Keeping their promises

Sir: Matt Ridley is right to assert the conservation role of gamekeepers (‘Ruffled feathers’, 30 May). They, like farmers and crofters, know wading birds are integral to Britain’s rich cultural landscapes. All ground-nesting birds benefit from culling generalist predators. I do this on my croft at my own expense because I love waders and passerines. Where costs cannot be borne by individual goodwill or taxpayer-funded grants, shooting provides a sound economic case for funding the vital combination of predator control and habitat management.

A keeper’s livelihood depends on his ability to prove consistent competence in these two skills. In contrast, government and charity employees suffer no personal consequences from the ongoing decline of the curlew. If their pay was tied to annual curlew productivity, pragmatism would soon triumph over ideology.

Julia Stoddart

Isle of Skye, Highland

Decline of the curlew

Sir: Matt Ridley raises important points about the increasing dearth of curlew in recent years. There were thousands of these birds in Orkney in my youth in the 1950s, crowded in the fields and moors in summer and winter. Even there the curlew has declined, despite the absence of gamekeepers, foxes or badgers – though there are actively controlled numbers of stoats on the main islands. No moorland burning takes place. This suggests that there are other factors at play – possibly changes in farming practices? Toxins associated with modern agriculture? A proper scientific study could help get an answer, and perhaps produce evidence that Chris Packham and the RSPB would find hard to ignore.

Bob Heddle

Ickham, Canterbury

Blame the parents

Sir: Mary Wakefield (‘The rise of the child-haters’, 30 May) misses a fundamental point about children sharing adult spaces on holidays, planes or restaurants. My generation was of the ‘be seen and not heard’ era. The idea that you would cause other diners angst by your presence would not arise, because you would sit still and hold your noise, or be relegated to the car with a packet of crisps. Too many parents do not control their children and allow them to run amok, use their phones and generally disrupt other people’s enjoyment.

Christopher D. Forrest

Yealmpton, Devon

CO2 converts

Sir: Edwina Currie Jones correctly highlights the lunacy of burying huge amounts of CO2 as a waste product under Liverpool Bay (‘Peak gas’, 30 May). Recent advances in catalysis offer the attractive alternative of combining captured CO2 with green hydrogen to produce low-cost, sustainable aviation fuel (SAF). CO2 is simply too valuable – and versatile – to be lost forever underground. SAF now emerges as a key decarbonisation option for the aviation industry.

Peter P. Edwards

OXCCU, Oxford Airport

A bird on the pate

Sir: In his ‘Notes on… Budgerigars’ (30 May) Steve Morris mentioned Winston Churchill’s pet budgie, Toby. Anthony Montague Browne recalls in his Long Sunset: Memoirs of Winston Churchill’s Last Private Secretary the bird’s presence when ministers met at Churchill’s bedside: ‘R.A. Butler (Rab), the Chancellor of the Exchequer, had a large bald head that Toby found particularly attractive as a perch, with inevitable avian consequences. Butler mopped his head with a spotless silk handkerchief and sighed patiently: “The things I do for England.”’

Peter Saunders

Salisbury, Wiltshire

Jazzed up

Sir: I enjoyed Andrew Martin’s account of his gradual conversion to jazz (Arts, 30 May), particularly his observation that some records require persistence before they reveal their charms. Yet he may be too quick to consign rock music to the funeral pyre of middle age. The idea jazz is somehow more dignified or sophisticated than rock seems a category error. Emotional depth does not depend on harmonic complexity. One could imagine Bill Evans accompanying mourners to the bar; equally one could choose ‘Waterloo Sunset’ or ‘Gimme Shelter’. The most fitting funeral music is simply the music that mattered most to the deceased.

Federico Forni

London SW15

Viz Britain

Sir: In Shaun Wilson’s review of Malc’s Boy (Books, 23 May), I was amused to learn of Auberon Waugh’s view that one could not properly understand Britain without reading Viz. Driving from Lancaster to Leeds recently, I paused for coffee at Clapham Village Store in the Dales. There, on the top shelf, Viz seemed to have found its natural habitat, lodged comfortably between Heritage Tractor, Farmers Guardian and the Land Rover Yearbook. If Britain can be understood anywhere, it may be there.

Isabel Hunt

Leeds, West Yorkshire

The sheep win

Sir: I read with interest about the excitement and foreboding around the impact of AI (‘Critical mass’, 30 May). Having only a limited understanding of new technologies, my benchmark for their benefits is if they will help me to ensure that the churchyard grass is cut efficiently. To date, sheep remain in the ascendancy.

Jane Moth

Stone, Staffordshire

Yellow book salvation

Sir: Flora Watkins writing about the National Garden Scheme took me back to 1990, when I moved to the country and would visit gardens in far-flung parts of Sussex with my baby. Every outing was a success as there were people to watch, flowers to wave at and lawns to totter on. I recommend the yellow book to any new mother who needs her sanity restored.

Julia Jeffries

Hartfield, East Sussex

Professor of surgery

Sir: I read with interest Hugh Thomson’s review of the biography of Vera Gedroits (Books, 23 May). I was surprised, however, at his assertion that there was not another female professor of surgery until 1993. My partner’s late grandmother, O.V. Sviatukhina, was an acclaimed breast cancer surgeon in the Soviet Union, widely published at home and abroad. She attended a number of medical conferences outside Russia and was identified in the records as ‘Professor’. She worked until she was 91.

Norman Jack TD,

Chobham, Surrey

Arise Sir Rod

Sir: The letters in last week’s magazine (30 May) started off with the words ‘Sir Rod Liddle suggests’. For one glorious moment I thought the impossible had occurred.

Charles Pugh

London SW10