WELL done Kate Helyer and the

Journal

for a decent, factual article on pheasant shooting. Much better than the seemingly bigoted tosh that John Barum wrote a while back.

Still on a shooting theme, the only cuckoo that I heard this year was at the West London shooting ground, which is an area of several hundred acres of rolling parkland just inside the M25.We heard three and one even flew past us.

The reason for the decline of the cuckoo is predation of songbird nests mainly by our vast population of magpies. If a cuckoo can find a warbler's nest then so can a magpie and the only places where effective predator control is carried out is on land managed for shooting. The RSPB, Natural England, National Trust etc do no control work at all, in fact the RSPCA and RSPB even ran a press campaign this spring denying that magpies had any significant responsibility for the decline of our songbirds and urged people not to kill them. What planet are these people on and how stupid do they think the rest of us are?

So shooting is not only financially beneficial to this area it also provides safe areas for our songbirds to breed.

MARTIN REED,

Bradiford,

Barnstaple.