Has anybody looked one step up the food chain to see the effect on insectivorous birds?  I once introduced a talk on 'The Birds and the Bees' by saying that birds eat bees and so should be eradicated!  I was joking!  On a bus journey across Northern France last spring there were very many more insects splattered on the windscreen in Normandy, a region of small fields, hedges, orchards etc than further east where there were vast fields of industrial agriculture.

Later in the year I saw more swallows in a couple of days in rural Co Galway, Ireland, where agriculture is conducted more gently (and yet Ireland is a food exporting country), than the whole summer in England.

I have no idea what was sprayed on the fields in England or France, but am pretty sure that nothing was sprayed in that part of Ireland.

Chris
 

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