Welcome to bird hell

摘要

Chris Packham describes a dramatic encounter with a rare bird that spurred him to take some direct action and vow to make a mere statistic countI can't remember when I last cried - at least 10 yearsago. Certainly when my dog was run over and died in my arms. Then I cried a lot. It's not that I fight it, just that I'm a pretty dispassionate pragmatist when it comes to life and death and probably more stoic than most. But this year I cried in front of more than 30,000 viewers on YouTube. I could offer some excuses but in truth, from the moment I reached into the cardboard box which held a shot Montagu's harrier and gently felt its badly broken wing, and as soon as I saw the blood of this beautiful and rare raptor on my fingers and looked into its brilliant yellow eyes it was a predictable reaction.