Singing in the Rain

Some things can be disturbing in a nice way. One thing that is, is waking up at 6.30 on a cold, dark,  rainy January morning and hearing a Song Thrush singinging its heart out. Its actually been singing all day for several days now but I haven't hear it in the dark before. Maybe its because at this time of year, 6.30 only really occurs to me in the evening. As yet it only really seems to be Robins and Song Thrushes that have seen a sign of spring, I haven't, apart from daffodil leaves. Spring to me is when you suddenly realise you should have planted seeds a month ago.
There are some things missing here this month, no Bramblings have shown up here, the Blackcaps disappeared in November, there are no overwintering Chiffchaffs, no Redpoll flocks, very few Goldfinches, and the Siskin flock which appeared just before Christmas as it usually does has made no sign of reappearing from mid January (which it usually does). Maybe it is the unusual temperatures that has displaced things.
Talking of disappearing things, I am going to have to remove my record of Ruddy Duck in an earlier post as apparently nothing less than the total eradication of this species will do for the RSPB. It appears that around a handful of British based Ruddy Duck (perversely introduced by Sir Peter Scott)  have made it over to Spain to hybridise with the the internationally threatened White Headed Duck although the actual number of hybrids appear to be almost stastically irrelevent. A more important issue surely has to be how the White Headed Duck became internationally threatened in the first place, which I would suggest might be loss of habitat and a surplus of orange sauce in the fridges of gun toting personages.  Presumably were a feral White Headed Duck population to be released in Britain, the RSPB would quietly ask DEFRA to do a quick, unthorough and unscientific appraisal on its environmental impact and order their destruction lest they impact on the increasingly rare British Ruddy Duck population (now estimated 500 pairs from a previous high of 6000).
Much as I appreciate the RSPB has international status which it is keen to uphold, I rescinded my membership of the RSPB several years ago on their stance on this extremely contencious issue as well as what I perceived their stance to be on breeding Eagle Owls in Britain which may, or may not be from captive escapees rather than vagrants. To my mind, regardless of the semantics, if you set yourself up as a body promoting the protection of something, you don't promote the shooting of it.
End of.