Crash-course in birding for Government minister as RSPB chief takes him walkabout at Bempton Cliffs in Yorkshire

 

All kitted out - Beccy Speight and Steve Barclay prepare to set off on gannet safari

IS this the most encouraging photograph of the week? 

Environment Secretary Steve Barclay accepted an invitation to talk all things birds with the Chief Executive of the RSPB, Beccy Speight.

The location - the society's reserve Bempton Cliffs on the Yorkshire Coast - was perhaps not the best. 

It is still too early for the site to resonate to the sights and sounds of thousands of nesting puffins, fulmars, kittiwakes, razorbills, guillemots and more.

But at least gannets were moving over the North Sea - and maybe a few red-throated divers could be seen in the distance.

The Blackpool minister, who took over the environment portfolio from Therese Coffey in November last year, is not  a birder - at least not yet.

But his constituency, North East Cambridgeshire, is on the edge of the Great Fen and offers plenty of habitat for wetland species.

Evidently the pair struck up a cordial rapport - one which immediately paid dividends.

The very next day, the Government announced a ban on industrial fishing of sandeels - prey for many marine birds - in British waters.

What next? A ban on herbicides, pesticides and fungicides on all farmland? 

If his schedule allows, the minister hopes to make a return visit to Bempton in summer - and possibly to Minsmere in Suffolk or some of the RSPB's other reserves.