Jim Perrin’s throwaway remark, in his piece on nuthatches (Country diary, 12 March), that he has taught a blackbird on his shed roof to whistle La Marseillaise demands in-depth inquiry. How do you do it? Can you do it with other wild birds? Is La Marseillaise the best song to choose? Is this dangerous mucking about with nature?
Dr Martin Price
Dinas Powys, Vale of Glamorgan
• I am sure that a 5am run may be magical, but an owl heard hooting along the river (10 March) would be a tawny owl, not the less common barn owl. Barn owls are beautiful, but make an unattractive screeching noise and hence are also known as screech owls.
Martin A Jeffree
Uckfield, East Sussex
• Praying for peace (Letters, 13, March)? Try paying. As the peace activist Felix Moscheles said: “Give me money and I’ll give you peace.” For far too long people have paid for war, and preparation for war, in accordance with the old and discredited dictum: “If you want peace, prepare for war.”
Peter van den Dungen
Halifax, West Yorkshire
• The letter about the dame “who followed her electric dreams” (13 March) prompted me to play the wonderfully joyful song Together in Electric Dreams – I’d recommend it to anybody who needs a lift in these troubled times.
Geoff Bunce
Harpenden, Hertfordshire
• Re older people having sex (9 March), one woman doctor said sympathetically to a friend with arthritic knees: “That’s the trouble with ageing men. They get stiff in all the wrong places.”
Margaret Forrester
Edinburgh
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