originator of ecological concerns.” Doris Lessing