SIR — At the top of Staple Plain on the Quantocks there is a small wood. During the gales in January, several of the fir trees were blown over. They have lain there these last months, the brambles and undergrowth slowly covering them.

Birds have nested there - a song thrush, almost as rare here as the peregrine falcon, jenny wrens, robins, blackbirds etc.

So the National Trust in its wisdom has moved in with big machinery and is now pulling out the wood, with total disregard for the wildlife. This could have been done nine months of the year, but now now!

It is little wonder that our birds are diminishing so quickly when things like this keep happening.

Kathleen Richards,

Townsend,