Madam,

Your correspondent last week who laments the shortage of some garden birds is right about ill-timed hedgerow cutting, but is surely joking when he advocates that another part of the answer is to shoot the remaining birds.

Anyone who daily puts out seed in a feeder designed to exclude squirrels and magpies will have, within a year or two, more songbirds than he knows what to do with, clamouring for their breakfast. And soon after that, the sparrowhawk.

Yours etc,

John Egan, Clarach.

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