Our native fish deserve better I leave the rooks alone. I keep an eye on the bats and owls. I am fascinated by anything and everything that happens within the farm's borders and new things are turning up, continuously. The adder last summer was probably the all-time highlight, although weasels are heart-stoppers too. I'm infatuated by my microcosm. I've had the woodland surveyed, the flora and fauna audited. We have snipe, orchids, lizards and lichens and I love them all as I love my children. I managed to get my hands on a report carried out in 2009 by the Environment Agency as part of the national fisheries monitoring programme. It is a survey of the river that forms our southern boundary and I don't think there is any treasure in the world that could possibly have pleased me more. It is a whumping great tome of bone-dry academia specifically about the inner workings of a part of my tiny world. What joy. I buried myself in its in-depth analysis - samples taken at nine locations along the reaches of the quiet Thames tributary, the Evenlode. There are graphs showing the growth of dace, roach and chub populations compared to other rivers in the South. There were many threads and sub-threads. It took ages to read and compiling it must have taken months and cost a fortune, but at least it seemed to be painting an encouraging picture of a river slowly recovering to good health. The only thing is that everyone for miles around knows that the river has been colonised by American crayfish, to the extent that swimming in there is now slightly creepy. They escaped into the river two decades ago and it's teeming with them as they feed on the eggs and fry of native fish. But the report doesn't refer to them at all. Not once. Who on earth commissions a report that fails to report on the thing that is most important? Sticklebacks deserve better social services than this.