THE STARLINGS HAVE RETURNED

There's a comforting fragrance in the air these bright spring mornings: a crisp wafting of dampness and cherry blossom, of tangled buds bursting through their winter carapaces, the new horizon of infinite possibility that this time of year always seems to herald.

This morning two starlings sat optimistically on the telephone wire that enters the house above my bedroom window. For as long as we have lived here, a loose board has given access to the attic and the starlings (they can't always be the same pair surely?) take advantage. But who determines which pair gets this choice nesting site in the dry insulation of a centrally heated house? There never seems to be any competition.

I love the mimicry of starlings: the way they sit on the television aerial making mobile phone rings, though as our TNT driver has a phone programmed to mimic a cock crowing, one wonders who is imitating whom. But all birdsong is enriching even the harsh cries of jays and magpies.

The other day I heard one of these birds - or maybe several - in the hedge on the Roman road. I could not precisely identify the cry; but it was loud, near and insistent. Though I peered into the hedge, I saw no bird - surely it must be quite large, I thought - nor did anything take flight. As I walked on, whatever it was followed calling to me anew. Strange, eerie even.

"Whatever is that bird?" I asked someone passing, a dutiful black Labrador at heel. "It's the power cables," she replied, pointing upwards.

I looked and sure enough we were under the heavy power line that runs northwards from Aberthaw. The paired cables are being renewed at the moment and normally they are held by spacers some nine inches apart. Clearly this operation had not been completed for the light wind was causing the steel cables to oscillate, so that they swung together irregularly, clashing, whooping and clacking like an outraged crow.

So that was the answer. The cables came together and the 'bird' sang. The cables drifted apart and silence reigned. The 'bird' seemed to be always in the adjacent hedge because the 'bird' was overhead.

In the evening I went along to a dinner marking the 50th anniversary of the EU. A select gathering, held for some reason in a Chinese restaurant. The guests were two Parliamentarians. Both spoke positively and well.

Unexpectedly, I found myself called upon for the vote of thanks and as it had been an occasion to remember the events that led to the initial partnership of six countries, I touched upon the great famine in Continental Europe after the Second World War - an event that British histories tend to overlook - and also of the Berlin airlift - on which my own father served and from the rigours of which he escaped to the rather different rigour of pig farming.

In those days when pigs were fattened on swill on the 'waste not - want not' principle, I used to think we were farming starlings, for the swill attracted great flocks of them. So when a pair sit outside my window, preening their iridescent feathers and hygienically wiping their beaks as starlings are wont to do, I am instantly transported to those far off and unenlightened days half a century ago when even visitors from France were deemed aliens and required to register at the police station.

And not only that. Despite the pressures of the moment, I feel compelled to blog it, too.

Posted by Fennie Somerville

European Commission Keeps Member States Up to Scratch

Two articles attracted my eye this week, showing that the European Commission is keeping its beady eye on what is going on and ensuring that there's no backsliding by member states. For instance, in animal welfare, we learn that the Commission has decided to refer Greece to the European Court of Justice for failure to implement properly and to enforce EU legislation on animal welfare in transport and at slaughter.

This action against Greece follows persistent short-comings identified in the field of animal welfare over a number of years. The standard of animal welfare in Greece remains below par, says the Commission, and the necessary legislation to improve matters has not been adequately implemented.

Among the Commission's concerns is the failure of the Greek authorities to implement EU Directives on animals in transit and on welfare at the time of slaughter. There are no adequate facilities at or near the Greek ferry ports for animals that have undergone long journeys and Greek controls were found to be insufficient to ensure the correct application of the EU rules on slaughtering rules such as the appropriate stunning of animals. Full marks to the Commission!

In the second case, the European Commission is taking Poland to the European Court of Justice over the construction of the Augustow and Wasilkow road bypasses that cut through the Rospuda Valley, damaging important primeval woodland and other habitats of European importance. As construction work has already started the Commission is asking the Court to make Poland to suspend the works immediately.

Nice to know someone is standing up for the environment!

Posted by Peter Sain ley Berry

International Women's Day

Thursday was International Women's Day - the Day when the United Nations and many other organisations take especial notice of the problems faced by women all over the world, particularly in developing countries. Here, of course, there are frequently marked differences in the levels of literacy between men and women as well as other differences in health, employment, education and human rights.

Too often in Europe the need for International Women's Day is scoffed at by people who should really know better. "Why don't we also have an International Men's Day?" they ask superciliously. I once responded to such a person by asking how he (for as might be expected it was a man) would like to be a woman living in Afghanistan, possibly not allowed an education and a marriage arranged over your head. Maybe even not allowed to visit a male doctor (if anyway one is available) but instead told to let your husband tell the doctor about your symptoms.

Thankfully it is now generally acknowledged that women's education is one of the very best investments that can be made in a country to improve generally its wealth and well-being. The emancipation of women also brings with it advantages in terms of fewer children being born and so less pressure on the health and education systems in those countries.

When I was about ten I remember the song 'Que sera, sera' - Whatever will be, will be. It was meant to be encouraging and uplifting - to give you a sense of the possible. Opportunities for women are now greater than they have ever been but still there is a long way to go. Women are succeeding in high positions as never before, but very frequently they are also having to do so either at the expense of raising their children or of not having any. While men cannot biologically bear children a great deal of the business of family and domestic chores are still done, or still organised by, women. There is a gender gap here too. Again progress is being made but the proportion of fathers outside the school gates is almost as small as the proportion of women in the high boardrooms. Things are changing, but meanwhile we still need an International Women's Day.

Posted by Fennie Somerville

Natural Carbon Sequestration in the Sea

A report recently published in the Financial Times told of the unregulated nature of deep sea fishing. The American Association for the Advancement of Science annual meeting in San Francisco was told that government fuel subsidies enable "fishing fleets to operate like roving bandits, using state-of-the-art technologies to plunder the depths" the paper's report said.

The conference also heard that fishing was virtually unregulated in international waters beyond countries' exclusive economic zones, with no agencies to monitor and control catches. Deep-water trawlers drag 15-tonne nets along the seabed, typically 500m-1km below the surface targetting fish such as the orange roughy and grenadiers that grow extremely slowly in the cold ocean depths.

Unlike my colleague Richard Laming who wrote about the topic in his Federal Union blog http://www.federalunion.org.uk/blog/ I personally am more interested in the reported side effects of this fishing than the fishing itself. Again, the Financial Times reports that the Conference was told that a side effect of bottom trawling is the destruction of deep-sea corals and sponge beds that have taken centuries or millennia to grow.

This is most significant and could have a major influence on climate change and the sequestering of carbon. One has only to look at the limestone crags on which this country is built to realise that over the ages a phenomenal amount of atmospheric carbon has been absorbed into the bodies and shells of sea creatures which when compressed have become limestone, chalk, calcite and the rest. Heat a piece of limestone and you drive off this carbon dioxide.

This process of sequestering carbon is on-going. Atmospheric carbon dissolves into the sea and creatures there use it to build their shells and skeletons. The flow of carbon from the atmosphere into the surface of the oceans is about five times that which flows into the atmosphere as a result of man's activities. A similar amount diffuses out of the sea.

It follows that any interference with this great sea engine of absorbtion is likely to result in an increase in atmospheric carbon, regardless of whether or not we burn fossil fuels.

The tragedy is that by not heeding our destruction of the sea's biodiversity we threaten to render all our emission cutting efforts quite useless.

Posted by Peter Sain ley Berry