Since my Dad died, one of the few things that has uplifted me is an unexpected brush with nature, especially in the air.

A glimpse of a Red Kite circling effortlessly in the far sky.

Seeing bats flitting across my Mum’s back garden in the dark, acrobatic in the twilight.

Which is why the news that the government is considering rowing back on a pledge to require new built homes to have a nest brick built into them came as a such a puzzling shock.

Nest bricks aim to make up for the absence of nesting spaces under the eaves of modern homes, which has helped cut our swallow and sparrow population by half in the last few decades.

They cost £35 per house, so not an onerous burden on developers.

The apparent reasoning is that encouraging the recovery of bird life will be “unpopular with voters”. I really don’t know who they might have been talking to. Perhaps they are the sort of people who hear the word “green” and reach for their chain saw.

It makes me wonder whether the Ministers who are pondering this have ever seen a swallow. They will have the opportunity in the next few weeks. I’d urge them to get their noses out of their red boxes and look up. They’ll feel so much better for it if they do; then make the decision to give more of us a chance to keep doing it.

Wordsworth once wrote “my heart leaps up when I behold a rainbow in the sky”. If you don’t feel the same about swallows, your soul is dead.

Please sign the petition to show that people actually like to live with and in inspirational nature and pass it on.