CAN anybody please shed some light on what is happening to the wildlife in this town?

I live around the Rooksbury Mill nature reserve, which now seems something of a contradiction in terms.

Gone are the wildfowl which used to visit throughout the year and covering a wide range of species including exotic grebe and mandarin ducks. You are now hard pushed to see even a coot or a moorhen.

The same with the stretch of river leading to the Mill, the same stretch where much work has been undertaken to encourage water vole and otter, and that seems to have succeeded only in dispersing all other wildlife in the vicinity.

The scarcity is not limited to this region only. The numbers of small garden birds has rapidly fallen too.

Blackbirds, finches, tits, thrushes and warblers are all hard to come by. Very few sparrows are nesting in the eaves of houses, and I have not had a single sighting of the kingfisher this year.

The dawn chorus is a mere shadow of its former glory.

Hedgehogs, which not so long ago, were plentiful in number, are never seen any more. The foxes have gone and the numbers of rabbits have diminished.

The river has become a sludgy, unattractive stretch of water and the microscopic life and invertebrates such as shrimps you could scoop out aplenty in bygone years, have gone. Twenty years ago, you could shine a torch in the river and be sure to spot at least one eel. Not now. Bats are very few and far between and so are the swallows which is leaving halos of insects to fight through at night.

Has anybody else noticed this?

Andy Boulton, Sainsbury Close, Andover.