HAVE YOUR SAY ON RURAL ISSUES
Share your views and opinions by writing to us at: Have your say: BBC Countryfile Magazine, Eagle House, Bristol BS1 4ST; or email editor@countryfile.com, tweet us @CountryfileMag or via Facebook facebook.com/countryfilemagazine
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SAVING LAPWINGS
Like Nicola Chester (August issue), I have a love of the lapwing and consider its courtship display equal to any spectacle that the natural world offers. Sadly, over the past few decades, I have witnessed the virtual wipe-out of the large flocks that were once so common on the East Midlands farmlands.
I used to offer to peg lapwing nests out [marking nests on farmland to help farmers avoid damaging them] and I would give the farmers a few bottles of beer if allowed, but my offer was met by various comments, from acceptance, to “I haven’t got time for that nonsense”, to the contractors not even knowing what a lapwing was.
Earlier in the year, I had been keeping an eye on several nesting pairs (the only ones this year) and was dismayed to see the farmer ‘raking’ the huge field as they were sitting. It was solely by chance that I had been passing and spotted him.
Pulling over, I saw the farmer walking with a traffic cone and together we found the nest that he was searching for to peg out. I bought him some chocolate and beer. He said, “you didn’t need to do that”, and I said, “I did, I can assure you.”
Ash Harrison, Derbyshire
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ADORED ARDNAMURCHAN
I very much enjoyed the article about Hamza Yassin on the Ardnamurchan Peninsula (September issue). But I felt rather jealous that he lives there. My late husband, together with our two children and two of their friends, spent what is one of the best holidays we have ever had there. We walked, climbed, swam in a loch and generally embraced the most beautiful surroundings.
My daughter became a vegetarian, as she couldn’t come to terms with the forthcoming culling of the beautiful deer, who were coming down to the loch to cool off (yes, the
