As it is now more than 50 years since the publication of Lack's Birds of Cambridgeshire it is inevitable that many changes, both anthropogenic and topographical, have taken place. These have been influenced initially by the Second World War and latterly by the technical and agricultural revolutions that have followed in its wake.

POPULATION EXPANSION

Throughout the world the effects of population growth have both directly and indirectly been the most important factors affecting the environment and thus the avifauna, by placing great pressure on the available land for human needs such as food production, housing and recreation. For example, in my native village of Sawston, which has always been designated an expansion zone, one third of the agricultural land available in 1947 had been built upon by 1975. This is somewhat extreme, and other villages have grown less quickly, but it gives a clear indication of the sort of loss of habitat that wildlife endures in such circumstances. However, in general Cambridgeshire has retained its principally agricultural status and has not been in the forefront of the population explosion, remaining very much a rural county with any large-scale expansion limited to its principal city and some of its largest villages.

The primary effect, in Cambridgeshire, of population growth is the need for increased food production, which in this country has been coupled with a curiously illogical EEC farm policy and supported by Government development subsidies.