Botham's article is arrant, ignorant nonsense (and he's a cricketing hero of mine). He reminds me of all those letter-writers to the Western Morning News who call for the destruction of all sparrowhawks. How do these people suppose that the songbirds, etc., managed to live alongside foxes and other predators for thousands of years since the last glaciation? If you want some home truths, Iains, it's that gamekeepers, via nest-wrecking, shooting and poisoning brought hen harriers to the verge of extinction. Golden eagle nests are wrecked every year in Scotland and birds are regularly poisoned. Landowners and their gamekeepers are not interested in maintaining biodiversity or ecological balance. They are interested only in maintaining their extremely limited range of desirable species which can be shot for the sport of brainless gits like Sir Ian and for their profit. Gamekeepers play a massive part in keeping our most magnificent raptors under constant threat, and farming practices, along with domestic cats, are the biggest threat to songbirds. If we all knew a bit more and cared a bit more, we wouldn't allow these countryside vandals to douse fields with neonicotinoid insecticides that wipe out bees and migrate up tbe food chain or plant winter wheat where skylarks breed. Foxes and birds of prey are easy scapegoats and they can't answer back, even though they're a bit brainier than Botham.