I was in the Western Isles a few years ago, I'd been travelling around from dole office to dole office to avoid the New Deal and the war and decided to 'do my time' there since it was a nice environment. I walked into a room labelled 'Intensive Activity Period' ( the jargonese for New Deal ) to see three guys laid out on desks asleep with their heads in their hands, that made me laugh. I was also dossing out at a permaculture place there when an RSPB volunteer came around asking for nettles to replant on a project to reintroduce the corncrake to the islands. Nettles provide perfect ground cover for these lovely, although loud, little birds. And the run-down place I was staying in was rich in nothing but nettles. The New Deal office was right next to the RSPB office. So to avoid the monotony of the New Deal office I persuaded another doley to march next door and we both volunteered for a few days work at the RSPB 'reintroducing the corncrake'. In effect we were shit-shovellers, taking a farmers bales of rotten hay and spreading them out as fertiliser in a corner of a field he'd donated to plant the nettles we'd previously dug up. The RSPB employee took a distinctly 'hands-off' approach, although their volunteer joined in. The farmer warned us that we'd need protective breathing equipment as dried hay can damage your lungs. The RSPB employee had no breathing equipment so cajoled us to continue even though I asked for a mask as I had several lung-complaints already. So at the end of the day we smelled worse than shit and could barely breathe.

Anyway, back to the point. On the return journey the RSPB officer had to stop various times to investigate dead birds found by electricity pylons. Two buzzards and some kind of hawk were found under three different poles while I was there. They looked healthy birds apart from being dead ;-)

I'm fairly technical, I've got an HNC in power-line transmissions amongst other basic qualifications. The birds weren't obviously burned at any point in their bodies but they were obviously killed by the transmission lines, given that they were all under power-line poles. So I feel it is safe to assume they were either killed by badly insulated power poles or by the radiation these give off, and I told this to the RSPB woman.

I saw every turbine in the Western Isles and found no dead birds near them. I saw many dead birds near ordinary transmission lines. You often find dead birds under transmissioj lines. And yet the RSPB in the Western Isles are still pursuing a vendettta against wind-power. My impression was there was wide-spread local support for local turbines ( for reasons of autonomy rather than sustainability ) and yet the RSPB there propagandise against wind-power. Local generators of any kind means less transmission cable and so less global-warming, as 90% of generated electricity is lost through electrical resistance in the distribution 'grid'. The fact that wind-power is sustainable and local with no toxic by-products and no need for long transmission lines is just the cherry on the cake.

And so for the RSPB to spend serious amounts of money on 'surveys' to oppose wind-power on false claims that it will harm birds - well, I for one suspect they are being subsidised by British Energy.

By the way, why did RSPB Scotland take 86 flights last year ? Empathy with the birds ? Those self-serving fakers should read up on something that begins with Global and ends in Warming. The RSPB should either sack ALL of it's Scottish staff or stop pretending to be a friend of the environment.