Todays Google Doodle celebrates Rachel Carson's 107th birthday. I hope this does not go entirely unnoticed, as her book Silent Spring was one of the influences that helped steer me on an environmentalist path.

Her staunch defense of nature in the face of the indiscriminate use of pesticides led directly to controls on the use of DDT and related chemicals. Acts which, not least, mean that buzzards and other birds of prey are daily sights in the skies across the Uk, and hat otters have succesfully returned to all of our river basins.

It isn't often a direct link can be drawn between a book and tangible changes in our environment, yet even today there are still debates raging over the banning of pesticides linked to colony collapse disorder in bees.

Let's hope for a brighter future for the birds- and the bees.