Against the dying of the light

Lesser celandine beams from the lane to my father's house and all his hedges are ablaze with the white-not-white froth of blackthorn.

The first ducklings on my pond have gone, lost to the cold, the rain or the gulls. On a faraway pool a twice-doomed duck breeds in captivity for the first time: eighteen weakling blobs of fluff a first turn in the tide of extinction, a covenant between committed conservationists and Madagascar's wild. Thank you Durrell, WWT and everyone involved. It can be done. It can be done. Extinction's not compulsory.

That wildlife is threatened by human activity is now so frequently announced in the mass media that one could fear that extinction is apathetically perceived as compulsory.

Jon Fjeldså and Niels Krabbe

Birds of the High Andes

Do not go gentle into that good night.

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Dylan Thomas